Pilning (and Bristol)

April 13th

It seems to have stopped raining for the moment, time for a spring weekend getaway. I’ve not been to Bristol since 2020 before the you-know-what so I bought a small handful of rail tickets on Trainsplit and booked a couple of nights in a city centre hotel because I enjoyed Bristol last time and it’s easy to get to. I also had a little mission nearby that I wanted to do.

 

An emergency track repair on the GWR main line meant a delayed arrival at Bristol Temple Meads but I still had time to go for a coffee before I could check it at the hotel. The coffee was covered by the £3.90 Delay Repay refund I got from GWR though 😀

 

Bristol is a fairly walkable city so later I went for a stroll around the harbour, had fish and chips for tea (it was Friday night after all) and walked them off (a bit) along the trail around the south side of the Floating Harbour.

 

 

 

Which was thirsty work so I stopped at The Nova Scotia Hotel, an old pub on the Cumberland Basin part of the harbour. After a couple of very nice pints of local beer I walked back in the gathering darkness along the north side of the harbour back to my hotel.

 

 

 

 Saturday morning and time for the “mission”. The plan was to take a train to Severn Beach, walk part of the England Coast Path along the Bristol Channel/River Severn then inland to Pilning and catch the rare train back to Bristol. The weather forecast looked good. Well dry anyway.

 

The train to Severn Bridge was busy to start but as it progressed the passenger numbers dwindled and the views out across the estuary improved and half a dozen or so alighted at Severn Beach station.

 

 

 

 From the station I walked through the village of Severn Beach, a minor “seaside” resort whose attractions include a couple of cafes, a bakery, and Wow! a Public Toilet that is actually still open! You don’t find many of those in England. From there I took a path over the ditch, or rhine (pronounced “reen”) as it’s known here, and up onto the river wall.

And bloody hell that’s a cold wind blowing out of Wales! Coat on.

 

 

 

 I followed the sea wall along and under the Second Severn Crossing, a.k.a. the Prince of Wales Bridge, which carries the M4 Motorway to and from Wales, supplementing the 1966 Severn Bridge which can be seen further upstream. The tide was partly out and the path along the concrete wall was littered with bits of tree, some quite large, washed down from inland.

 

 

 

 After passing under the M4 and I reached New Passage Pier. This used to have a railway terminus and ferries across the Severn before the 4.4 miles long Severn Railway Tunnel superseded them in 1886. There is an information board at the point where you walk over the site of the tunnel. Beyond New Passage I turned inland to follow the Severn Way along The Pill river but soon and to backtrack because someone had let the cows out. The cows themselves weren’t the problem, the fact that the ground wasn’t yet firm enough to support them was since they had puddled the surface into an impassable quagmire and when the mud reaches over the top of your boots it’s time to change your plans. Even the cows didn’t seem to be enjoying the conditions. I re-routed via New Passage Rd. crossing the M4 in what according to the signs visible from the over bridge appears to be a no man’s land between England and Wales, and after a couple of miles reached Pilning. Well to be accurate I reached The Plough, where I was glad to have time to enjoy a pint of Wadworth’s and where they didn’t seem to mind the mud splattered apparition that just left a visible trail in and out of their saloon bar.

 

Pilning Station

 

Pilning is a formerly quite important station on the South Wales Main Line between Cardiff and Bristol. Potentially it could be an important transport hub for the surrounding area. Currently it’s the ninth least used station (2022-2023 figures) in England though due to under investment, poor management, and reduction in services that looks very like an attempt at closure by stealth. Until 2015 there were two trains a day, one in each direction. In 2016 that was reduced to two a week, the minimum permitted under the operator’s franchise. In November 2016 as part of the Great Western Mainline electrification the footbridge to Platform 1 was removed and the decision made not to pay to replace it. So now the two trains a week run in the same direction, towards Bristol, on a Saturday timetabled at 0832 and 1532. To make a return journey from Pilning you need to leave early in the morning and return early in the afternoon travelling to Severn Tunnel Junction and then back to Pilning. It being Saturday and GWR it’s not unknown for the trains to be cancelled. You can see why the locals are not happy. The publicity around the above has, because UK rail enthusiasts being what they are, resulted in something of an upturn in passenger numbers though and Pilning refuses to die. I added 1 to the statistics. Why? Because it’s there of course.

 

 

 

 Fortunately I only needed to make a single journey from Pilning to Bristol Temple Meads, cost with a railcard £3.60 and scheduled to take 20 minutes. Why the 37 minute trip from Bristol Temple Meads to Severn Beach earlier only cost £1.35 is a mystery known only to the gods of the UK rail ticketing system. I arrived in good time to take a look around. There’s not a lot to look at.

One platform, unlit because no one would replace the unsafe lighting and so trains cannot call after dark. One small shelter with a seat. This was actually occupied on my visit by the other two passengers travelling from Pilning that afternoon!

