A century ago, Britain's rail network was the envy of the world.
You could get a train from almost anywhere...
..to almost anywhere else.
But many of these lines were considered unprofitable,
and in the 1960s,
Dr Beeching was recruited by the government to come up with
a plan that would stop the railways from haemorrhaging money.
He famously brought the axe down on
over 4,000 miles of track and 2,000 stations.
Almost overnight, 30% of the network was closed down.
50 years on, I'm going on a journey
to discover just a few of those lost lines.
I'm walking the old Ruabon to Barmouth line,
which connected the heart of England to the untamed wilderness of
Wales...
..the beauty of Snowdonia.
I'll visit the country's most famous aqueduct in order to discover
what the Romans taught us when it came to building railways.
I'll seek out living history.
"I've got a dead body here," he said to me.
Good Lord, the chap had collapsed and died on the train.
We had to take him out here.
We had him standing in the office over there.
Once I reach the coast, I'll marvel at one of the oldest and most
spectacular viaducts still in use in Britain.
And at the end of it, I look forward to a rather nice seaside town.
I'm in search of one of the great lost railways of Wales,
and to get there, I need to cross the Cefn Mawr Viaduct.
And the only way to cross it and reach my starting point is by train.
In the 1840s, railway companies started offering low cost
excursions so that working men and their families could travel
to parts of the UK they may have never seen before.
And trips like this became available to everyone.
Now the line I'm looking for was one of the first to take
passengers from the busy, industrial heartland of England deep
into Wales, with its dramatic scenery.
I'll be walking the Ruabon to Barmouth line,
55 miles of track bed that winds through the rugged
countryside to the beautiful Cardigan Bay.
This is the starting point for my journey.
In its heyday, this station was a hive of activity.
It was a terminus with a goods depot,
a marshalling yard and a turntable.
But sadly, by 1974, after the wave of Beeching cuts,
it was reduced to an unstaffed halt.
There's a photo of it a good few decades ago now.
There's a lot missing.
There's a whole station building gone from that side.
There's a canopy no longer here.
That's still the original station building, though.
Now it's just quiet.
The lost railway line I'm looking for splits away from the mainline
just outside of Ruabon station here.
But it's been shut down for 50 years,
so whether or not I'll find exactly where it splits, I don't know.
I'm game for giving it a shot.
Now the thing about lost railway lines is,
for the most part, they're not there any more, they are lost.
So, it can be quite tricky to find them.
But if you know what you're looking for, there are clues out there.
Now looking at my map, I think...
Well, this is a bit deceptive, cos there's water down here,
but if you come across with me, it doesn't go anywhere.
It stops there in a bit of a kind of mucky puddle.
Now I don't think that is a waterway.
I think this is water that's just filled up.
I think this is the line.
This is definitely the first thing I've come across
that says I'm on track.
So, Barmouth, at the very end of the line,
should be about 55 miles away down there.
Pretty sure I'm right.
It's hard to imagine walking through this overgrowth, but this was
part of the track bed that leads to a small station called Acrefair.
There's absolutely no trace of it now, though.
Hoi!
So, I've come down and I thought there might be some old clues.
I don't know, some piles of old railway ballast or some old
sleepers or something, but, no, there's nothing down here.
When it's gone, it's gone.
Especially here.
I'm confident elsewhere on the line there will be some bigger clues.
Taking a slight detour from the old track bed,
I want to see what life was like before the railways by
exploring this region's star attraction.
Now this is the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.
This has been here for over 200 years.
It was built by Thomas Telford,
pretty much the grandfather of civil engineering.
And it's the longest and tallest
navigable aqueduct in the whole of Britain.
I'm meeting Peter Jones and Lynda Slater of the Canal & River Trust,
to find out how the railways impacted on the waterways.
Come on board. Thank you very much.
Have a good look at the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.
Now we've got the Cefn Mawr Viaduct just behind us there,
and here we are on the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Yes. Yes.
How important were the canals around
here then before all the railways arrived?
They actually shipped all the cargo around the country into the docks.
So before the railways, the canals were the arteries of industry, were
they? They were the original superhighway. The superhighways.
