don't do this at home folks but what a tree that was not factored in at all
whoa what you're about to show them a tunnel spoilers good morning everybody welcome to uh
paul and rebecca whitewick, our channel wayhey, I'm Paul, I'm rebecca it's a tunnel video today
and we are uh making a video from the beautiful devon and somerset railway which stretched 43
miles across north devon pretty much from taunton to barnstaple it had four tunnels
join us on today's adventure when we try and have a look at them all
so the line was completely built in 1873 and it was constructed using 40 000 cubic yards of
masonry for the viaducts and tunnels and bridges and they excavated 1.7 million cubic yards of
earth crikey it was originally broad gauge but then was converted to standard in 1881.
now there's four tunnels along this very undulating and gradient field line we're going
to tackle them from east to west so you joined us from Taunton where we travelled towards Barnstaple
that's the way we are tackling the tunnels the first of which
is barfallerton now bartholomew we are going to hit from the west side first i believe okay holly
what you know you just said baffleton oh yeah i think it's bar bath bath or even
pronunciation is not my thing i'm going with bathleaton bathaelton not bath allerton bath
allerton is what you said yeah so first tunnel first attempt we're hitting it
from the western side now when we visit these tunnels we never know really what to expect
there's only so much research you can do beforehand about how accessible they are
sometimes they're hugely accessible sometimes they're open access and a lot of time they're
on private land so let's have a look from the west side first and see if we can get to see the tunnel
okay a bunch of cows there ahead of me I've got a significant gate which is
causing me issue in that it's brand new it looks like a seated area um just ahead of me
so it's almost like someone's garden which very much puts me off walking through it right
frustratingly baffled and at least the western portal is a bit of a no-go
it's really tricky i'm sure many of you will scream out and say just crack
on and go and have a look at it but i didn't have a good feeling about
it didn't feel right so we didn't do it plus we had a meeting at Venn....
however we are now stood on top of Venn tunnel so we got to then we had a lovely tour by the
people who owned the property they were absolutely lovely they had so much to see it's useful having
the garden open national garden scheme because a lot of people who came or quite a group of people
yeah had connections with the station one way or another yeah yes there was a lot
wasn't it including a tunnel that they had in their garden yes now the tunnel in the garden
it's tricky because it's not accessible they don't have the key for it so we had to find
other means to get in we're not exactly going to tell you how we did that as such
but suffice to say it's not accessible so anyway inside the tunnel here's a few shots
so as you said before it's quite fascinating to look at this tunnel because it was
built for broad gauge so it's in theory a little bit wider than what it would have been
for any normal standard gauge tunnel despite the line being converted itself
to standard gauge so there are still a number of recesses within the tunnel
there's also a number of very bizarre artefacts here perhaps from a post-rail era
now the tunnel is on a gradient and for the life of me i can't remember which
way Venn and Venn cross is at one of two of the highest points on the line so
i believe the station is the highest point so i understand that some of the trains had to sort
of slow up when they went into the tunnel to make the stop for then cross and that wasn't
always judged very well and some of the uh engine drivers at the time had issues with
smoke in the cab we've had a few of those stories before from i think the bath two tunnels era
we are going to move on now to the next tunnel which is nightcote is nightcote which is only 44
yards long on completely private land and we were definitely told to avoid it yeah we told to avoid
it because uh i don't think the landowners are very um happy with you it's essentially a long
bridge so we thought you know what let's avoid that and go on to uh tunnel of the day coming up
so
rather sketchy walk along the devon link road which is now taking over a lot of the old railway
apart from this section here so this section here where there was a tunnel and a viaduct viaduct
is now literally the main road disappointingly um and this huge embankment right here in front of me
was is is new it's all for the uh devon link road sadly now um
somewhere down here we'll find the old track bed how far we can get along i don't know
so let's talk about the next tunnel castle hill tunnel also known as
bembridge tunnel because that was bembridge on one of the original maps
then it was castle hill after all that let's talk about me breaking one of our sort of
golden rules for our youtube channel what rule i wasn't with you so what rule did you break
so you know on our channel we kind of say we don't trespass so our golden rule is if
there's a fence a newly put fence or something really obviously trying to actively keep people
out at that point and it's quite recent then we think it's kind of wrong to do that
but today i'd walked about a mile up the devon link road on the side of it
i'd climbed down an embankment which was probably 70 80 kind of meters down i'd crossed a river
and i'd then got to a fence it was a newish fence and it had barbed wire on the top
now this tunnel lies in the castle estate i've written about four emails over the last
year to the good folk at castle hill estate and asked if we could go in um we had no response
i didn't realize that when we i got to this tunnel where i could get to i didn't realize
that there would be a fence i thought it was like an open access estate i'd done all that
travelling for like an hour to get to there and it was sort of within grasp it was like 100
200 yards away and the estate is sort of miles and miles of bigger state and the nearest sort
of building is about two miles away so i kind of broke one of our rules and i climbed the fence
so the tunnel itself well at each end of the tunnel is around about
10 to 15 feet of stone work before the remainder of the tunnel is largely
unlined pilton mudstone there are a couple of collars of masonry towards
the middle but i believe they're relatively new certainly in terms of the age of the line
it's thought that the tunnel had a top heading driven first so the upper section of the tunnel
including the archway itself so the point at which the lower part curved roof meets the top
part and of course at this point in time i was acutely aware that i was somewhere i shouldn't
be i kept on hearing what i thought were vehicles it probably wasn't so i only went in maybe 50
to 100 yards had a good look around took some photos and made my way out as quick as possible
okay i hope you forgive me i didn't go in too far i went in maybe 40 50 yards of the probably 250
didn't want to push my luck probably shouldn't be in there don't do this at home folks but
what a tree that was not lined at all apart from the portals um yeah just and even the recesses are
sort of bored out of the rock there fascinating i hope the pictures came out okay so that's the four
tunnels of the devon and somerset railway quite a long day quite a wet day quite a struggle at times
yeah 14 abandoned stations we did in the video before if you haven't seen it and four tunnels we
attempted to get to or three tunnels we attempted to get to um it has been a while though to be
first since we've actually done a tunnel video it does seem quite a long time it does doesn't
it seems like forever but it feels quite good because i like the tunnel videos so i still feel
bad about that last tunnel if you're watching from the castle estate i apologize i did email them and
asked them um and i didn't think i was really pushing it just on that sort of 200 very careful
um so apologies thank you um anyway right we are off and we will probably see you next sunday
i think probably we'll almost certainly see you next week we won't see them they'll see us they'll
see us it could be weird if we started seeing them all in their lounges while we're watching
can you imagine that that'd be weird kind of fun yeah i know you oh i'm down there oh and you too
goodbye
you