A day out on the railway
Newport and Gloucester
© Geoff’s Rail Diaries 2014
Arriva Train Wales offer trips out for
those of a certain age - “Club 55” -
providing a return ticket to
destinations on their network for
£23 (or, a real bargain this one, £22
with a railcard...). If one possesses
a railcard, the trip needs to be a reasonably
long one to make it worthwhile. We settled
on Gloucester, via Newport.
I joined my friends at Church Stretton for the pleasant
run down the Marches to Newport. If we were on time,
we’d arrive a minute after a Gloucester train left. We
didn’t - we were perhaps 7 minutes late - so we would
have almost an hour to wait at Newport. There’s a new
and modernistic station entrance and footbridge at the
west end, which may not suit the traditionalists, but is
Geoff’s Rail Diaries
23 October 2014
clean, bright and spacious.
I’d never travelled on the line from
Severn Tunnel Junction to Gloucester
- it’s a most attractive stretch of
railway, running as it does beside the
Severn estuary for part of its length.
We noted the lock gates at Sharpness - later,
after lunch, we’d spend a little time at the
other end of the canal, around Gloucester’s docks, now in
a gentrified state following redevelopment.
Back in Newport, we boarded a northbound train - just
two coaches, and passengers standing the length of the
aisle. It wouldn’t be stopping between Hereford and
Shrewsbury, so I’d have to change at Hereford. A quiet
half-hour on the station platform there, in the gathering
dusk, came as welcome relief...