It was just all about speed, wasn't it?
River and road just wasn't enough. It was all about the timescale.
Taking large loads in a shorter space of time.
And it was profitable, was it? Oh, yes.
It was going from not being able to move any industry anywhere,
to being able to take whatever you liked across the world.
What happened with the canals, then, when the railways came in and
took over that industrial transportation?
Well, it quite quickly turned into
a tourism attraction, you know, with boat trips.
Did it, even then? They did. So it's always been a hotspot.
And, of course, it's convenient to England.
It's on the border, it's a different country, different language.
And so there was something almost... Exotic. ..exotic,
yeah, mystical about coming abroad. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
So we're talking here, kind of middle of the 19th century?
Yeah, the Victorian era, yes.
And people still do it in their, what, thousands?
In their thousands. Thousands, yeah. Absolute thousands.
We see nearly 500,000 visitors a year to come see the aqueduct.
Yeah. 500,000 a year? Yeah.
Now that it's a World Heritage site, it's just gone "boom."
Goodness me. Yeah. Amazing. It's quite disconcerting.
I've been chatting to you there and then I turn around and look.
Yeah, it's a drop, isn't it?
Birds flying beneath us.
That's 126ft down. It's nicknamed, "the stream in the sky".
Just because you do just feel like
you're in the middle of, you know, flying across. Completely.
Well, it's beautiful, and it's magnificent,
and thank you to Mr Thomas Telford. Yes, oh, yeah. Definitely.
I'm walking from an engineering marvel of the canals
to a once lost but now found piece of this line's railway history.
Train railway enthusiasts do have model railways.
You've taken that to the next level here.
It's like having your hobby in your back garden.
I'm about six miles into my journey,
walking the lost railway line from Ruabon to Barmouth in Wales,
and I'm heading to the picturesque town of Llangollen.
Before the advent of the railways,
the concept of tourism was very much
reserved for the upper classes -
the affluent few who could
afford vast, elaborate,
cultural tours around the country
by stagecoach at the time.
But the railways,
they were affordable.
And so suddenly, travel became
available to the working classes.
Taking a trip across the border to North Wales would have been
an entirely new experience for Victorian tourists,
with its foreign landscapes, language and culture.
Even now, as I follow the lost track bed,
this feels like a hidden, magical place.
Esteemed writers such as Shelley,
Wordsworth and Byron were all inspired to visit.
And later, when the railways passed nearby, the tourists followed.
This is Plas Newydd in Llangollen.
It is famously the former home of two upper class women who
eloped from Ireland at the end of the 18th century to escape
the prospect of arranged marriages,
against the will of their influential and wealthy families.
Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby
became known as the Ladies of Llangollen.
And the romantic lifestyle that they lived here became a source of
intrigue and curiosity to all of those who visited the area.
It's quite a dramatic front to a house here.
You can't help but be impressed by it in some way.
It's not just the house on its own - it's all of this, the gardens,
but then beyond as well, that sets this house in context.
While the ladies, with their unconventional romantic
relationship, were trying to escape the spotlight,
in the years since their deaths their unique story has enthralled
hundreds of thousands of visitors brought here by the railways.
Tourists have continued to flock here...
..attracted by this really quite seductive,
idyllic surroundings and...
..the legacy of romanticism left here.
I've just popped back down the hill to join the line again, which really
hugs the River Dee here, all the way along the Dee Valley.
So as I'm making my way west,
I'm just coming up into the centre of Llangollen here.
When this section of the line opened in 1861,
it was busy with freight trains carrying coal and slate.
A year later, when it opened to passengers,
thousands of visitors started to pour into this picturesque town.
The reason all the visitors come here today,
the same reason all the Victorian tourists flocked here,
it's the peacefulness, the tranquillity of these surroundings.
And Llangollen's really turned its hand at making money from that.
There's loads of hotels and restaurants, ice cream shops here.
But one way these modern-day tourists can really
experience what the Victorians had, is just over here.
Llangollen was, and still is, a popular tourist destination.
But the Beeching cuts in the 1960s meant this beautiful old
station became a victim of the unprofitable line it was on.
The last passenger train ran through here in 1965.
