I’m strolling in deepest Britain, far from anywhere, on a route originally set by a Victorian theodolite. Empty flat fields stretch silently away. A wren, an animated ball of feathers, whizzes across my path to break the purest peace.
Far in the distance a little dot is growing bigger. Once it might have turned into the express from Oxford to London, all fire and fury, trailing smoke over the ancient hedges. But that is now deep history. The dot becomes a lone commuter on a bike, taking the scenic route home on this safe, car-free, surface.
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This is one of the long-lost Great Western Railway routes, through the Chilterns and across Buckinghamshire farmland, the HS2 of its day. It was the vision of illustrious top-hatted engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to carry his great broad-gauge expresses from Paddington Station.
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