A Dip in the Poole
A friend of mine is planning a trip to Poole in Dorset in the new year. (I won't go into details, but it involves stuff that young people do on smartphones, apparently.) Needless to say, she's called on my services as an independent travel consultant to plan out a route for her. Easier said than done. I was in my local library earlier, armed with Stuart K. Baker's indispensable Rail Atlas: Great Britain and Ireland (12th edition), and Ian Allan's companion book British Railways Pre-grouping Atlas and Gazetteer . (Both books are from my personal reference library – Aberdare doesn't have anything like those on the shelves – but I wanted to use the Wi-Fi.) Here's what I've found so far: The Somerset and Dorset Joint Committee (a 'joint' line operated by Midland Railways and London & South Western) had what looks to be a nice route through Radstock, Shepton Mallet, Wincanton, Sturminster Newton and Blandford Forum. That was back in the days o