The track was pulled up and the rest of it just left to rot and ruin.
A group of passionate and dedicated volunteers re-found this lost line
and have lovingly rebuilt ten miles of it.
Is this a hobby that's become a profession? Yeah.
It was a hobby, it's become a life, that's for sure.
It's become a life. Yeah.
The hobby's very demanding,
but it's like having your hobby in your back garden.
You know, my back garden's here.
This is where I play.
This is where I like to be.
I love the fact that you use the word play, cos I mean
people do, you know, train railway enthusiasts do have model railways.
You've taken that to the next level here.
For me, OK, it's a very serious play.
It stems probably from childhood,
because my father was personally interested in spotting the
trains, and he'd shown me all this at a very early age.
Do you have a love for the railway as well now?
Yes. It was my second date with my husband
was a footplate ride in December, on a Santa special.
And he said to me,
"If you don't like this, then we're not going to go any further."
And I was on a footplate in freezing cold weather in December, with
people I didn't know and a man I'd met once.
And look at you, you're still here, so you must have enjoyed it!
And I did, I loved it. So it's a very special experience
going on the footplate, I've got to say.
Do you see yourself as a kind of custodian in this period? Yeah.
I'm keen on making sure we preserve all the original elements,
like the old clocks and the lamps
and things that have stemmed from the old period.
But it's those things that when people come in here,
you see their faces light up... Yeah.
..when they come and they see the station like this.
It's gotta be a working museum serving a purpose,
and letting people, you know,
transport themselves from one end
of the valley to the other.
Well, hey, I'm very much looking forward to my journey
along the route here.
Railway enthusiasts Quentin and Liz McGuinness
have been spearheading this monumental task.
Quentin and Liz have breathed new life into this lost railway.
People come from all around the world to get a taste of this
great British age of steam.
And now, the moment I've been waiting for, a chance to
enjoy the line the same way the Victorian tourists would have done.
Here we go.
That sounds ominous. Tunnels...
..and into the Wild West.
The scenery out here just keeps surprising me.
And it's...
..truly beautiful.
50 years on since its closure,
this line is now busy and profitable again.
I know Quentin and Liz would love to extend it further and claw
back some more of its history, but the land it would need to
pass through is now privately owned and it would cost millions.
For now, I'm happy to sit back and enjoy this beautifully
restored ten mile stretch, that seems to get more and more
remote the further down the line we go.
Now this is very obviously the end of the line as far as the Llangollen
Heritage Railway folk are concerned, so I'm back on foot.
But it doesn't take too much now to figure out where the line continues.
It's straight along.
It's all here to see.
I'm about a third of the way into my journey now,
and heading west towards Lake Bala.
Although I thought I was following the line,
I'm beginning to wonder if I've taken a wrong turn.
I've had to check my map a couple of times along here to make sure that I
am still following the old railway line, because...
..well, I'm in people's gardens here.
So it does feel a bit odd.
It feels like I shouldn't be here, but this is definitely the
old route of the line, and this is absolutely a public right of way.
So as long as I've got the River Dee on my right-hand side here,
I know I'm following the line.
Now this is the first bit of kind of hidden clue along this railway I've
come across, that this was the railway,
cos I keep wanting to remind myself.
Look at this little stone wall built in here.
Just keeping back the earth from
where the tracks would have gone along here.
In fact, actually you can see a lot... There's loads along here.
Look at this.
You know, this isn't natural.
I mean, it's all covered in moss now because you haven't got
trains rolling through here every day.
These stones haven't seen trains through here for decades.
Rolling stone gathers no moss.
And these are covered in moss,
cos there's been no rolling stock.
You've got all this old railway ballast under me here as well,
that this path's made out of.
You know, that was keeping the track in place.
It's those little clues.
I'm stepping out of the wilderness
into what used to be the old Bala Junction.
And believe it or not, it's another section of restored track.
Perhaps this railway's not so lost after all.
I'm actually quite happy I can give my legs a bit of a rest,
as I catch a ride and head a few miles up to Llangower Station.
The reopening of two heritage lines on this old route is
testament to the area's continued popularity as a tourist attraction.
And that's no surprise with the beauty of its lakeside scenery.
Unlike the full-sized Llangollen line, this is a narrow gauge
track, meaning smaller locomotives and carriages.
It almost feels like a model railway.
As I follow the track bed of this Ruabon to Barmouth line,
I'll meet up with a railway veteran who has some unusual stories to tell
about his 50 years as a signal box controller.
"I've got a dead body here," he said to me.
And we had a corpse here all day. All day with you? Yeah.
I'm following the lost railway line from Ruabon to Barmouth.
I'm about halfway into my journey and I've hitched a ride on
this restored heritage line, to take me to Llangower Station,
which was once a busy stop for hundreds of children.
At the beginning of the 20th century,
the future looked bleak for the Welsh language.
Speaking English seemed to dominate
every aspect of life outside the home.
So places like the Glan-Llyn Activity Centre were set up
all over Wales to protect its culture and traditions.
By 1953, children were being sent on the railways to this remote lakeside
station, where they'd board a boat to take them across to the centre.
I'm here to meet Llinas Jones Williams
to find out why these centres were so crucial.
SHE SPEAKS WELSH
I'm sorry, I don't fully understand everything there.
No, that's fine. But will you teach me some Welsh?
I will indeed. Good. Can we do it in the canoe?
Let's do it in the canoe, yeah. Thank you. OK.
It's the best way to learn a new language.
How do you say "canoe" in Welsh? A canoe.
It's pretty calm out today, isn't it?
Well, I'm glad actually.
We're quite lucky in Glan-Llyn cos in Glan-Llyn we've got the bay,
which is quite sheltered. Let's get out and have a look. OK.
Would the kids arriving here at Glan-Llyn,
when it first opened, would they have been arrived by rail?
Yes, and the first camp was held in Glan-Llyn in 1950.
So the first resident would have arrived from all around Wales
and they would have travelled up by train.
So imagine the excitement of being, you know,
12, 13 and you would have travelled for hours from Swansea or
Cardiff, or Haverford West, or whatever.
So tell me about the Glan-Llyn Centre, then.
Glan-Llyn is run by an organisation called the Urdd, Urdd Gobaith Cymru.
And that was set up in 1922, because Welsh needed to be preserved.
Basically there was a threat to it dying out altogether.
At the time, all education was through the medium of English,
and it was only a few decades earlier that they system of
the "Welsh not" had been in place.
The "Welsh not"? What's the "Welsh not?"
Well, the "Welsh not" was a fairly cruel system that children in
Wales were punished for speaking in Welsh.
Say, for example, if a teacher heard one of the children speaking Welsh
within the school grounds, then they would have to wear a plaque, like
a wooden plaque, with the letters "WN" that stood for "Welsh not".
And then if another child was caught,
this plaque would be passed from child to child and whoever
had the plaque at the end of the day would get caned six times.
So, you... So basically, they were trying to kind of
punish the Welsh language out of them, you know?
Oh, my word. So it was through force. Yeah.
The arrival of the railways wasn't always positive.
As they provided easier access for English-speaking tourists, they
may well have played a part in the declining use of the Welsh language.
Back on the Heritage line here,
finishing off my journey to the end of Lake Bala.
So I've got a good idea of what it was like to ride the trains
along here, but I'm about to meet a chap now who can tell me what
it was like working on the old Ruabon to Barmouth line,
cos he's worked every single station when it was running.
One of the most crucial jobs on the railways fell to a dedicated
group of men whose love for the job knew no bounds...
..the signalmen.
And after 50 years on the job,
I'm betting John Roberts will have some stories to tell.
Well, look at it, it's beautiful!
Similar to what it was when it was running on
British Rail and the Great Western. Is it?
And the instruments are exactly the same as when I started here in 1947.
I was 15 years of age and the wages I was earning at that time
was short of £2 - £1.90...
That's... ..for a 48 hour week.
I thought you were going to say per day. No, no, per week. For the week?
Yeah, £1.90 a week.
It's a very active job, isn't it? It's not just signalman.
You're called into action in all different ways.
Yeah, called into action, yeah. We were called GPs, General Purpose.
That's a good name for it. Yeah, it was, yeah.
