Great video David! I also live in Poole and today ran along the footpaths on the old railway from Downton - the sidings road to Alderbury. Found quite a few bridges, including a couple hidden across a farmers field!

I worked at Redland pipes when young...Old boys who worked there told be all the tales of the past...they said there was a gate to the estate at Wallisdown cross roads by the round about....the road then went down past Talbot village and the church across to Talbot view common and there is a bridge there over the railway and onto the Branksome estate and Canford village...loads more but i will leave it there.

I don't think Marples invented Subscriber Trunk dialling. "Holding the baby" springs to mind. certainly the fore-runner of Maggie's "Great Car Economy"

Another well presented and highly informative video David. I always learn something new. On a sidenote, i was amazed that the Brighton Cottages were only knocked down as late as 91. Although i only started to drive in 93, i cant for the life of me, ever remember those cottages. Maybe I'm just getting on in years now 😂

fascinating ty

Fantastic, really enjoyed watching this. Makes Paul Whitewick video look second rate !

Well done mate , but no ice cream van up the top at the beacon ?? A '99' would have been a nice reward after that slog !!

I went to school at Henry Harbin and there was a guy called Angus Fitchett who lived in one of the Brighton Cottages. He had an old bath tub which he rowed round Holes Bay - what a character

It's not unusual for politicians to hire someone and then when the job they're paid to do looks bad politically they get all the blame for doing their job. However if the job they do is politically good then the politicians take all the credit sidelining them in the process. The real slimy ones are the politicians not the people they hire. Even Ernest Marples said that Richard Beeching had no authority to close any railway for that's the minster of state for transport's job or Ernest Marples in this case. But because it was bad politically all the blame was heaped on Beeching and Marples got away with it as slimy politicians always do.

Error on your map around Redbridge Roundabout, it did not skirt around the Roundabout it went thought it, the popular trees mark out the side of the canal, I can remember where the canal was, before they turned the Mono Redbridge road into dual carriageway, and put in the roundabout which came before the flyovers, There was a dip in the ground were the canal ran, between Millbrook Roundabout and Town a lot of the canal never got built only sections of it did, The canal never ran under Gover Rd, but between the footpath you walk and the front gardens of the bungalows ant the bottom of Gover Rd near Nine Elms Rail gate, it branched off and went behind the Anchor Pub to a canal dock. The flat subsidence was more likely cause by the number of Marsh Creeks and streams and not the canal, the whole of that area 400 to 500 years ago was reeds and marshes, the oldest building in that part of Redbridge is the Ship Hotel/Inn, originally built in the 1600s when there was a mud dry dock close by and used for the ship builders. This was not the first canal, the original canal was for sailing barges, that sailed up the River Blackwater up to the cooling ponds where they made gunpowder at this point of time, there were 3 rivers Totton side was the Blackwaters and on Redbridge side was the Test and the one in the middle was the Grayling stream, then they built the 5 arch pack and pass bridge followed by the causeway out of Totton, the Blackwaters were diverted to the Grayling and a single arch regency bridge was built to allow for the barges to sail up to the cooling ponds and a link between Black waters and Test dug out to allow Blackwater barges to connect to the Andover Canal

David, well done! I have travelled this are for years and never realised there was a canal there! Thank you, I shall now explore with knowledge!

David, doing what you do best! Fascinating and a really good watch. I have retraced some of your rides inspired by your vids since you first started and really enjoy your historical take and depiction of the subject at hand. Please keep up the excellent and entertaining work. Thank you!

Well done it’s a great bike! Enjoy!

Good luck David, you will be carried along by the spirit of the event and it’s only 54 miles (approx) so not so bad. Your training looks perfect, there are some hills but nothing too bad and nothing to rival Worth Matravers, just make sure you have a Granny gear available for Ditchling Beacon. It’s a fantastic event, if a little crowded, but it will leave you on a high. The very best of luck and enjoy. Great to see you back again. By the way I’m envious of your cruise jacket… very cool!🙂

Thank you David - most informative, and enjoyable !

Watching this with 2 weeks to go until the ride

Just wondering, if you ever worked for Mastercare, back in the 1980s. at the time i was working for dixons.

I definitely need to go see the lady bridge it’s near the school for tight pants!

That bridge at Wimborne now gone my hubby kayaks along there it’s not far from where Wimborne market used to be. I believe that a new housing estate has been or is being built there

Definitely not a mark2 Capri, they had vinyl roof and no spoiler! Mark 3! X

If you go into Upton country park, part of the castlemans is within it, with an impressive telegraph pole and p way hut. You can also head to the railings at the back of hamworthy lidl and get onto the bridge. It’s quite scary up there tho I must warn! It was cool to have actually got on it though even though I had to turn back due to safety issues!

Most of the new forest is a no drone fly zone. I have no idea why, maybe because of the animals?

Did you say ‘kittens bum’ 🤪

Fogmens hut. They had small braziers to one side

At 3:20 in the video! It was loose on the ground so I picked it up! Also got a couple of ceramic insulators from a collapsed pole on the large bridge near ringwood

I have a couple of bits from there including that bridge support strut that is shown in this video!

I was in the U.N. and did a 6 month Cyprus tour in summer 1976, I was driving a RE “fridge” mechanic and and went there to fix the Swedish police fridge, but back then had to be escorted from checkpoint by the police and Turkish troops. Grass and trees were starting to sprout even so soon after invasion.