 

 

 

 An information point and a train times poster pretty much completes the set. There’s one station name sign ideal for selfies wearing your “#footbridge4pilning” tee shirt. No, I’m not sharing it here 😜

 

A couple of trains passed through while I was waiting, one in each direction. There’s no train departure board at Pilning obviously so I was keeping an eye on the Train Track app on my phone - fortunately something Pilning does have is a decent mobile signal. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to see that the 1532 train was now shown as “Delayed” with no estimate of when I might arrived. Told you, GWR + Saturday. Eventually it’s ETA was given as 1546 which kept moving away until 1549, which is when it finally appeared.

 

 

 

 This train from Cardiff Central to Penzance in Cornwall had left Cardiff late and was quite well loaded. Interestingly I had a seat reservation, Coach C Seat 78, but although the seat was vacant that was only luck since the reservation wasn’t shown on the on board display above the seat. (GWR+Saturday again?). Anyway it got to Bristol Temple Meads 19 minutes late so I got a refund of… 90 pence. Not enough for a coffee sadly.

 

Pilning ✓

 

I headed into Bristol city centre to buy a brush to remove at least some of Gloucestershire from my boots and jeans and then get something to eat. I had intended to return to the Nova Scotia later but frankly I was knackered having totted up a dozen miles walking and fortunately I had made provision in the handy fridge in my hotel room for such an eventuality. And that’s a really big television at the foot of the bed to fall asleep in front of.

 

Flickr Photos from the trip.

 

 

 

 

Clifton Rocks Railway

Sunday 12th January 2020

While looking at the map around Clifton Suspension Bridge something else of interest sprang off the page. In Sion Hill a little south of the suspension bridge was marked “Clifton Rocks Railway”. Searching the web revealed a disused funicular railway. In a tunnel. I had to go and have a look obviously.

The former top station is next to the Avon Gorge Hotel and is where there is most to see from the street. There were two entrances for passengers which lead down to the ticket hall and platforms below street level and you can look down through the iron railings into this area. A gap in the old awning of glass and iron pavement lights allows you to throw donations into a dustbin with a bell in. These donations go to the Clifton Rocks Railway Trust which has been formed by a group of volunteers to restore the Railway. Not as a working railway unfortunately as subsequent re-use of the tunnels since the railway closed in 1934 make that an impractical proposition.

The railway opened in 1893 it had taken two years to build and cost £30,000 -twice as long and three times as much as originally planned. (Sound familiar?)

The tunnel is 500 feet long rising 240 feet at a gradient of 1:2.2. Semi-elliptical and lined with bricks it is 27 feet 6 inches wide andv18 feet high with two pairs of tracks allowing operation of four cars, in pairs connected by steel cables.

The cars were raised and lowered by means of adding or removing water from tanks under the car floors to balance the weight of car, passengers, and water tank so that the upper car going down pulled the lower car up the incline.

The railway was very popular on opening but that didn’t last and in 1908 it went into receivership, being purchased by the Bristol Tramway and Carriage Co.

In 1922 The Portway road (now the A4 Hotwell Road) was widened. This required the closure and demolition of the Bristol Port and Pier Railway from Sneyd Park junction up to and including the Hotwells terminus, leaving the Rocks Railway somewhat isolated. Also having a major road placed only inches from the bottom station made, and still makes, access difficult.

That rather heralded or at least hastened the end for the operation of the Clifton Rocks Railway and in 1934 it ceased operations.

This wasn’t the end of the line for the tunnel though. Well it was the end of the line as a railway obviously but five years later the tunnel, like so many others, got a new use.

At the outbreak of the Second World War the Ministry of Works and Buildings leased the tunnel from the Tramways Company. In March, 1940. British Overseas Airways built an office suite and used part of the upper tunnel for storage. The ARP (Air Raid Precaution) Committee established air raid shelter number 1898.

In 1941 the four cars which had remained at the bottom of the tunnel since the railway closed were removed and the BBC moved in. They built a complex in the tunnel of four main chambers and three smaller rooms in the bottom station. From the top these contained transmitters, a studio for creating programmes, a recording room to record programmes which also contained enough recorded material for several weeks’ broadcasting, and a control room where eighty GPO land lines to other BBC sites could be switched. 

The three small rooms contained generators, ventilation plant, and of course a canteen because you can’t fight against Lord Haw-Haw without plenty of tea.

In the event the main BBC Bristol studios were never put out of action by the German bombing so the emergency studio at Clifton was never needed but the useful control room alone made the tunnel conversion worthwhile. The BBC continued to make use of the site until 1960 when advances in radio technology rendered it redundant.

In the late 1950s it became apparent that the facia of the bottom station was beginning to part company with the cliff face, a four inch wide crack having appeared between it and the rock face.As a result a series of tied buttresses were constructed along the face of the tunnel in Hotwell Road. These steel sections encased in concrete were anchored to the cliff using inclined anchors connecting the top of the assembly down into the rock behind. This has rather defaced the original facia of the bottom station.

