When you think of Wiltshire, prehistoric sites or sweeping downlands probably come to mind. The ceremonial county is home to iconic landmarks like Stonehenge and the Westbury White Horse, a vast white figure carved into the chalk slope of an Iron Age hillfort.
But did you know that this area of southwest England is also home to some properly gorgeous old towns? And two of them could be about to get much easier for Londoners to visit. Local campaigners have called for direct rail links from the capital to Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon to be reinstated.
Routes which previously connected the towns to London Waterloo were axed in 2021 and passengers now need to change trains at either Salisbury or Southampton to reach them, with journey times lasting around two hours.
South Western Railway (SWR) has now launched a consultation asking passengers what they would like to see changed about current services – a development that has stirred campaigners into action.
The local West Wiltshire Rail User Group is pushing to have two SWR services – one that runs from Bradford-on-Avon and Trowbridge to Salisbury and one connecting Salisbury with London Waterloo – to be joined up. Its members argue that there would be no large costs associated with getting the direct service up and running again.
Wiltshire Council said it would ‘strongly welcome’ the direct train service, which would provide local commuters with easy access to the capital and city slickers with a link to west Wiltshire’s picturesque towns.
Historic weavers’ cottages pepper Bradford-on-Avon, which is full of Georgian architecture. Its riverbank is lined with 19th-century former cloth mills, and beyond historical sites, it’s also home to a wealth of independent shops, restaurants, bars and cafés. Trowbridge, once known for its thriving woollen cloth industry, boasts big green spaces and a museum dedicated to textiles and 1,000 years of local history housed inside a former mill.
Did you see that the Tower of London is putting water back in its moat?
Plus: the Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs have been restored to their full Victorian glory.
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