Walk a disused railway line out of the city in a day
“The first mile is just a path like any other. Then the line takes over, flat and dead straight where the roads twist and climb, and carries you out through the backs of the city into country it was built to reach.”
The Recipe
- Find a disused railway, now a path, that runs out of the city into open country, and check for transit back from the far end.
- Get to the city end of the line first thing and start where the platforms used to be.
- Follow the old line outward, staying on the trackbed through its cuttings and over its embankments.
- Read the remains as you pass, the platforms, the bridges, the mileposts still in the grass.
- Eat at the old station halfway out, whatever the village there has.
- Keep to the trackbed as the city thins into country and the line runs straight where nothing else does.
- Reach the end of the path, where the line either stops or is lost under a road, and stand at the buffers.
- Take transit home and work out how long the train would have done it in.
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