The Oldest Railway Bridge in the World.

Here we are at Cawsey Arch railway station, that's more of a rail halt, just a siding here with some coal wagons. Here's a train, the train's just passed through and a very nice grass platform. It's supposed to be one of the nicest peaceful railway stations I've ever been to but there's no facilities here. But there's something very very unique, something you will not see anywhere else called Cawsey Arch. The reason it's called Cawsey Arch is because just over there is the oldest railway arch in the world. Now that obviously because it's the oldest it predates every other railway so of course it predates this railway. It used to be a horse-drawn tramway for moving stone or minerals etc and this is its track bed and there's talk of recreating a section just so you can see what it would have been like and I'll be able to show you as we leave the station. This station has no road access and it's a little walk to the nearest road, the car park's about a quarter of a mile away, so yeah it's a pretty remote railway station but as I said it's unique. So that is the old tramway track bed and this is the sort of wagons that would have been running nearly 300 years ago. So before steam trains were invented, steam locomotives were invented, the horse would have pulled this along and clearly it was only controlled by this brake and tracks were probably wooden, the wheels were certainly wooden but to get them over the gorge they built this, the Cawsey Arch. So we're going to walk over it and then we're going to find a way down into the gorge to walk under it. So as we come across to here you can see now as we come out to this little lookout area we're pretty high up above the treetops so I'm going to walk over the arch, I'm going to go down those steps, take you under the arch. It's really, I like it up here, up in the trees on a nice hot day and you can hear the relaxing sound of the river below. The last time I did a video a bit like this was in Manchester when I went to Healydale Nature Reserve and I walked over an old railway viaduct but obviously newer than this one. Have a look at the link on screen now if you'd like to see that video, that reminded me a bit of this but this, as I said it is the oldest railway arch in the world and it's only when you'll get underneath it you'll see how impressive it is because obviously we can appreciate the height up here, look down to the river below but the sheer scale of the arch can only really be appreciated from down below. So I'm now following the old tramway, I'm not going to walk along it, I've got, I'm going to go for another little walk and I'll see more, Matt might see more of the trains on the Townfield Railway. I did really enjoy my trip this morning on the Townfield Railway, it's a very attractive industrial railway so I get to here as the junction of the path so the tramway would have carried on down there but I'm going to go down here. I've got wild garlic growing over this plant here, it looks like it's pretty past its sell by date but that's wild garlic, you can pick it and it's quite nice if you cook it into, oh yeah there's a strong smell now of wild garlic, that's kind of because I'm surrounded by it, really strong garlicky smell, not so nice to be honest but if you pick it and you can cook it, put it in your salad it can be quite nice. So there's the arch there, still we can't really see the arch itself because there's some trees in the way so that's why we need to go down these steps, you can start to see the sheer height of it as we go down to the river and then I've got to find my way back up the other side. Oh yeah now look at that, there it is, it's huge, it's enormous, that's got to be one of the biggest circumferences of an arch I've ever seen, it's pretty high, I don't know about, I wouldn't go as far as saying it's the highest arch I've ever seen but I don't know if I've seen an arch with such a large circumference, it's just massive, oh that is really really impressive and to think how old it is, how you know it's been here for the last 300 years and when it was new horses were clipped clopped clipped clopping over it pulling wagons right so we're right underneath it now the sign saying beware of the sudden drop we're still not down quite at the river level and here a waterfall directly down there and it's funny because it's the waterfall's really echoing I can actually hear the sound of water coming from up there but of course there is no water up there it's not raining it's like um you know a similar thing to the whispering gallery at St Paul's we can't try it I reckon if I stood over there and whispered to someone standing there I reckon we'd hear each other quite clearly but it's I hadn't realized that when we stand underneath you realize that the sound of the waterfall below echoes around so I'm going to take you down to a less interesting and much much more modern wooden bridge as opposed to its very old stone bridge but from that bridge we should get a view behind us of the Cawsey arch and there's probably then some steps take me back up the other side so as we come down here here we have I said a newer not so exciting bridge it's enormous so here we are down in the burn the bridge towering above us the Cawsey arch the world's oldest arch we was up there a moment ago I hope you enjoyed this video um thank you very much for watching thank you to the Tanfield railway for a great day very much appreciated then I'm just going to have a look in the shed that was really nice and as things get back to normal they'll be able to run a service where you get on and off at each station they'll start running to Sunnyside again it's a great day out to do come and visit the Tanfield railway and as for the IFA events do look out for them there will be more of them in the future and I'll be making more videos like this with the IFA club at other interesting railways other historic sites etc so hope you enjoyed this little series of the IFA event up in the northeast the road run the visit to Beamish the railway museum at Darlington thank you very much for watching there'll be a few more videos coming from the IFA event I've done on my own a few little places I've been to with my larder so do also look out for them but from Cawsey arch in County Durham the oldest railway arch in the world thank you very much for watching please do feel free to like subscribe and comment goodbye