A Monday in June. Grey clouds hang over my two-ton claustrophobic car, max speed over 100mph, which jolts and stops every five metres, the queue into Bristol choking my temperament and the atmosphere. Forward 24 hours. The sun, whose hat has steadfastly remained off for around five months, is shining. As is my wife and I’s mood. We’re merrily rolling along one of Beeching’s victims against a backdrop of birds singing, flowers blooming and a glorious, fecund countryside. It’s a bucolic idyll made possible by a band of intrepid volunteers who’ve made the Strawberry Line one of our county’s proudest engineering feats. If you’re looking to crank up fitness via two feet or two wheels (or three, or four…), cut a few pounds, give mental health a gentle caress, teach your youngsters to ride a bike and simply have safe fun, whatever your age, this is the place to be this summer. Why? I’ll tell you why…
West to east
The Strawberry Line is a predominantly off-road cycling and walking route from Yatton in the west to Shepton Mallet in the east. In-between are completed paths, proposed paths and stretches of quiet road. Once finished, those proposed paths will turn to completed and the line will edge further west to Clevedon. It’s a huge transformation from the 60s when trains rolled along these tracks. Then, with increasing competition from the rapidly expanding road network, then-chair of the British Railways Board, Dr Richard Beeching, oversaw the axing of a series of major routes that also closed 2,363 stations across the country. Somerset was hit particularly hard as anyone will tell you who’s reliant on buses in Glastonbury, Chard, Burnham-on-Sea, Midsomer Norton… Sixty-seven thousand jobs were lost and 4,500 miles of railway ripped up. The picture was dismal. But thankfully, through vision, sweat, tears and we’re sure the occasional droplet of blood, every cloud has a silver lining…
On this particular summer’s Tuesday in Yatton, blue skies prevail as my wife collects her hire bike from the Strawberry Line Cycle Project that nestles aside Yatton Station. The not-for-profit establishment was set up to encourage people to enjoy the great outdoors and explore the Strawberry Line. They also wanted to offer people with learning disabilities a chance to enjoy meaningful work and vocational training. My wife and I have visited before, testing our relationship to the limits by hiring a tandem. It transpired teamwork did indeed make the dream work and we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon of cycling cohesion (until we faced bollards. Which would test the most in-sync of cycling couples!) A range of other bikes are available including children’s bikes, e-bikes, adaptive bikes and even dog trailers with bike-hire costs from as little as £10. My wife chooses a purple Dutch bike that looks both stunning and bulletproof. We contemplate fuelling at the Strawberry Line Café, but we’ve thus far ridden 10 metres in the car park and burnt around one calorie, so we leave the home-made treats behind and set out toward our turnaround point for the day, Winscombe.
A route for all
After shadowing the trainline for a few metres, we head south in the direction of Congresbury, known for Cadbury Garden Centre that stocks a wealth of garden products you never knew you needed. Woolly water keeper, anyone?
It’s a Tuesday afternoon so, with many people having real jobs, it’s relatively quiet. Those who are satiating their alfresco urges are the high-octane – a pair of runners whose sinewy limbs and skeletal frames suggests they’re aiming for the Paris Olympics – the canine lovers – appreciatively not on uber-stretchy leads (the dogs, not their owners) that could be a spoke-wrapping nightmare – and a pair of ladies with children who all look happily shell-shocked that it’s not raining.
It's an Everyman endeavour over flat terrain that’s predominantly hard-packed gravel and trail. Where once steam engines deafened all around, peace reins. And it’s heavily down to the efforts of the Strawberry Line Society, the registered charity that was set up in the 70s. Mick Fletcher is the current chair and has been for the past couple of years, though he’s been involved with the charity for decades. What Mick doesn’t know about the Strawberry Line isn’t worth knowing, starting with its roots.
‘After the Beeching cuts, North Somerset responded quickly to pressure from residents and created the forerunner to the Strawberry Line Society by acquiring most of the path, certainly between Yatton and heading through Congresbury down to Winscombe, pretty much down to the A38, which is really a county boundary,’ he says from his Westbury-sub-Mendip home. ‘Somerset didn’t adopt that approach and the path got sold off in smaller bits, so they’ve been playing catch-up for the last 20-odd years.’ Yatton 1 Wells 0! ‘One of the first sections built was between Axbridge and Cheddar including one large section,’ he adds. ‘The impetus came from the head teacher of Kings of Wessex School [now Kings Academy] when a pupil was involved in a serious accident cycling to school.’ In 1990 this section of path was opened, attended by the boy who’d prompted the campaigning.
Volunteers are the heartbeat
As the years have rolled by, bit by bit Yatton to Shepton Mallet has become safer, healthier and closer. It means you have time to look around, suck in the air, and absorb the cerebral-cleansing North Somerset and Somerset landscape that, during our summer ride, is in full-on technicolour. We pass numerous rhynes that ensure we’re cycling rather than canoeing. After just under two miles, we briefly flirt with a main road, the A370 through Congresbury, before continuing past the immaculate-looking Mendip Spring Golf Club.
