Cycling the Southwell Trail

How lucky we are to have the trail. I use it most frequently to complete my regular cycling circuit, usually joining it at Maythorne. Its uphill nearly all the way home to Farnsfield, but as that’s the railway version of uphill, I can cope quite easily with the gradients, in spite of frequent westerly winds and the occasional squelchy surface after heavy rain, which makes it more difficult for the tyres to grip.

The Southwell Trail hasn’t been a railway line since the mid-1960s. Before that, it carried passengers from 1871 to 1929 and after that mostly coal, especially once the link with Bilsthorpe colliery had been established in the 1930s, via the junction at Farnsfield. The stations at Farnsfield, Kirklington and Edingley and Southwell all had goods yards with sidings and were served by occasional pick-up freight trains, bringing in coal, machinery and building materials, and taking out largely agricultural produce.

The three station buildings all remain today as private dwellings. Also surviving are the former platform edges at Farnsfield and at Kirklington and Edingley. Farnsfield goods shed - also now a residence, the former track bed with its cuttings and embankments, the original road bridges and culverted stream crossings, a splendid little Midland Railway plate layers’ hut, or perhaps more likely a small goods office, at what was the entrance to the former station yard at Kirklington and Edingley, as well as a concrete framed, metal loading gauge at the other end of the same site, originally placed there to make sure that open wagons were not overloaded when they left the goods yard by rail. The former goods yard is now a picnic area. The signalbox at Farnsfield was removed after the line closed and the location today is just a tangle of undergrowth, though the car park area and the spacious entrance to the trail at this point remind us that there were a number of sidings on both sides of the line near the station, which also had a passing loop and two platforms on an otherwise single-track railway.

The trail is now a multi-use path, catering for ramblers, runners, cyclists, dog walkers, birdwatchers, horse riders, nature lovers and geocachers. Normal progress has also, on at least one occasion, been interrupted by the hunt - all dressed up, tally-ho, hunting horns and galloping. Presumably they were chasing a lure, as they are supposed to do these days, but that was no consolation for the two brown hares that got caught up in it all. They were chased off the fields and sought refuge in a hedgerow alongside the trail, only to be promptly torn to bits by the pack. That spectacle unfolded within full view of an unsuspecting young couple who, up to that point, had been out for a nice quiet walk in the countryside. The moment was within our earshot, as well, unfortunately. I imagine that hares are what the hunters might describe as collateral damage. Nottingham-based hunt saboteurs were also present but appeared to be having little effect on proceedings. As they were necessarily on foot, rather than in their cars, they were struggling to keep up with all the action, so hardly an equal race, really, which had obviously already been won, anyway, by the hounds.

One major reason that I wend my way home along the trail rather than by road, is the wildlife. Over the years I’ve seen mouse, shrew, stoat, bats, fox and loads of grey squirrels, of course, and all quite close up. There was a very recognisable badger sett that had been quarried into the embankment near Edingley until its more recent collapse. The well-worn paths either side of the trail between the foliage at that point suggested a substantial badger community, though I never witnessed any all-night parties of intensive badgering, myself. In the early days, there were also sand lizards at the Farnsfield end, close to the entrance and the houses, where there was a sand bunker lined with wooden sleepers that was presumably another left-over from the railway age. Railwaymen sometimes put sand on the tracks to improve adhesion.  

Birds are plentiful, with fieldfare and redwing flocks in winter, as well as linnet, goldcrest, bullfinch, brambling, buzzard and lesser redpoll. Summer visitors include common and lesser whitethroat, garden warbler, willow warbler [though fewer than previously], sedge warbler [heard this morning next to where the formation crosses Halam Beck, where I once also saw a snipe] and legions of blackcap. Green woodpeckers are commonly heard, red kites are increasing but still only occasional, and skylarks are quickly off the mark in each new year, sometimes deciding that it is spring a bit prematurely, it seems to me, at a time when I am still deliberating between four layers of protection from the elements and three. I don’t see tree sparrow these days, yellowhammer are less frequent, too, and I haven’t heard corn bunting locally for years. I miss the once common cuckoos in the vicinity of Edingley, where the station also used to get regular nesting turtle doves, at one time. One fairly regular attraction when cycling the trail is sparrowhawk. They always see me coming before I see them. Then they fly off away from me along the path, below the tree canopy and close to the ground, before veering off and finding another perch to the side of the trail. They may repeat this action three or four times, as I move steadily towards them, before they get fed up with me and head off somewhere else.     

Most folk I pass are quite friendly. I have a tinkly little bell to announce my presence, especially for those who are going my way and therefore haven’t seen me coming. People are often on their phones, listening to podcasts or deep in conversation with each other, and so not everyone acknowledges me. If I’m still unsure whether they know that I’m there or not, I just give them as wide a berth as possible.  

In my experience, people generally look after their dogs much better, these days, and so the dogs behave better, as a result. If I ding my bell to attract their attention as I approach, most folk will either reel in their long dog leads, reach for the dog’s collar or go for a tasty doggy treat from their coat pocket as a distraction, so that their charges forget about trying to take a piece out of my ankle, as I come by. I always thank them and wish them good day.

Then there are insects. We seem to be very well off for insects in Nottinghamshire. In the summer months, most of them seem to want to visit our house. If we leave the door open, which I’m prone to do when its warmer, we soon attract house flies, may flies, crane flies, wasps and bees, all coming in for a look round. Most of them then spend a lot of time and energy unsuccessfully trying to find their way out again. On my bike, I wear a snood over my head and beneath my helmet at all times, to protect from the sun and from flying wildlife. Every now and then, buzzing insects get wedged between the grills in my headgear and I then panic, rip off my helmet and throw it to the floor, only to find that there is still a loud buzzing in my ear as the culprit is sitting somewhere on my snood, so I start madly whacking myself about the head until I manage to dislodge it.

It’s no wonder, then, that the trail attracts all those insect-eating birds in summer. Mosquitos, midges, ladybirds, flying ants, thunder flies, the horse flies that congregate on dollops of horse poo, and those exceedingly juicy-looking, slow moving, very black and much larger than average jobs with dangly legs - the ones that look like there’re probably the most nutritious, though I’m not intent on giving them a try, all make it essential for me to keep my mouth shut as much as possible as I saunter along between May and September. Even then, smaller insects miraculously manage to squeeze themselves between my glasses and my goggles and I’m left desperately pawing at my face to shake them free with one hand whilst grabbing the handlebar more tightly than usual with the other one, as I wobble along.

As is the case in so many other parts of the country, the severe contraction of the railway network in the 1960s provided great opportunities for the development of these amazing social amenities, along what were also to become valuable wildlife corridors. Many local authorities gratefully accepted the challenge, but in our travels around the country, we’ve also seen areas where this hasn’t yet happened as much as it could or should have done, even though the potential is still there for it in many instances, in the form of an increasingly overgrown former track bed.

Our own local trail can also be used to reach Clipstone Forest, via Bilsthorpe, and the River Trent at Fiskerton, by way of the gated racecourse road at Southwell, with only comparatively short stretches of on-road cycling needed to complete the links. Dedicated urban cycle lanes, the ongoing contributions of Sustrans and the creation of a system of linked national cycleways continue to encourage more people to get about by bike. So, thank goodness for the trail at Farnsfield, and a big thank you to the local authority for their foresight, and especially to the Friends of the Southwell Trail for all their hard work in maintaining it so well for us all to use as we see fit.