A Cycling Tour Along The World’s Oldest Former Railways

One of many traditionally resonant things about riding the Bowes and the Tanfield railway paths close to Newcastle is the proximity of the family-friendly Beamish, the ‘Living Museum of the North’. This 350-acre open-air museum houses a number of significant steam locomotives that when toot-tooted alongside these former rail lines.

It’s a given that North East England led the railway revolution almost 200 years in the past, however what’s less well-known is that this was the second railway revolution.

North East England led wall washer was on the forefront of the primary one, too. Wooden railways, ‘waggonways’ with wood rails, have been used within the area at the least 20 years before the English Civil War within the 1640s, and the world’s first passenger railway wasn’t the Stockton and Darlington line of 1825 however Kitty’s Drift, an underground railway beneath a Tyneside colliery that carried paying visitors in the early 1800s.

Carlton Reid cycled the Bowes and the Tanfield railway paths, near the family-friendly Beamish, a 350-acre ‘Living Museum of the North’ that recreates the environment of yesteryear life

Carlton seen riding between remnant rails on the for-now defunct Bowes incline railway close to Gateshead

The bike ride saw Carlton set off from Newcastle’s Quayside. From there, he rolled over the Millennium Bridge beneath the ‘futuristic curves’ of the Sage Gateshead cultural centre, pictured above at sunset

The waggonways of Tyneside and Wearside – often known as ‘Tyneside Roads’ and over which components of the Tanfield Railway had been laid – had been technologically superior, many requiring huge embankments and valley-spanning bridges long earlier than the civil engineering feats of George and neon led flex linear light Robert Stephenson.

The earlier and later improvements came about due to the extraction of squished vegetation pressed into place thousands and thousands of years previously: coal.

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The good Northern Coalfield was as soon as the beating coronary heart of the Industrial Revolution, but most of the once-teeming rail lines and horse-drawn waggonways that began to vein Durham and Northumberland within the 1600s to transport coal are actually linear backwaters, their rails long gone.

However, on one stretch of the Bowes Railway path you possibly can nonetheless see the stays of oak sleepers and can even ride between steel rails on a bridge that was as soon as a part of the Bowes incline railway. Stationary steam engines pulled carriages up steep valley sides on this 15-mile industrial line, the earliest part designed in 1826 by Stephenson Snr.

This image exhibits a steam locomotive at Causey Arch on the Tanfield Railway

A chicken’s eye view over Causey Arch, with railway coal wagons to the left. The railway bridge was constructed more than one hundred years before the first steam locomotives

The Causey Arch (pictured here by way of a drone as Carlton trundles throughout), inbuilt 1727, is the world’s oldest surviving single-arch railway bridge

Only a part of this supposed Permanent Way still exists as a working rail line. Before they have been mothballed a few years again, the road’s hill-climbing trains would be paraded periodically. Today there’s no sign of activity, and I used to be able to ride between a short stretch of rails after which on to the gravel-strewn remainder of what was once a busy colliery rail line.

I had started this ten-mile bike ride on Newcastle’s Quayside, rolling over the Millennium Bridge beneath the futuristic curves of the Sage Gateshead culture centre. Almost the entire route is on site visitors-free cycleways, a few of it tarmac however most of it gravel.

The Bowes Railway path – strictly speaking, the previous Pontop and Jarrow Railway – leads to the Tanfield steam railway. This line, stored alive by volunteers, once crossed the historically important Causey Arch, a railway bridge built greater than a hundred years earlier than the first steam locomotives.

You might ride this undulating route on a mountain bike or, if you do not mind the free stones, a road bike, however I opted for a combine between the two, a gravel bike.

Helpfully, the Cannondale Topstone has front and rear suspension. The front fork – referred to as ‘Lefty’ – has one prong, not two; it turns heads. Think a one-prong bike ‘fork’ can’t be protected? Fighter jet wheels use the identical cantilever precept.

