Geograph - photograph every grid square

The Castleman Trailway is a walking and cycling route between Ringwood and Upton Country Park, on the outskirts of Poole. It runs for 16 miles. Much of the route is along the path of a dismantled railway.

The route takes its name from Charles Castleman, who built the railway line in the 1840s.

More information can be found on Dorset Council's website: Link

The National Cycle Network is a network of cycle routes. It was created by the charity Sustrans Link (Sustainable Transport), aided by a National Lottery grant.

Many routes aim to minimise contact with motor traffic, though 70% of them are on roads. In some cases the NCN uses pedestrian routes, disused railways, minor roads, canal towpaths, or traffic-calmed routes in towns and cities.

National Cycle Network route 25 (NCN25) stretches for a little under 100 kilometres, from Bournemouth on the south coast to Longleat, where it meets NCN24. En route, NCN25 passes through Poole, Wimborne, Blandford Forum and Gillingham.

The Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway was an amalgamation of two separate railway companies which had between them built lines linking Bath with Bournemouth. Much of the line passed through territory that was very rural and sparsely populated. Development of road transport took away much of the local passenger and fright traffic, while the growth of foreign travel made possible by jet aircraft resulted in a decline in seasonal holiday express trains which used the line to take holidaymakers from the Midlands and North of England to Bournemouth. The line closed in 1966, as part of the "Beeching Cuts" (see separate snippet here: Link )

The Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust has an informative PDF file which gives more detail about the railway and the stations it served: Link

Dr Richard Beeching (1913-1985) was employed during the 1960s by the government as the Chairman of the British Railways Board. In 1963 he produced a report which recommended the closure of thousands of miles of railway lines and thousands of stations, which were deemed to be unprofitable, to streamline the British railway network.

Over the years that followed, many of the lines and stations recommended for closure did indeed close, although some did survive against the odds while a few which did close have since been rebuilt and reopened. The railway closures of that period are often referred to as "Beeching Cuts".

More information about Dr Beeching's report cn be found on the websites of Network Rail Link and the National Archives Link