Do you have any suggestions for a day out, meeting the following criteria?

• A day trip by rail from Western Wiltshire
• Enough at the destination to occupy about five hours
• Decent cafe (doesn't have to be Michelin...)
• Destination doesn't look post-apocalyptic, which includes places that have become car-dominated

 
Those restrictions seem to exclude Weymouth. 

Nailsea? (That includes Tyntesfield, a rambling National Trust property, just to the north).

 

That's Swindon off the list then!

 

These days, private cars dominate so many places, but there are many excelllent sections within towns and cities which aren't overrun ...

Places I have enjoyed by train from West Wiltshire include:
Bath
Bristol
Frome
Oxford
Salisbury
Stroud
Gloucester
Cardiff - Central and Bay
Barry Island
Penarth
Salisbury
Hamble
London
Marlow
Dawlish
Exmouth
Poole
Weymouth
Chepstow
Worcester
Malvern
Bournemouth
Southsea
Tiverton (by bus from Parkway and canal walk back)
Isle of Wight (if you allow a ferry and have a deep pocket!)

And places that I really should take a (further) look at might include:
Exeter
Reading
Cheltenham Spa
Chichester and onwards toward Brighton
Sherbourne, Gillingham, Axminster, Honiton
Didcot, for rail centre

Less that 5 hours (for me), but fun:
Yetminster
Avoncliff
Severn Beach
Lymington
Brockenhurst
Bicester Village
Oldfield Park (to Midford)
Yatton
Burnham (for Highbridge)

Overrun with cars IMHO from the station might include Dorchester, Weston-super-mare and Newport

Not listing post-apololyptic places, nor "home" places within West Wiltshire.  Many more options if you allow a relatively short bus ride from a railhead.  And others if you are looking for countryside / canal walk

 

Slight bias involved?  .  I have visited Nailsea, as friends live there. Would like to visit Tyntesfield again, but there doesn't seem to be a safe walking route between N&B station and the NT site?

 
Have you thought about Southampton or Windsor? If you don't mind two changes of train (at Reading and Richmond) and like gardens with a bit more, you might also consider Kew Gardens.

 

A number of years ago I did a walk from N&B to Bristol going through Tyntesfeld, Ashton Court and the Clifton Suspension Bridge.  Tyntesfield was accessed by a "back entrance" (stop giggling all of you at the back there) footpath from around the Wraxhall area.  It did involve a bit of roadside walking and a yomp though Nailsea but all in all I quite enjoyed the day out.

 

Probably rules out Slough too.

 
Exeter Central for shopping, museum, cathedral, riverside. It's not car friendly.

 
I wrote a post earlier this afternoon that seems to have gone AWOL. So, briefly, thanks for the ideas so far, and don't stop yet!

My request was (and still is) genuinely for ideas for a day trip for two in the near future. However, the search and follow-up raises a number of interesting points, some relevant to the concurrent thread on town centres.

I will post some further thoughts when I have time.

 

That can happen if another follow up has been posted while you are writing - you press "post" and can (I sometimes do) don't notice that rather than posting, it alerts you to another contribution and asks if you want to post anyway. 


Not sure if the original post specified "for two". Similar generation to you, or outing with a child or a parent?

Like the example so far - I left out Southampton because I find it a bit car infested near the station ...

 
Bradford on Avon has it's charms.  There's the attractive town itself and up by the canal lock there's a couple of waterside pubs and the Tithe barn retail outlets.  From there you can take a modest stroll along the canal towpath to Avoncliff and the Cross Guns pub located between the canal and the river Avon.  Just over the river bridge is Avoncliff railway station for the return journey.
Worth noting is that there are a couple of impressive National Trust gardens within a few miles radius iThe Courts in Holt and Great Chalfield Manor) plus the splendid Italianate Peto Gardens at Iford.

 

It can also happen if you are an innate Luddite (like me) and choose to 'preview' your post - to make sure it looks alright before it appears out on the forum.  If it does look alright in 'preview' I've then occasionally moved on to another topic - forgetting to complete the process by going back to click on 'post' for my efforts.

CfN.

 
Thank you all for the suggestions.

The list was whittled down ... and the final winner was... Lymington.

Except that dealing with some Brexit fallout left us too tired in the morning... so we decided on a shorter expedition to Salisbury.

We then spent a long time examining the vegetation between Warminster and Wilton... in both directions... during the Friday "signalling fault".  We have visited Salisbury before, but (rather hungry after the extended journey), we found a nice cafe we hadn't visited before. Refueled, had a successful visit to a single shop. Another drink, then it was time to come home. Saw several closed shops but the general image is still OK.