Vegetation flanks each side of the path, ducks duck into ponds, and the heart, lungs and muscles are working effectively but gently. All is good, and it’s the perfect antidote to a world dominated by screens that shrinks life to about a foot. It’s also the perfect antidote to a world that’s seemingly becoming more about the selfie individual than the altruistic collective. That’s thanks to the efforts of the many women and men who freely give their time and energies to make the Strawberry Line a reality. ‘Volunteers are the heart of what we do’, says Mick. ‘We have groups of volunteers in each of the four branches. There’s a branch in Clevedon that’s focused on extending the line between Clevedon and Yatton; a branch in Winscombe around that looks after a large section of North Somerset path; a branch that focuses on Cheddar to Wells; and a branch that covers Wells to Shepton. Each of these undertakes considerable work.
‘In my little patch in Westbury-sub-Mendip we have around 30 or 40 people who manage ditches, clear pathways and even build headwalls around new pipes. They resurface paths washed away by rain and are certainly used to raking and shovelling. But we’re always on the lookout for recruiting volunteers, especially younger people.’ Go to thestrawberryline.org.uk to take up Mick’s invite. The volunteers are the motivators and maintainers, but the actual building of the path’s supervised by another charity, Greenways and Cycle Routes. They’re funded via the local authority that comes from either their own funds or via the Department of Transport through Active Travel England.
‘There’s a fair amount of money around for active travel at the moment, but you must have done the donkey work before,’ says Mick. ‘You won’t receive the funding unless you can say you’ve negotiated a deal with the landowners and the volunteers have created a visible route. It does help, of course, that the formidable John Grimshaw is involved…’
From Sustrans to Strawberry
Formidable indeed. John Grimshaw CBE will be 80 years old next year and is still one of the driving forces of England’s walking and cycle network. He founded Sustrans in the 70s whose first project saw the former Midland Railway line between central Bristol and Bath turned into the first railway path for ‘walking, wheeling and cycling’. After 30 years he stepped down and set up the new charity, Greenways. ‘He just wanted to build new paths,’ says Mick. And he did, his projects including the Brean Down Way and Wye Valley Greenway. ‘He pioneered the idea that to build a cycle path through rural areas and farmers’ fields, you didn’t have to employ someone whose day job’s building roads and roundabouts, who would design it with a CAD system measured to the nearest millimetre,’ Mick explains. ‘He brought a pragmatic approach to developing the path, which brought the cost down from around £1-million per mile to a tenth of that.’
Grimshaw, like Fletcher and the band of volunteers, deserve huge respect or ‘chapeau’ as they’d utter in cycling quarters. Their sweat-inducing efforts have created a route that’s leisurely, picturesque and simply joyful. About five miles in we reach Sandford, one of the latest off-road sections to be completed. The backdrop’s reminiscent of Superman III as it was purpose-built by the National Grid beside a new electricity sub-station serving Hinkley Point. In years to come, it’ll be concealed (slightly anyway) by the hundreds of saplings that have been planted.
Refuelling for the journey home
We cross the A368 and ride a couple more miles to Winscombe where we divert slightly off the Strawberry Line, lock up our bikes and nip into the Woodborough Inn for a spot of textbook, elite-athlete fuelling, aka a glass of Pernod for my wife and a pint of ale for me. From here you can carry onto Cheddar and even Shepton Mallet if you’re feeling particularly perky, but we’ve a table booked at The Railway Inn at Sandford, so we about turn and roll back over the path just covered. It’s then a brief dalliance with the A368 before locking up once again and enjoying the Epicurean delights of the Thatchers-owned pub where I upset the applecart by ordering an ale. We then enjoy a really, rather impressive meal, my adventurous wife tucking into an exquisitely cooked cod fillet in a sauce of which the name escapes me adorned with a cracker-type thing on top that I’m sure has a more culinary term. I go for the fish a la battered and chips le thick-cut. The food’s impressive, as are the staff who are charming and attentive, even in my by-now mildly perspiring state.
Food and drink doffed, we unlock, hop onto our saddles and make our way back to Yatton Station. The ride back’s slower but still delightful and we know we’ll return very soon, with a slice of Cheddar on the menu. Our round trip tallied to around 16 miles. This’d rise to a 22-mile round trip if we hit Gorge country and a near 50-mile effort if we ventured further to Shepton Mallet and back. Then again, we could raise the stakes even further if we complete the Somerset Circle, a 76-mile, mostly traffic-free circuit linking Bristol, Bath, the Mendip Hills, the Somerset Levels and the coast, of which the Strawberry Line is a key part. Around two-thirds has already been completed and includes the Colliers Way, the Two Tunnels Greenway, the Bristol & Bath Railway Path and the River Avon Trail.
The options are endless, but one question remains: why is the Strawberry Line called the Strawberry Line? ‘Well,’ says Mick. ‘That’s down to the volume of strawberries the Cheddar Valley Line, of which this once was, carried to London and Birmingham markets, collected from a string of Cheddar Valley villages.’ Mick knows everything.