I'm eternally grateful for the existance of such a video with such a title. So many don't understand that Beeching simply did what *he was told to do.*

We visit Cyprus a lot ! we have been visiting Cyprus for 24 years & of this year (April 2024) we had chance to visit. We are from Ireland & see some familial issues . It was Well worth a Visit.

evening hill dam near killed me and that was when i could manage a mountain bike. good option to walk it.

Well done, keep up the training. There are some particularly vicious hills on the London to Brighton route.

"Beeching wrote a report but he never closed a line." - That sounds like a technicality to me. Did Beeching agree with his own report or not? Was he in the habit of writing reports he didn't agree with? To excuse him just because he only wrote the report is a bit silly. The video just replaces one villain with another. I think Beeching was responsible for his own report and clearly agreed with the parameters set for him - his own public statements supported this. The truth is that a narrow view was taken of the railways by politicians, no doubt under influence from the car lobby (e.g. Marples, but not just him), and Beeching shared this view, which is why he was chosen to write the report. Beeching is responsible for his own work and so are the politicians who made the decisions. They believed that railways should be profitable, which is clearly stupid and shows that something was fundamentally awry with the post-war generation of politicians and civil servants (other misguided policies post-war governments were responsible for - mass immigration, joining the EEC, abolition of grammar schools, provincial Brutalist architecture, railway privatisation, list goes on). They had been affected by the War experience and wanted to build a shiny, idealistic new world while suffering from some sort of folie en masse (or whatever is the expression). They were mentally captured by ultra-modernism and railways seemed old, smelly, provincial and stale, and a bit boring too because a railway-centric society means people are more regimented and family-centric and activities are more structured. That's so boring, whereas cars are individualist and exciting and you can go anywhere in a car. It's freedom! We can now see that they were stupid, but it's too late. We are where we are.

I'm bit confused, David. Breamore House was build after King VIII, so how did he behead the owner if the house wasn't built?

in DR Richard Be ec hing's defense BR needed to save money and closing down lines, and employing people and scrapping locomotives and rolling stock to save money was the most freezable things to do why keep something open if it's gonna be a drain on finances.

Very interesting how stories are simplified for general consumption. There are plenty of skeletons in the mismanagement /vandalism cupboard I am sure. Didn't he preside over the double arrow rail symbol, which is excelent. (in some countries, it is hard to see where the station is) and the merry-go-round for feight trains to power stations?

Great video! Interesting stuff about the railways and castle too - enjoy the cycle!

Very enjoyable. I travelled the Ringwood to Salisbury road frequently doing my sales calls. I often wondered about the railway but never seemd to have time to explore. Thank you for posting your video..

I enjoyed that David. Well done.

Thank you, very interesting. How much of the city is open, and how long do you think is needed to visit it (how much time would you want to spend there)? And can you just drive there any time of day? Or do you have to be on a coach tour, or go at a specific time of day?

Brilliant and interesting commentary, I lived on the estate just past the bridge Alderney West , didn't realise how big Canford heath was, thank you for an interesting tour.

Good luck, I’m going to do it this year too - hopefully see you at the start and certainly the finish line!

Thank you, David. My early years were spent in Bournemouth, and my Grandmother lived in Ringwood, so we used the railway quite a lot. In summer we had Holiday Runabout Tickets which were valid from Brockenhurst to Swanage and Weymouth including the Lymington branch, so we went to all sorts of interesting places. We got off at Wool at least once and walked to Lulworth Cove, quite a hike for us young lads! All your videos bring back many happy memories. Now retired to Picton, South Island, New Zealand.

Ive seen only one photo of it when it was in its pomp

Enjoyed this and feel more informed. Not sure there is physically much left but perhaps you can do another video on the two small lines that were around lilliput/south western crescent (i think it was the Jennings clay quarry???) and the line that was around bourne valley (Guest avenue etc.).

Lovely job.

Beautiful 😊

Great stuff David! Loved seeing the old B&W pics. The station in the private garden is amazing 🤩. How cool!! Dream shed eh? 😂

I Used to walk along the trackbed in the 1990s and the 00s! Is the footbridge still there ? l believe it was not at the Station but further on in the cutting and carried a public right of way over the line ! Glad to see it's been made a cycle way ! Was a bit muddy and rough when l used to walk it !

My mother was from Ringwood, and father came from Bournemouth. We lived at Ensbury Park from 1948 to 1957. We used to use the train from Ringwood in the summer, as my grandmother lived in Westbury Road. These were “Railway Runabout Tickets “ which were valid west of Brockenhurst (including Lymington) to Swanage and Weymouth. So we traversed all the lines over a week. At Wool we walked to Lulworth Cove. On several trips the train from Ringwood used the line from Broadstone to Hamworthy Junction. Sadly the line to Christchurch had long closed, but my model railway based on Ringwood has trains still running via Hurn! It’s a “what if” layout, of course. My cousin still lives near West Street, Ringwood, and my youngest brother lived at Hurn Lane for a while. I could see my cousins property from your drone sequence. Thanks for a very interesting look back in history!

Hi , very interesting , thanks for another interesting video . 👍🚂🚞🚞🚞