Bidding farewell to Plymouth, we embarked on Sunday morning for a trip on two rather long branch lines in Devon, to Barnstaple and Okehampton. As last days of holidays tend to be, it was a little more fraught, a little more rushed than we'd have liked it to be, not least because we were on our way home and had to cart our luggage around with us all day.
1040 Plymouth to Exeter St Davids, arr 1141
Headcode: 1A81, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA62 with 43012+43172
Distance: 52 miles; walk-up price: £10.05
We started with our last run over the Devon banks, back from Plymouth as far as Exeter. The HST to London, the first one of the morning from Penzance, was fairly busy, and we ended up sat in various parts of the quiet coach at the rear of the train.
After an hour, the five of us arrived in St David's station in Exeter, where we met up with Paul, who'd come down from Reading for the day to join us in our exploits around Devon. Nearly as soon as we'd met Paul, we said goodbye to one of the Jameses, who wanted to get back to Liverpool relatively early; he'd been to Barnstaple but not Exmouth, so he headed to Exmouth. The four of us plus Paul wished him farewell, before boarding the train to Barnstaple:
1203 Exeter St Davids to Barnstaple, arr 1314
and
1324 Barnstaple to Exeter St Davids, arr 1433
Headcode: 2B75 and 2R33 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 153382* + Pacer 143612
Distance: 39 miles each way; walk-up return: £6.20
Barnstaple is easily the longest of the Westcountry branch lines, at nearly 40 miles long and over an hour from Exeter. Even though this Sunday train was calling at all the intermediate stations (relatively unusual for a weekday), we still got some fairly decent speeds up in between the stations. The unlikely combination of a one-car Sprinter and a two-car Pacer was our chariot; we decided to avoid the Pacer and go for the Sprinter, if for no reason other than it had tables.
The line runs across the centre of Devon, from Exeter on the south coast to Barnstaple on the north coast. Well, nearly anyway; both Exeter and Barnstaple sit at the top of an estuary. The line used to continue north to Ilfracombe, which is actually on the coast, but the line was cut back in the 1960s.
While the last section between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe was surprisingly hilly, what remains of the line is reasonably flat (at least as Westcountry branches go). The views of the gently rolling Devon countryside were thus comforting, rather than spectacular; the kind of views that bring a contented smile to your face on a warm Sunday lunchtime as you lean back and watch the world go by.
Our train was a little late into Barnstaple, so we had no time to stand and stare before coming straight back. The way out had been relatively quiet, but the train was a little busier on the way back; nonetheless, after two-and-a-half hours out in the far reaches of rural Devon we were suddenly thrust back into the urban reality of Exeter.
Upon arriving back in Exeter, we bumped into James who, in the time we had been to Barnstaple had gone to Exmouth and Okehampton, and was now waiting for a train to take him north. After bidding him farewell for the second (and final) time, we grabbed some supplies and headed to our final branch of the weekend, to Okehampton.
1509 Exeter St Davids to Okehampton, arr 1551
and
1556 Okehampton to Exeter Central, arr 1640
Headcode: 2K08 and 2K09 resp., operated by First Great Western using Pacer 143620
Distance: 25 miles and 25.75 miles resp.; walk-up return: £3.30
The branch to Okehampton is not like any other line in Britain, for many reasons. For one, it's privately owned by the Dartmoor Railway, not by Network Rail. There are just five services in each direction on summer Sundays, with one train shuttling back and forth between Exeter and Okehampton. And it's not as if there are many more trains on weekdays: the Okehampton branch only runs on Sundays.
Let's start at the beginning. First of all, here's a map showing the Okehampton, Barnstaple and Gunnislake lines, together with the now-closed section between Okehampton and Bere Alston (in brown):
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| (Map based on OpenStreetMap; © OpenStreetMap contributors) |
The line was first built as the London and South Western Railway main line between Exeter and Plymouth via Crediton, Okehampton, Tavistock and Bere Alston. The section between Bere Alston and Plymouth remains as part of the Gunnislake branch, which we traversed the previous day. At the other end, between Exeter and the former Coleford Junction the line remains as part of the Barnstaple branch. Put another way, the Barnstaple branch used to leave the mainline at Coleford Junction. That's actually no longer a junction, with the two branches now having parallel single tracks for the three miles until they join at Crediton.
