right so i've just taken rebecca up the middle way you can't say that oh it's a bit windy good
morning everybody welcome to uh hampshire right question we're going to walk along
a 6.8 mile slash 11 kilometer abandoned railway how much of that railway can you officially walk
well as in literally on like where the tracks used to be literally yep on the tracks where
there used to be an official pathway permissive pathway right away that's on the os maps go 28
right 28 we'll put a little graphic on screen i'm going to guess 20 graphic on screen throughout
today's journey join us on the sprout and winkle branch line we are paul and rebecca
that's me and that's obviously paul we spend a lot of our time exploring old railways canals tunnels
via ducks and whatever else floats our boat at the time so join us on our weekly adventures
that sounds rude after you've pressed subscribe of course
okay so the first part of this line um is kind of a no-go because it's all it's just trees isn't it
there's a lot of trees it's not even like we can walk down there is it it's just like
forest and jungle i mean jungle's probably a bit of an exaggeration for this country
it's the jungle yeah so right we're gonna have to keep walking
now through this part of the village which is cottonwood and we're gonna head north
just private property do you think it's private i'm not sure i don't think i saw enough signs
that said private property in the river it's like this forward in the whole wide world yeah
i know it's mad isn't it it's a ford right says obviously allow um space for horses to get through
because it's fooled on the shoot river we're just at chipotle common we're probably about a
a mile or so up the line we haven't been able to walk any of the line yet
i don't want to bring my horse through it i wouldn't want to bring my horse through here
that's some hard work ducks
so we're about a mile and a half in now and uh i think we've had zero percent of track bed walking
i think my 28 isn't looking good right now it's not is it but we're going to walk through the
village of wherwelll which is very beautiful and we can't just reflect on how busy we are
at the moment yep that's an understatement i run my shop you run the family business
um we've got this youtube channel my youtube channel and we've got kids way too many kids
now one thing we try and do to relax because we feel that's quite important
is um have a bit of downtime and that's often for me and a little bit for you
is reading especially magazines a little while ago we discovered really a magazine subscription
service so instead of paying for every magazine you buy 4.99 5.99 or whatever the price is you can
access thousands of titles online through release one monthly payment and that's just 7.99 a month
so for me personally i love looking at old railway magazines for those that watch the channel
regularly you know i love the landscape while i do love modelling that landscape and i get hundreds
of different ideas from old railway magazines i also love looking at walking magazines because
that's kind of 90 of what we do in our spare time and you can do it whilst you're out and
about you can do exactly what i'm doing now which is looking through the app whilst we're out and
about it's got so many different features you can look at back catalogs you can do search features
you can zoom in and out all on your mobile app it's an extremely user-friendly app and i use
it as well for the antiques magazines to do some research sometimes for my shop so the offer that
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doobly-doo below we come up to the line now we're actually right next to the line but again it's
not it's not a walkway you can walk over it and you can look one way it's thick jungle uh jungle
jungle jungle today and you can walk that way but you can't walk that way on the line because
everybody's back gardens there's a whole row of back gardens all the way down there
we can walk alongside it yeah so let's can walk alongside it
so if you could look that way through the trees there you would see the picture of old wherwell
station because we're just approaching whirlwind village now and i can't you can't see there
because there's trees there's hedges you name it but this is obviously the spot that that was taken
from looking that way and it's a huge station and it has double track whole line was double tracked
everything about this line was built like a grand big railway it was only a seven mile branch line
and that's kind of always fascinating and then you realize the reason why because london south
western railway built it as um attempt for the didcot newbury and southampton railway
to come and come and have a use our line so you don't have to bother building your own you're
short on cash come and use our line yeah brand looking line look what we've just built for you
massive station with goods yard double track another station further on for long parish
which we'll get to shortly but this whole line was built massive budget and didcot newbury
and southampton railway had an answer for that which will come to you shortly
that's really cool there's a dog grooming in daycare center called
harry poppins that's what a great name what great
we're now two miles into the journey how much of the line have we walked on
zero can you do zero with mittens okay i can look i can do one i can do two zero zero
that that really kind of shows rebecca why you can't walk the line right
yeah it's a bit of a jungle it's like a jungle look at it
os map says there's a pathway perpendicular here to the bridge the parapet of the old
railway however we just bumped into a local who walked up the steps up on top of the railway and
we said can you go that way and she said yeah so we're kind of thinking that's a bit strange
so we just got to kind of follow the person that way and see what happens
right
this is clearly a walk of all pathway yeah but there's no this is not on the os maps it's
probably cut back and everything this is the first time today we've been walking on the track bed
it's proper cut back there's pathway there's people's footprints dog prints you name it and
it's a beautiful cutting had it not been for the woman we saw who walked this way
we wouldn't have come down here in a million years because how would you know this was here
so the question says are we counting this on our stats as can you walk along the line because
it's not not on the other side your statement at the beginning was it needs to be on the os
right so this is this doesn't count no it doesn't despite the fact we're walking it doesn't count
and Didcot, newbury and southampton said nope we're fine we're going to carry on going so this
line double track line massively expensive two huge stations was pretty much redundant
from the word go it was used obviously as everything was in the world wars
uh they used obviously uh long parish little sightings for long periods to get the bombs
up into harewood forest but other than that it was effectively a waste of money perfect shot
right under this bridge really windy beautiful tall bridge we have to walk now along the road
as far as we can probably meet them again a long patch yeah i think that's probably our best
place
we found the 428th private no uh one two three three signs just around here
it's like so many signs not this way not this way not that way so aggressive isn't it
just what i mean it feels like you can't walk anywhere
so we're going to walk kind of through this way now we i mean
you're not supposed to there's no right of way here but we're in the middle of nowhere
and we've not crossed any fences etcetera but you can join another pathway just up here
so be interesting to see if there's any old relics
or bits and pieces along here which is probably very very seldom trod
so this this pathway crosses the line the line goes that way off towards hurstbourne and
then over to london now interestingly it's funny how public rights of way
like this remain because if you look down here right
here well that's an old route way across so there's obviously like a
level crossing here or not level crossing but just yeah and you can see down there
all of the um concrete oh concrete post leading up to the line
we found a place where we thought it'd be a lovely little overbridge because on the map from uh to
1900 there's a nice over bridge on this section of the track but obviously it didn't last because now
it's a pathway down to the track bed which we're just on now because this is a public footpath but
um yet again public uh no right of way private that way is where we thought there used to be or
definitely used to be an overbridge this way faces the road that's the road bridge on the middleway
right so what we learned today rebecca in today's film what we learned um
um you can't walk on any of this line you can't walk any of this line 0.00 of this line can be
walked along officially and legally we want to cross it and we walked across it a few times we
were zig-zagged all the way up the line basically every seven miles of this line we would hope one
day that we should be sort of campaigning for the right to roam like they have in scotland where if
you don't walk on cultivated land people's houses gardens schools that sort of thing you can walk
with a little bit of responsibility and sensibleness but we don't have that we seem to be
going backwards at the moment in this country rant over i think we've learned number two the good
people at really still have an offer on to sign up now and you'll get six weeks free of charge
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lockdown people we've got like a couple of weeks left so you know you'll hopefully see us back in
traveling all over the country and making you wonderful beautiful videos we really appreciate
your continued support however during this difficult period we will see you next week
it's blue sky that's the blue sky well that way