The first Transport Research Webinar was hosted a couple of weeks ago by Living Streets Aotearoa, Transport Research Network (TRN), and Cycle Action Network (CAN). The webinar speaker was Dr Giulio Mattioli from TU Dortmund University who spoke about “...

The bespectacled historian has had a good idea. Stuart (for it is he) said, “Why don’t we have a train ride and a bus ride and a walk and conjoin the Rev Awdry blue plaques at Rodborough and Box?” Everyone said it was a great notion and so they made a ...

The Railway Curiosity Shop of Wonder in John Street, Stroud Alec is always busy in his shop, Mending clocks and repairing engines, Walking past trucks and carriages and bottles and level crossings – But when sunlight flashed through the rainswept...

Pride comes before a Fall You know the shop in John Street with all the bottles and jars and bikes and signs outside, and all the vintage toy railway engines inside: all those toy trucks and carriages and level crossings and signals and oh so much more...

Together with Jalan Gembira and Kunci Study Forum & Collective, we're hosting a Dérive app walkshop in Yogjakarta, on November 29, with an introductory online session on November 22.

1825 STROUDWATER WEAVERS’ RIOTS BICENTENARY COMMEMORATION Saturday November 15th. Meet outside The Prince Albert at noon for a commemorative walk of some five or six miles maximum along the River Frome and the canal before climbing up towards Amb...

Rodborough Fields Ridge and Furrow When you walk down the footpath towards Kwik Fit, You can see a clear pattern of ridge and furrow (‘Like corrugated fields or waves in a land-sea’), Particularly on frosty midwinter days: A glimpse of a world before e...

A small new deck with the tune-ups used by Street Wisdom in their wanders, including during the World Wide Wander.

Stations like Stroud (and Macbeth)   They’re great theatre, railway stations, don’t you think? The platform as the stage with Life and Existence itself in the limelight. For it’s almost as if a state of beatitude is attained whilst sitting on that plat...

View from a Carriage Window: Fields of Ridge and Furrow near Minety Gaze out of your window between Kemble and Swindon, Look left and right between Purton and Minety, And you will see a clear pattern of ridge and furrow (‘Like corrugated fields or wave...

Gloucester Quays and Making the Connections Start your walk by Phillpott’s Warehouse – No plaque mentions that Thomas Phillpotts Benefitted from some seven hundred enslaved people, Nearly three hundred of whom were shared ‘investments’ With Samue...

Life in a Railway Factory: Alfred Williams, the Hammerman Poet Born close to Brunel’s broad gauge at South Marston, While Richard Jefferies measured the red brick growth Of New Swindon’s terraced street advance, You studied express trains from farm and...

From Stroud to Swindon for a Football Match (Brunel All the Way) Start your journey at the Platform One Café, Coffee and croissants and Katie and Rick, 3 tables, 6 chairs, a trunk, 15 railway puzzles (Always one on the go for travellers with a brief en...

The Glue Pot I always like visiting the Glue Pot, I like its position in the Railway Village: A sentinel of Swindon’s heritage, With open doors to the pavement To welcome local and visitor alike. I like visiting the Glue Pot in springtime: Lengthening ...

History at Capel’s Viaduct It’s a great walk down to Capel’s Viaduct, Past old ridge and furrow and tenterhook hedgerows, Teazles here and there to raise your nap, Imagining the patchwork quilt of fields of two centuries ago, Field-names such as Bacon ...

A Stroud Valleys Railway and Canal Walk   At first glance, it might seem a bit odd to link old railway stations and halts near Stroud with Shelley’s poem Ozymandias. But if I give some famous lines a Dr Beeching tweak then I think you’ll know what...

A Tale of Two Water Towers, A Tale of Two Stations, A Tale of Two Rivers   It takes less than an hour to walk from Kemble station to the source of the River Thames: it’s usually dry at the spring-source, although I have seen bubbles surface from t...

Railway Life Part Four A spring time step in his walk to work, On past the gas works, the pub and the chip shop, A wriggle of his hips as he walks past the football pitch, With egg and bacon for a fry-up on the shovel; But back in the house, she sits f...

Railway Life Part Three It’s full steam ahead – Until, freezing in the cab, paper in his boots, He gets stuck in a wind-whistling loop, Out here in some unsheltered, open landscape; Or, shovelling six tons of coal Choking in some seeming endless ...

Railway Life Part Two But down at the running shed: All is different! Hustle, bustle and red-hot tumult: Fill the tender! Water the tank! Empty the firebox! (Cough on the dust, choke on the fumes, burn your hands.) Smash the clinker! Draw the firebar! ...