Walking Britain's Lost Railways

The lines that unlocked the wild coastline of North Devon.

Rob follows an epic 70-mile route along the glorious west coast of Scotland on the Callander and Oban line.

Starting out from the Regency splendour of Cheltenham, Rob Bell crosses the Cotswolds, following the 46-mile route of the Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway. The line passes many quarries, all producing the famous Cotswold stone - some now abandoned and some still supplying stone to sites like Hampton Court. With numerous hills to negotiate, this railway was never an express route, but it did open up this landscape to visitors for the first time. From the late 1800s, tourists piled in by rail to explore picture postcard villages like Bourton-on-the-Water, establishing a new local `industry".

Rob Bell follows traces the course of the Great Central Railway, the final great line of the Victorian era and the last main line built before the Channel Tunnel rail link more than a century later. Starting near Nottingham, Rob is taken aback by the scale of demolition and excavation needed to build this line through the city. Around Loughborough, Rob catches up with the major project that is now rebuilding bridges and 500 yards of track in order to link two heritage lines and restore a 20-mile section of the old route. He also visits Leicester Central station - once derelict but now set for a new life as a bowling alley.