Meon Valley Railway Restoration

Blimey, that's better tree clearance than NR manage to achieve.

 

Looking at the picture on the BBC it would appear that the 300k is well spent with all the tree felling and well drained base which perfect for relaying track laying now

 

These people are unbelievable. The drainage on much of the trail was abominable, making it unusable after wet weather. The trees were completely overhanging the path, shading it and keeping it in a damp condition, as well as adding to the mud through leaf-fall. The lineside shrubbery blocked out all views of the surrounding countryside and was encroaching on the path, narrowing it so that it was almost impossible to pass a horse going the other way.

But of course, local people liked it like that. It kept it private for exercising their horses. They don't want all these cyclists and walkers from outside the area using it.

 

your last line says it all..... finger right on the point , well said

 

Oh well, if the walkers don't want it anymore, at least they wouldn't complain at it being relaid as a Railway then....

(Only joking! But I bet their tune would change if it were a realistic proposition.. Obviously a quiet news day - reporting on the activities of Facebook groups is always lazy journalism).

Steven

 

I think I have a little sympathy for the locals, it does look rather bare now all the trees have been cut back, it looked much nicer before. I can't believe some sort of compramise couldn't have been had, whereby they resurface the path and cut down just some of the trees, rather than make it look like rails are ready to go down again...

 

A compromise has been had. They have delayed installing the track until later.

 

Actually this story has been running in the Hampshire Chronicle for two or three weeks now. I haven't walked that stretch for a good few years, and have never ridden down it. My recollection is that it always used to be pretty "bosky" Maybe the current works push it too far in the other direction, there have been reports of a number of motorised vehicles using the new pathway in a way that is friendly neither to walker, cyclist nor equestrian. My recent experience has been in walking parts of the Mid-Hants between Alresford and Martyr Worthy, this path seems to be a good mixture, some hard surfacing, not particularly wet or muddy butt still often shaded by trees with a rather sylvan feeling.

 

It always makes me chuckle when people refer to an old railway path as having had a 'natural surface'.

 

Not only that, they've put a layer of ballast down too

 

I'm sure the County Council have acted with the very best of intentions, but the contractors have completely over-engineered what is only supposed to be a multi-user path. If they were intending to reconnect West Meon to the national rail system by Christmas. they couldn't possibly have done a better job, and in places the trackbed has even been restored to its (never used) double track width. There is a lot of hysteria locally about this but in truth the surface isn't that difficult to cycle on and will undoubtedly settle down in time. What is fascinating is to see a long-closed railway emerging from the undergrowth and in particular the floor of West Meon's down side waiting room rediscovered like a Roman pavement. Whoever knew that was there?

 

I did!

 

I think I shall pay a visit soon! I do think that, that in these times of austerity, £300,000 is a lot to throw at a bridleway and a slightly less engineered solution might have been found to increasing ease of access to a range of "service users"

 

This maybe of interest to anyone who likes walking old railway lines.

http://www.railwayramblers.org.uk/homepage/homepage.htm

 

How soon we forget our real land of railways, people smoking when and where you liked and Austin A35s! This is what all railway cuttings and embankments looked like when I was a lad. There was not a tree in sight. All vegetation was kept at bay by humans working for the Railway. Compare this view of the GWSR north of Toddington (Stanway) Viaduct even after clearance in 2015 (I don't have a 2015 photo to hand but there's more trees, trust me) with this view taken as recently(!) as 1966. I also recall that it was rare to see a crow or a magpie then in the countryside, farmers and smallholders shot them as they were, and still are, egg thieves. (I'm not condoning shooting anything or anyone by the way!)

 

People forget (most likely never knew) that all what grows in the countryside has been planted by man, and if not maintained by us the landscape will become overgrown so by cutting down those trees/shrubs will be returning it to a year or two when the landscaping was done. Now the trees have gone the grassland flowers will have a chance to bloom and people will love the look of the wild flowers and where the trees have been cut down (coppiced) they will re-shoot from the stumps and so in a years time it will look so different than it dose now.

 

Not necessarily planted by man: but there is absolutely no part of the British Isles where the "natural landscape" is not heavily or entirely man-made, apart from possibly the occasional sea stack or islet. A lot of the seeds of those trees probably got there by train!

 

Yeah. Take Dartmoor for example. Used to be forest in pre bronze age, man moved up there, cleared pastures, settled the land, climate changed, and you now have moor. Point being man has changed, or been the catalyst, for changing the way nearly all of the UK now looks. Take the Somerset Levels, Norfolk Broads, - all man made, these islands have been settled for a very long time. Only the high peaks not been affected really.