One morning the guard called me over, "John, come here," he said.
And he said to me, "I've got a dead body here," he said to me.
Good Lord, the chap had collapsed and died on the train.
We had to take him out here, we had
him standing in the office over there for all day.
That's not in the job description.
It's not in the job description that, no, it wasn't. No. Yeah.
When the old Ruabon to Barmouth line closed,
how did it affect the community?
Well, it hardly affected them, did it? You know. Really?
Maybe it affected local merchants for awhile,
as far as the passenger people went along.
Adequate bus service was provided.
And what about you? How did it affect you?
How did it affect me? Yeah.
Well as I say, I had to move, didn't I? Yeah. Yeah.
I had to pack it in around this area
and go back to Ruabon and Shrewsbury to work.
I love characters like John.
They're the heartbeat that keeps the history of the lost railways alive.
Thank you so much, indeed.
Really, really nice to meet you.
I'm now heading along the old track
to Dolgellau, Snowdonia,
which is a nine mile hike
into the rugged countryside.
Signs of the old railway are few and far between,
but every now and then you stumble across an obvious reminder.
Now I wondered what I might come across when I got to here.
So this...
..there's really not much of it left here now,
but this is Drws-y-Nant Station.
You can see, look, we've got platforms on either side here.
There was never much here in the first place.
I mean, look around, there's no houses.
There never were any real houses around here. There's no industry.
There's not really any buildings at all, which begs the question, what
on earth would you need a station for in the middle of nowhere?
I guess it's almost like a local bus stop,
where you might have picked up the occasional passenger who was,
I don't know, maybe went for a walk and decided to get the train back.
When you see just how remote this station is,
or was, you can start
to understand that this line wasn't
always that economically viable...
..especially once cars and trucks arrived as well.
This wilderness would have felt extremely alien
to 19th century tourists.
It's no wonder this part of deepest,
darkest Wales is often referred to as the Wild West.
The area just off the line in this direction here was called Mawddwy,
And it became infamous in the 16th century because of a band of
red-headed thieves who were nicknamed The Red Bandits.
I mean, they were effectively highwaymen terrorising locals
and people passing through,
and the reason they could get away with such lawless behaviour
for so long was just because of how remote it is out here.
There are very few towns or villages between Bala and Dolgellau.
I mean, this pretty much was the Welsh Wild West.
Fortunately, 200 years later when the railways did arrive,
they took the fear out of travelling by offering a secure,
safer passage, turning this intimidating landscape
into a leisurely sightseeing journey.
I've now arrived at the market town of Dolgellau.
There's no trace of the original station that served this town.
It was demolished in the '70s.
But in its heyday, the railway attracted hundreds of paying
tourists, and the locals were eager to demonstrate a different
culture, which in turn encouraged the economy to thrive.
Towards the end of the 18th century,
it was noted by tourists visiting the area that many of the women were
still wearing costume from a good 50 or 60 years earlier, if not more.
In particular, the large, red tweed coats and mannish black hats.
By the 1830s, this look had become recognised as Welsh national
costume, and a lot of that was due to the fact that Welsh gentry
at the time decided there was a need for more national identity.
Almost a manufactured identity to be used on souvenirs and on
postcards to satisfy visiting tourists.
And it's an identity that's still strong today.
It wasn't just the sight of these unusually dressed women that
surprised the early tourists here.
They may have been taken back by the unlikely Welsh sounds too.
The triple harp was also adopted as a symbol of Wales.
I've come to meet Mair Ifans.
Wow, that's lovely. This is it, then, this is a triple harp.
Which is the Welsh instrument.
There would have been a harper in most pubs.
People would dance and they would, you know,
do clog dancing and that type of thing as well, you know.
Oh, lovely. But because it was associated with pubs and so on,
it became the instrument of devils. Did it?
You know, we think of harps being music of angels. We do.
Then after the religious people in Wales during the 19th century,
they wanted them burnt in Bala, for example.
Goodness me.
Because it was creating these urges in people in the pubs to go dancing.
It was having a detrimental influence to society.
Yes. Terrible, terrible, it was.