During his journey, Carlton noticed ‘a number of puffing locomotives’ in action and stopped to photograph them along the way

Old wood sleepers can still be seen on the Bowes Railway path at Springwell, close to Gateshead

Carlton’s Cannondale Topstone gravel bike by a sign for the quaintly-named Cranberry Bog Road, a minor street to Beamish museum, near High Urpeth

And the expertise is removed from new: the first bicycle made with a mono-fork was the Invincible of 1889, at the peak of the steam age. And speaking about the steam age, there are a number of puffing locomotives to see on this journey, together with an entire bunch at Beamish museum on relocated tracks. And, for the real factor, steam trains additionally run during summer season weekends on the Tanfield Railway.

In four years’ time, the Stockton and Darlington line will have a good time its 200th anniversary however, amazingly, in the identical yr the Tanfield Railway can be blowing out the flames on a cake adorned with a further a hundred candles.

Inbuilt 1725 to transport coal to the Tyne with gravity and horse flesh, the Tanfield Railway, the world’s oldest, was a cartel formed by three wealthy industrialists, one of whom – Sir George Bowes – was an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

The Bowes Railway path (pictured) – strictly talking, the former Pontop and Jarrow Railway – leads to the Tanfield steam railway

The centrepiece of the Tanfield Railway is the Causey Arch, erected in 1727 and now the world’s oldest surviving single-arch railway bridge.

Ralph Wood, a local mason, was so unsure his bridge would stand he threw himself into the burn under, a fatal drop that the native authority as we speak averts with fencing and ‘you are not alone’ notices.

Just over a mile from Causey Arch is the Beamish museum. Popular with families since it opened in 1971, Beamish has costumed employees and volunteers bringing historical past to life: it began the development for regional ‘dwelling’ museums.

Colliery buildings at Beamish, which comprises brick-by-brick reconstructions

Beamish Engineers working on a working replica of Puffing Billy, the world’s oldest surviving steam locomotive. Here’s more on led linear led light light (https://pastelink.net/4gve9wxs) take a look at the website. The original – housed in London’s Science Museum – was in-built 1813 by engineer William Hedley for Wylam Colliery, to haul coal wagons to the docks at Lemington on the River Tyne. Puffing Billy influenced George Stephenson to build Locomotion No 1 and, later, the Rocket

Visitors to Beamish can hop on ‘Buffing Billy’ for a short rail ride on the Pockerley waggonway

A drone shot of Carlton on a piece of the Bowes Railway path, near Birtley

The Angel of the North could be seen in the space. Carlton stated he felt Antony Gormley’s iconic sculpture was watching his ‘every transfer’ throughout

Carlton Reid crossing the Tanfield Railway close to Causey Arch – a line saved alive by volunteers. The museum’s expansive parkland has recreations of a Georgian corridor. An Edwardian city that was used as a backdrop for the current Downton Abbey movie. There’s additionally an early 1900s colliery and adjoining pit village, and – rising behind fencing – there’s quickly to be a 1950s extension complete with publish-battle prefab homes and a cinema.

Beamish incorporates brick-by-brick relocations of historic buildings, but the adjacent Beamish Hall is original. It is not part of the museum as we speak, but it’s why, in 1970, the founder and first curator selected this site.

The hall is a mid-18th-century country home built on a lot earlier foundations. It was the museum’s first storeroom, following its earlier uses as a National Coal Board constructing after which a residential faculty. The hall was converted to resort use in 2000.

Carlton is pictured here cycling past the Angel of the North on his method house from his waggonway wanderings

After a surprisingly hilly bike journey (former railways are normally flat) and a few hours walking around Beamish in robust sunshine, I was too drained to do anything much however collapse within the shade. Those with more stamina may need once swung by way of the bushes on the hotel’s high ropes course. However, due to the coronavirus lockdown, Beamish Wild closed down after 10 years of operation.

I’ve it on good authority that, even when open, you couldn’t see the Angel of the North from the rope course, but from a prone place on a grassy bank, I might see Antony Gormley’s iconic sculpture thanks to my trusty DJI drone. I used this eye-in-the-sky to take many of the images illustrating this text.

In fading light, I rode back to Newcastle via the Angel, now silhouetted in opposition to the dark orange sunset, but nonetheless watching my every move.