This explore took me to what remains of a section of the long forgotten Thames and Severn canal in Gloucestershire near a village called Sapperton. The main reason for the visit is the Sapperton tunnel, To the south you have the Coates portal and to the north the Daneway portal. An extract from wikipedia about the tunnel: The Sapperton Canal Tunnel is a tunnel on the Thames and Severn Canal near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, England. With a length of 3,817 yards (3,490 m), it was the longest tunnel of any kind in England from 1789 to 1811. Construction, following an Act of Parliament, began in 1784. Twenty-six shafts were dug along the line of the tunnel and workfaces dug in each direction eventually joining up before the diameter of the tunnel was expanded. Difficulties were encountered related to strata of Great Oolite (solid limestone) and Fuller's Earth clay. These caused roof falls and narrowing of the channel which continued after the tunnel opened in 1789 and required freq...
The lost Banbury to Cheltenham direct railway B&CDR A short quote below about the line from the pages of wikipedia, The full information can be found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banbury_and_Cheltenham_Direct_Railway The Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway (B&CDR) was a railway company through the Cotswolds in England that built a line between points near Banbury and Cheltenham . Its principal objective, as well as a general rural rail service, was the conveyance of iron ore from the East Midlands to South Wales . The B&CDR opened its western section, from Bourton-on-the-Water to a junction near Cheltenham, in 1881, and its eastern section, from Chipping Norton to a junction at Kings Sutton , near Banbury, in 1887. The company was always short of money, and the timescale of construction was correspondingly lengthy. When the extensions opened, the Great Western Railway worked the B&CDR line and the two earlier branches as a single...