The line between Meldon Quarry and Bere Alston was closed in 1968, and passenger services between Exeter and Okehampton were withdrawn in 1972. Until 1997, though, the line soldiered on with ballast traffic to and from Meldon Quarry. With the ballast traffic winding down, and the branch now owned the quarry owners, they decided to reinvent the line between Exeter and Okehampton as a heritage railway line, with passenger services.
Aside from the Dartmoor Railway's own trains, which are now rather infrequent, the main such service is the FGW-provided summer Sunday service, which is funded by Devon County Council. Dartmoor Railway still run the stations of Okehampton and Sampford Courtenay, both of which have a well-kept feel of the Southern Railway to them - this was never GWR territory, and thus it shall remain!
While the LSWR managed to avoid gradients as bad as the 1 in 36 on the GWR main line between Exeter and Plymouth, they didn't manage to avoid them completely: after all, Devon is a rather hilly county. But rather than several steep hills, the 60-mile LSWR route between Exeter and Plymouth was simply one big hill, with 30 miles up at 1 in 75, and 30 miles down at 1 in 75, the summit pretty much dead in the middle at Meldon Quarry.
As such, our ride in this Pacer along a rather overgrown line to Okehampton was rather entertaining. On the way to Okehampton, the engine struggled constantly up the hill. But on the way down, we were treated to one of the most hair-raising rides on a train I've been on for years: the track, while sound, was not as precisely aligned as, say, the 125mph West Coast Main Line; and with a 1 in 75 downhill gradient to take us most of the way back to Crediton, once the driver got it up to speed we barelled down the hill like we were almost out of control, practically clinging on for dear life. It was great fun.
All too soon, we left the wonderful backwater of the Okehampton branch, and returned to normality at Exeter. Rather than disembark at St David's - the GWR station - we continued on up the 1 in 37 bank to Exeter Central - the LSWR station, much more conveniently located for the city centre - and headed off to buy some food for the long trip home.
In keeping with the LSWR theme for the day, we decided that getting a FGW service back to Reading would be hell on a Sunday afternoon, with most of the trains probably ending up full and standing. Having said goodbye to Ian, who was heading back via Birmingham, the four of us decided to go back via Basingstoke instead:
1730 Exeter Central to Basingstoke, arr 2002
Headcode: 1L62, operated by South West Trains using Sprinter 159001*+159007
Distance: 124 miles
It's been a good few years since I'd been on the South West Trains route between Exeter and Basingstoke - also part of the LSWR mainline to London - and it made a nice change from FGW. With a full two-and-a-half hours' journey to Basingstoke ahead of us, the four of us sat round a table and played our last game of Fluxx, a remarkably addictive card game.
The two and a half hours passed fairly quickly, and before we knew it we'd arrived at Basingstoke. Ben stayed on the train to head home via Clapham Junction; Paul, James and I alighted for our connection to Reading:
2007 Basingstoke to Reading, arr 2030
Headcode: 2J62, operated by First Great Western using Turbo 165104
Distance: 15.5 miles
Our five-minute connection at Basingstoke was easily made, and we duly joined our last FGW train of the weekend. But it wasn't a sleepy Westcountry branch, it was a slightly more busy Thames Valley commuter line, which the next morning would be rammed once again with commuters to London. It just didn't feel the same, and it brought home that, slowly but surely, the long holiday was ending.
Once in Reading, I bade farewell to Paul, a Reading local, and James, who was heading to west London, and joined my final train, the familiar CrossCountry run back to Coventry:
2041 Reading to Coventry, arr 2152
Headcode: 1M96, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221132
Distance: 79.75 miles
Somehow, the very same train we'd been on three days previously from Newton Abbot to Plymouth had made its way to Reading to take me home to Coventry; a little digging suggests it did so via a night in Aberdeen. It's easy to forget just how big CrossCountry's network is.
Once I was finally home, I collapsed into a chair, and said plaintively to my housemate, "too many trains!". It had been a long week, and a very good one; but perhaps a little too intense, in retrospect...
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