 
Salisbury also featured in my travel plans for Friday 2nd.
Having given up on my regular trips to Castle Cary from Paddington prior to Covid, I decided for my 81st birthday (in July!) to travel 1st class to Cary on October 2nd, have lunch at The Creamery at the station, (which I remember as a milk factory)and return. Returns from Waterloo, 1st class, for two of us were £111 (good value, I thought). From Paddington it would have been well over £200 each. We got, in comfort and speed, to Salisbury where we were tipped out of the train. Easy decision to abort and return whence we came. No through trains back to Waterloo, so stopping services via Basingstoke.
I then spent the evening battling with the nightmare that is the TrainLine web site. With difficulty (I am not good with apps - at the school where I volunteer we say that the only app that matters is the reading lap) I got a refund for much of the journey, but not for for the outward (for one person) from Waterloo, as I had touched in on departure. I was unable to find any method of claiming for an 'abandoned journey'. First time I had used Trainline as I avoided them when they charged a fee. And now, not again!

 
All the suggested place you could walk round on GoogleEarth.

 
I planned a day out in Taunton last Wednesday.

Definitely one to add to the "Overrun with cars from the station" list (IMHO, as mentioned). What was planned to be a day out ended up being an hour spent in the excellent (albeit very child-friendly, almost to the exclusion of anyone else) Somerset Museum. What might have become a second hour or so was curtailed by cries of "How much?!?" in the museum cafeteria, leading us to buying sandwiches from a supermarket on the way back to the station. No plans to return to Taunton any time soon.

 

What a darned shame - TravelWatch on Friday would be worth coming, and just a few yards from the station 

 

I had a look at some of the places using Google Streetview. Perhaps a topic for another thread: "Does Streetview make places look more dismal than they really are?"

When I find out the right way to condense the long-winded Streetview URLs into something neat for a message on this forum, I will post a few examples of what (for me, anyway) makes or breaks a potential destination.

 

My learned mentor grahame will be happy to help you with that. Please do go ahead and post such examples.

 
Google street views are usually undertaken early morning so the camera on the motorcycle can get round without stopping. You often get delivery lorries in the view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnKPUAL7eO0

 
Salisbury was the runner-up. The winner was...

 
...Dawlish.

I cheated slightly, as the visit was rather longer than a day trip; more like 50 hours.

Boxes ticked:
Convenient station.
Modest traffic - and a zebra crossing in the right place.
Short walk to nice B&B
Plenty of food options for daytime and evening
Walked along coast from Teignmouth to Dawlish
Starcross-Exmouth ferry - seabirds and a seal.
Friendly people
Some interesting independent shops

Downsides:
Current works related to separating storm water from sewage (not as bad as it sounds)
Signs of the typical seaside downturn in fortunes,

Overall, a very enjoyable break  (with weather almost miraculously better than the forecast). Some lessons, though, relevant to other threads on this forum, including town centres, Torbay and  various rail, including catering. More to follow.

 
Thanks for this thread.

 
(I should confess, first, that I had a sneak preview trip to Dawlish a couple of weeks ago. This is relevant to some of the comments).
The journey experience
For both outward journeys, and one of the return journeys, I made use of the Torbay Express, which provides a through journey from Westbury to Dawlish and v.v. Having a relatively uninterrupted journey is an improved experience (even for someone comfortable with changing trains).

Most services ran well. The down train on Wednesday was 30+ late, after the set was swapped at Reading. Frankly, I'm surprised that there was something available for the swap. It was 9-for-9 and the new unit managed to have the seat reservation information.

It took a while for Mrs T and I to find a table with decent window alignment where both seats were free for the entirety of the journey we were making. We managed (with a bit of help from no-shows) but the effort, and the generality of restricted views caused by bodywork pillars or seat backs takes the shine off what should be a quality railway experience.

The IET seats were adequate for the journey we were making.

On neither of the down journeys did the catering trolley appear. On one of the up journeys (this was from Plymouth, not the Torbay Express) the trolley was for some reason static, manned by a friendly and apologetic chap. On the other up journey, the trolley hadn't made it through the train by Westbury. Is one trolley really sufficient for a 9 car train? It's fair to say that the simple enjoyment of a coffee as we looked out of the window would have made the experience less bland.

 
I think part of the problem with the trolley getting through a train is down to it making a late start.

It often seems to take a long time to check stock after a crew changeover or replenishments being loaded.  I don’t know what is involved in the process but it can seem lengthy.

 

During the summer I walked from my house, near Montpelier Station, to Nailsea and Backwell - via Tyntesfield, where we stopped for a very enjoyable cup of tea. The only part of the route that was dodgy was a section of the main road in Failand, where I was nearly hit by a bus while making my way along the verge, but that’s not really relevant to Trowres’ question!