The information above is just a brief summary of that supplied by Richard Hope-Hawkins on the excellent Cliff Rocks Railway website which is well worth visiting if you want to know more. You can also book tours via that site when they are running. I do hope they manage to open the site properly as a tourist attraction, given its proximity to the suspension bridge it surely has great potential.

A Bigger Boat

Saturday 11th January 2020

Bored on a Friday night in the pub and with a couple of days off work I got to wondering where I could go and what I could visit that would be open at this time of year. Armed with a pint and smartphone I’d soon booked a hotel and a train ticket and on Saturday morning was speeding West towards Bristol on one of Hitachi’s finest. Brunel’s steamship the SS Great Britain my destination. As it was too early to book into the hotel I walked straight from Bristol Temple Meads station to Great Western Dock where the ship lies in dry 

dock since it was brought back from the Falkland Islands in 1970.

As well as the ship itself the dock site contains two museums, a cafe, and of course a gift shop through which you must pass to enter and exit the site. Alas no cloakroom or luggage lockers so I had to leave my bag with the ticket sales staff behind the counter. It was that or drag it round the ship.

Having coughed up my entrance fee of £17, about average for a tourist attraction in the UK I suppose, a  guide gives you a quick run down of the site and suggested route to take although you’re not constrained to follow a set path.

First up in a building on the starboard side of the ship is the Being Brunel exhibition. Being Brunel explores the life and legacy of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. This covers the life and achievements of one of the greatest engineers of the 1800s. He built bridges, tunnels, ships and railways that were longer, faster and bigger than anyone before. Brunel was also an innovator, a dreamer, an artist, and frequently a gambler with other people’s (i.e. investors) money. Extraordinary, but also human. He had faults and sometimes failures, but he never gave up.There’s a massive figure of the man dominating the exhibition space with his “trademark” top hat and cigar.

Next come back around the stern of the ship and descend into the dry dock to see the underside of the 322 feet long hull and the great iron propeller - SS Gt. Britain was the first large ocean-going ship to have both an iron hull and a propeller rather than paddle-wheels. Also the first iron ship to cross the Atlantic, it took 14 days.

The iron hull has plenty of rust holes and repairs and the dry dock isn’t that dry despite the glass ceiling around the ship’s waterline so the hull is cocooned in a “blanket” of warm dry air (as dry as a desert) fed from ducts and nozzles below. This should prevent it rusting away altogether.

Climbing out of the dry dock (or there’s a lift) you then go through the Dockyard Museum. This takes you back in a reverse timeline from the 1970 salvage operation and return to Bristol, through two world wars, the ships conversion into a sail-powered “Windjammer” cargo ship, and back to it’s days as a luxury liner. 

There’s a huge amount so see here from documents and pictures to machinery such as the propeller lifting gear - the propeller could be lifted out of the water to reduce drag when the ship was under sail.

If you’re the sort of person who likes to dress up in historical costume and have your photo taken you can do that too. I don't, I didn’t.

From the 1st floor of the museum you access the SS Great Britain’s Weather Deck. You get a pretty good view of Bristol’s Floating Harbour from the pointy end of the ship and can wander the whole length and breadth of the deck - even crossing the line on the deck beyond which only first class passengers were permitted and who doesn’t like to cross the line occasionally?

Then you open the door in one of the small deckhouses, duck, and go below to the passenger decks. Unless you’re short you’ll be doing a lot of ducking and minding your head from here on. 

The reconstruction of the passenger areas is superb. From the opulent dining saloon, through the first class cabins, doctors, bakers, butchers, and kitchens through to the cramped 3rd class or “steerage” accommodation. All atmospherically lit, populated by life-like mannequins, and with sound effects which enhance rather than intrude.

Better still none of this is cordoned off or behind perspex screens. There are many scenes of life on board as it was in the 19th century and you can get right in amongst it all. It’s one of the best museums I have ever visited. And there’s a fair dose of humour here too, as you’ll find if you try to open certain cabin doors!

Of course it helps that this is a reconstruction so it’s only the ship’s structure that needs to be conserved not the interior but it does make a change from the restrictions found in most historical sites.

They’ve also installed replicas of the two steam engines amidships, which slowly turn, showing how the drive to the propeller shaft was conveyed from the engine via huge wrought iron chains.

And there are the cargo holds, depicting their use as stables for the cavalry when the Great Britain was used as a troopship carrying soldiers to the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny.

I really enjoyed my visit, helped of course by the fact that being January even on a Saturday afternoon it wasn’t crowded. I might even return at some point as the £17 ticket is valid for a year, as is common with many tourist attractions now.

A decent cup of tea and a very nice piece of cake was to be had in the Harbourside Kitchen cafe before I headed for my hotel.

Brunel's SS Great Britain is billed as Bristol's number one visitor attraction and it’s hard to disagree. Go if you can. Take lots of photos, I did: