'Exploring Old Ways By Bike'

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As suggested by @bluenotebob, in response to a posting of mine, in the Your ride Today' thread (see the one above his, for the reason he suggested it)

I'll suggest 'we' feature;
Old roads that have been superceded by new routes/cut-off by road realignments
Railway lines, that are still not surfaced, or taken on by Sustrans/local Councils
Canal towpaths/river sides (same guidelines as above?)
Any others that are thought applicable

If it considered to overlap with the 'Your Ride Today' & the 'Trig- Bagger' thread, I apologise
I'll answer for my mistake later, as we're away from dinnertime to Sunday evening
(just waiting for wife to come home, so we can go)


For this opening post, I'll feature an 'orphaned' section of The Great North Road, as it was called (& still is, in some locations)
By that, I mean the days when it passed through towns/villages, in the pre-bypass/motorway days

I'll go to my ride to/along the old stretch at 'Red House'
That's where the A1 intersects the A638 (Wakefield- Doncaster road)
This is part of the pre-bypass 'GNR'

It's still complete with white-lines & cats-eyes!

It was bypassed when the junction was upgraded
If you look at the amp under the Geograph photo, it's the white road above the 'Red Ho' text
https://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/SE5209

The Red House itself is now a farm, but was a coaching inn

Looking back towards the junction ('north)
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The gate that blocks off the GNR, now field access
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How old? Alfred Watkins old??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Watkins
 

bluenotebob

Veteran
Location
France
I’ve enjoyed discovering and following the routes of old railway lines in central Brittany. Some have been turned into Voie Vertes (Green Ways) but other routes have been either been re-surfaced as minor roads or simply neglected and exist just as footpaths or have been reclaimed as farmland. One of the latter is Le Petit Pelot (‘The Little Puffer’, I think) – a branch line that ran roughly 25km NNW from Ploërmel to la Trinité Porhoët, following (for the most part) the E bank of the Ninian river.

It was opened in 1902 but closed 37 years later as it was ‘no longer commercially viable’ – whether it was ever ‘commercially viable’ is open to question.

The route of the line out of Ploërmel is now almost impossible to trace on the ground because of the construction of the N24 dual carriageway. The line then ran through the Bois de Lambilly, although exactly where has been hard to trace. Perhaps the line entered the wood at the point featured in the photo below. The railway line left the Bois de Lambilly and looped around W of Taupont before dropping to the Ninian flood plain. I’ve cycled most of this section and there are some surprisingly steep gradients and sharp bends for a railway line. There is one extant railway bridge in this section, carrying the line over the Léverin river near Helléan (known to @lane ). The route continues NNW for about another 8 km before disappearing W of St Malo-des-Trois Fontaines.

Once we’re out of the third lockdown, I’ll endeavour to trace the route of the line between Mohon and la Trinité Porhoët.

Perhaps where the line entered the Bois de Lambilly.

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Bridge over the Léverin

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Towards Helléan

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Shack

Senior Member
We have a lot of green lanes in Devon (over 1100miles) that still have vehicular access but an awful lot are in a really poor state (great for a MTB or gravel bike) and a few do have an interesting history.
 

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