Description
If you are a walker, you will be interested to note that the return ticket (for the full length of the line) is not a ‘day rover’. However, you can pick up any train, any time, all day, as long as your ticket is valid. That means you can very easily do the whole return trip, PLUS breaking the journey (to do a walk from an intermediate station), during a whole day out.
The Rheidol Valley feels amazingly unspoiled and relatively undiscovered thus far by walkers. Yet there is a delightful network of waymarked paths and tracks, amid truly stunning varied scenery. The valley contains significant fragments of the ancient sessile oak and birch forests that would have originally covered much of upland Britain and is home to an abundance of wildlife. In addition, walkers will come across discrete remains of the old lead/silver/zinc industry which once thrived here, and was the original reason the railway was built.
Maurice Kyle is the author of a walkers’ guidebook, called ‘Railway Walks in the Vale of Rheidol’ (in association with the railway), which helps you explore this fantastic area. It is available for purchase from the station shops at Aberystwyth and Devil’s Bridge, the Tourist Office in Terrace Road, Bwlch Nant yr Arian Visitors’ Centre, and Amazon online. Beautifully illustrated with colour maps and photographs of the routes, 26 walks are described in detail. This is an essential guide if you wish to use our stations and halts as bases for walking, as the book also uniquely suggests how the routes can fit in with the railway timetable.
The author also has a website detailing other walks in the local area which can be found at this link: http://rachelseabrook.net/wild-walking.html
83 pages paperback.