And people maybe getting to hear about this exotic place in
the west, and coming on holiday on the trains and...
To come and experience some of that exotic... Exoticness!
So then it is exotic, you know, it is foreign, you know?
I would love it if you could play me a tune.
I'll play you a tune called The Bellisle March.
Leaving Dolgellau behind, it's easy to find your way back onto
the old railway line really, cos you just head towards the river.
This is the River Mawddach.
And unsurprisingly, this has now become the Mawddach trail.
The thing that I find quite interesting is, how the
modern roads tend to follow the same route as the old railway line.
And the old railway line, for almost the entire length of this
particular line, follow the route of the water.
The water is the path of least resistance
through all these valleys and hills.
And now it takes me up to Penmaenpool on my way to Barmouth.
As I continue to retrace the route taken by Victorian tourists,
I share the excitement they would have felt.
They came across this bridge,
possibly about to experience the seaside for the very first time.
I'm three quarters of the way along this lost railway line,
between Ruabon and Barmouth on the Welsh coast.
I'm walking the old track, which is now the Mawddach trail,
and I'm approaching Penmaenpool Station.
There's not much left of it, but it's not too difficult to
work out where the platform used to exist.
That's it, that's perfect.
So you've got the bridge here, I mean that's just off,
and all these hills are exactly the same, they've not changed.
And yes, there's the signal box there that's hidden behind here.
But I'm stood in the middle of a car park now.
If I take myself back to the time of this photo, I'd have had
a whacking great big steam engine coming right at me here, look.
"Toot, toot!"
I reckon this is Penmaenpool Station here.
It looks like the back of a station,
coming onto where the platforms would have been here.
I'm pretty sure that is.
Good afternoon. How we doing? Good, thank you. Beer?
Yes, please. Thank you very much. Just one second.
So that building just next door, is that the old station here? It is.
Right at the bottom end, the two-storey one,
used to be accommodation.
The middle was the ticket office/parcel office, lost property.
And this end was the waiting room. There's not much sign of it out here
now. It's not railway traffic you get now.
There's not much. We keep waiting, but we don't hear anything now.
No more steam trains coming past your window. No.
The signal's still there. But, yeah, it would have been great.
Yeah, it would have been much nicer with the railway, I think. Yeah.
I'm going to go and enjoy this.
Thank you very much indeed. Good health. Cheers. Thank you.
Even though this line was closed 53 years ago,
some of the old structures have been put to good use.
Rhys Gwynn works for the national parks, and has been responsible for
re-purposing this old signal box for nature lovers.
Rhys. Hello, Rob. How are you?
Nice to meet you. OK, pleased to meet you. Welcome to the signal box.
Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah, there's not much that would tell you
it's a signal box. It's still in the
colours of the Great Western Railway, on the outside. Yeah.
But apart from that, apart from the signal box,
there's not an awful lot left.
Why was the decision taken to re-purpose it as you have?
It was empty for awhile, so I decided to basically off-load
all the skulls and bits and bobs of animals that I had at home,
and I thought, "Oh, I'll create an exhibition here."
I mean, it is a fantastic route.
And, I mean, the view that you've got out here is just spectacular.
Would there be any particular effect on the nature here,
because of the railway that used to be here?
With the old steam trains, so much vacuum behind the train as it
whizzes along, that it draws in seed behind it.
So often you get a progression of a plant species down the line
following the train.
And I suppose the other aspect is that,
although it looks very wooded now, there weren't any trees at all.
But now, it's a bit of a haven for wildlife.
Is this area of particular interest to bird watchers and naturalists?
Well, it does draw people in.
So the people we get in here, they're either bird enthusiasts
or naturalists, or they're railway enthusiasts very often as well.
Cos we had a lot of people coming in who remembered the trains.
And in fact, one of our ex-seasonal wardens remembered coming
here as a child to have his hair cut by the signalman in here.
What? Whilst it was operating as a railway? Yes.
This was an operating signal box? Yeah. Yeah.
He'd come and get his hair cut? Come and get his hair cut.
Well, as things were done in those days, yeah. I love that.
All over the country there are many
colourful stories relating to signal boxes just like this one.
