Inevitably, I feel a tinge of sadness when I come across viaducts robbed of their railway. Built at unimaginable cost, opened with glorious fanfare and now mere memorials to more ambitious times. At least this one is still standing, abandoned by its railway in 1965, precisely a century after it opened: 19 arches up to 130ft high, leaping 302yd across the river valley.
I make my way four miles east to a five-storey, 16th-century tower house. Little wonder it inspired a 19th-century writer; it was his ancestors’ home and he was brought up nearby. Five miles to its south, though, is history of an older order — a Roman road. It was built at the behest of the governor of Britain (born AD40). I find the stretch, now part of a 63-mile long-distance footpath. Walking a short way along it, I reach the site of a battle, fought at the cost of some 600 lives one January 27.
Back at the car, I check the map. Five miles south-southwest is a second tower house, restored and 729ft above sea level. Odd name. But it’s a small village five miles northeast of the battlefield that I head for. I’m curious because it was once considered the country’s fourth most important town. Important enough to have had a castle. And important enough to have been where a king was killed, in 1460.
Once upon a time, I could have caught a train straight there from a station close to the aforementioned viaduct. But that stretch of line suffered the same fate as the first, so for me it’s the jalopy or bust.
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Last week’s prize
The answers are Tremadog/Tremadoc and the Pass of Aberglaslyn. Robert Watt of Edinburgh wins a week for two in Corsica, with Corsican Places.