In the early 1900s, composer Sir Edward Elgar thought nothing of cycling 40 miles from home to watch his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers FC. A keen cyclist, his pride and joy was a Royal Sunbeam, built in the city (no longer a town, it was awarded city status in 2000). I, too, cycled to Wolverhampton recently, following a little-known, backwoods trail that didn't exist when Elgar was pedalling.
Once a railway line, I found this nine-mile route quite by accident. At one point on it I was barely two miles from the city centre. I found this hard to believe, as I had pedalled variously through woodland echoing to the sound of pheasants, beneath silent country lanes, through a sandstone cutting, past farmland and beside a scenic canal. The original railway was so remote it probably never should have been built.
It only carried passenger trains for seven short years, from 1925-32, before the GWR admitted defeat and gave in to competition from buses and the private car. It limped on as a rail version of a city bypass for goods and through passenger trains, until the mid-1960s. Thankfully, two local councils then stepped in, buying the land from British Railways and turning it into a trail. Which is why it has two names. The Kingswinford Railway Walk becomes the South Staffordshire Railway Walk at an anonymous farm gate.
Denne historien er fra August 2023-utgaven av Best of British.
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Denne historien er fra August 2023-utgaven av Best of British.
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THE FEW ON SCREEN
Steven Taylor looks at the Battle of Britain across film and TV
Table Service
Rachel Toy looks at the history of Ridgway Homemaker tableware
Hever Forever
Claire Saul studies the newly refurbished Boleyn Apartment at Hever Castle & Gardens - a castle fit for a queen
Shining a Light
Tony O’Neil tunes into the history of the last manned lightvessel
The Man With the Goldeneye
Film stills photographer Keith Hamshere describes how he came to enter the world of James Bond
THE ORIGINAL GOLDEN BALLS
lan Wheeler looks back on 70 years of Tiger comic and Roy of the Rovers, and chats to the man who edited and oversaw both titles
To Play the Queen
Chris Hallam looks back on the life of one of the UK’s best known lookalikes
POOLING RESOURCES
Martin Handley looks at what life was like after the Vernons Girls
POSTCARD FROM= SUSSEX
Bob Barton indulges in pleasure piers and fairground delights, as well as fulfilling a long-held ambition to visit the home of Rudyard Kipling
Oh, Miss Jones
Chris Hallam looks back at the origins and legacy of Rising Damp, ITV's most successful sitcom