In 1948, there were over 10,000 of them,
but sadly today, just under 500 are left.
My journey from Ruabon to Barmouth is nearing an end.
I'm rejoining the Mawddach trail for the last few miles to the coast.
Here at Arthog, what's now a really quiet stretch of the estuary
was once a hive of activity.
Back in the late 1800s,
a mini gold rush here saw around 500 men at its peak employed to
search for this precious metal, and they did a pretty good job too.
In today's money, an estimated
60 million pounds' worth of gold was mined here.
And because of its scarcity and difficulty of extraction, it's
still thought of as one of the most sought-after golds in the world.
Now, finally, after 55 miles by canal, canoe,
on foot and on two glorious heritage railway lines, I can feel the
landscape opening up as I approach the west coast of Wales.
It's the end of the line.
All I need to do now is head across
the estuary north into Barmouth itself.
And the reason I can do that is because of this.
The Barmouth Bridge.
At just under 700m long,
this remarkable structure is a masterpiece of engineering.
It's survived 150 years of the sea lashing at its feet,
two world wars, a stray naval mine, and an attack of marine
woodworm, and it's still in use today, taking visitors right
into the middle of town just as it did over 100 years ago.
What I really love about this bridge is that
it's almost entirely made out of timber.
These handrails are made out of timber, this walkway is timber.
And look here, even the beams that the rails themselves are
bolted down to are all made out of timber.
Now this is the longest timber bridge in Wales,
and it's one of the oldest that's still in use in Britain.
I'm quite excited to be coming across it.
But I'm also excited to be here because...
..I'm almost at the seaside.
But I reckon the excitement I've got here now is only a fraction
of the excitement that some of those working class Victorian
families, making their way over here from England,
might have been feeling as they came across this bridge,
possibly about to experience the seaside for the very first time.
Barmouth grew up around its ship building and fishing industries.
But since the arrival of the railways,
guest houses and hotels sprung up everywhere to cater for the
thousands of visitors that came from far and wide.
It's easy to see why early Victorian tourists were attracted to
this place, but I wonder WHO they were.
To find out more, I've come to speak to Janet Griffith
here at the Sailors' Institute.
Barmouth was well known for tourism and though recently I heard
that Barmouth was known, not for bed and breakfast, but for people
actually coming and renting places even then.
And the lady of the house would cook the food for them.
And in a 1911 census,
there was 130 ladies' boarding houses that were registered.
So they wanted to come on long holidays?
Oh, yes, they absolutely came on long holidays.
A lot would come for four weeks.
They would come as a family,
the husband would then go back by rail for work and then come
back at weekends, and that's how they used the train an awful lot.
And of course, they used to put on special trains as well from the
Midlands especially. Unfortunately, Mr Beeching is the one who cut that.
Sadly. Actually, I used to use that railway. Did you?
Yes, because I lived in Birmingham and my parents lived here.
I was wondering if you could help me understand where the majority of
those tourists might have been coming from?
Yes, I've got this photocopy of all the boarding houses
that were in the area at the time. There's some more.
All these people on this date were visiting Barmouth.
About 40% of the people who came here as visitors were from
the Midlands, but there was an equal number of 40% that came from
the North West, which was Liverpool and Manchester.
80% were from the Midlands and the North West.
So, I mean, in a way fairly local as we might see it today, local.
Back then, not at all local.
Well, listen, I'm going to go and, well,
experience what a lot of these guys came here for.
I'm going to head to the beach, finish off my journey.
Seeing the effect the railways had on people and communities
here has been a journey of discovery for me.
Despite the Beeching cuts of the 1960s and the closure of this
line, there's still a yearning for the glorious age of steam.
What confirms this for me is that out of the 189 stations in
Wales that were closed, 32 have since reopened.
For centuries, tourists and holiday-makers have been making
their way through North Wales here to Barmouth,
drawn by the allure of the dramatic mountainous landscapes inland,
and the vast expansive beaches here on the coast.
But it was the railways coming here that opened up all of this to
all people, making it an affordable journey.
Without the railways, I doubt that Barmouth,
nor the scenic route here from Ruabon,
would ever have become the hotbed for tourism that it still is today.
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