There is a footpath across the fields from Nailsea and Backwell station, skirting the southern fringe of Nailsea and passing through Watercress Farm before entering Tyntesfield near the Kitchen Garden. I don’t remenber any particularly onerous obstacles!

 

I understand that on the down journey, the trolley crew changes at Exeter. The new crew (on both occasions of my travel) made a long announcement on the PA, so the train was around Starcross before anyone would have been likely to have received service. I wonder how many passengers purchase things at this late stage in their journey? (If you are first to be served and you are going all the way to Paignton, you have about 35 minutes)

 
So far, I've posted a reflection on the experience of my train journey. There are other points I'd like to cover and to see how other Coffeeshop members views compare.

Firstly, it was not easy to choose a destination. Some of this may be due to my advancing years and a sense of "been there done that". Some, however, may be due to a decline in the destinations themselves. This forum has already covered town centre decline and the particular problems of coastal destinations.

Some of that decline may have been unavoidable. Some, I feel, is down to poor design and planning. (Here, planning is in a wider sense than what Local Govt. does). So many places look dreary or "the same".

Then there is the aspect of car dominance. Not only does this detract from the beauty or tranquility of places, it has also led to particular difficulties for those of us trying to use public transport.

Turning to my decision to extend the trip to more than one day: it is not particularly easy to find somewhere to stay overnight (varies by location and budget). It is much harder when you are looking for somewhere that is easily accessible by train. Many websites are catching on to the idea of searching for "dog friendly" but I've yet to see "near the station" offered as a search option.

I have stayed in some fantastic B&Bs over the years, which I prefer to the more impersonal hotel experience. Not many could be described as "easily accessible by rail". In Dawlish, with a bit of effort, I found three (can you do better? without using AirBnB). I have also tagged B&Bs in Lymington, Yarmouth IoW and Sway for future reference.

 
Talking with a B&B owner in Scotland, that class of accommodation's very much in decline for reasons you can imagine. Information being online is a mixed blessing too, as the number of deceased web sites, deceased email addresses, unresponsive email address owners, is legion.

Something that's gone and that I'm not sure was valued even when it was running was the Tourist Information 'Book a bed ahead' service, which for a 10% commission was pretty good at finding somewhere to stay and often provided a voyage of discovery too. It was UK-wide so I once visited the tourist information in Bath and within a few hours they booked a B&B for me in Stirling. Compare and contrast with the present day and Bath has no tourist information office.

One memorable time, before the service was centralised, and for Gairloch, the tourist information person completely ran out of options but had enough local contacts to go on the grapevine and find someone who was very content to put us up in a spare room. Evening sun, a small house with an extensive view a mile or so to Gairloch, and on arrival having taken a quick look at us, she handed us the house keys, apologised that she was out for the evening and with that we were beyond reach of the midges and had a roof over our heads.

 

I use a combination of Booking.com to locate (but not book) potential places near a specific location by using their map facility. Having located suitable places scoring ideally above 8.0 (but higher the better) using their map, I will check reviews there & elsewhere before looking up their website & making contact direct - the vast majority of places these days have learned that they can offer cheaper rates direct than on Booking.com by not paying the latter's comission fee of around 9%. Hasn't let me down yet.

 

Not sure about Dawlish ... but just today I have been booking hotels that need to be stations for next week.   These days, outside the UK, I tend to search on booking-dot-com, find something that looks vaguely suitable, then click on the map, find the station, and navigate around hotels nearby.   It's a formula that typically words, just with the proviso that in big cities what looks close to the station may not be. 

 

Yes, I have come across a number of dead links. One thing that irritates me is the large number of websites that, for want of a better term, seem to be parasitic; that is to say they appear to have scraped details from elsewhere and often offer to "check availability" for places that have long-since ceased to exist.



It was probably the early 90's when I used Tourist Info to obtain a long list of B&B in North Cornwall and worked my way through the telephone numbers until I found one that was suitable and had space. Although not the most streamlined of processes, it had the advantage of being, probably, a comprehensive list of accommodation - in one document.


Brings back memories. I stayed one night in Inverness. The proprietess didn't have space for the following night, so asked her neighbour.  I stayed with said neigbour several times over the years. She was a fantastic host and was there with tea and sandwiches to welcome me at about 02:30 after the Taunton-Inverness train* was delayed by 5 hours.

Still as a student, I booked into a B&B opposite Balloch station. When my friend and I arrived, the door was opened by a girl rather younger than us. She looked rather hesitantly at us - nobody else was in the house - but let us in. The same girl cooked breakfast the following morning, saying very little. We enjoyed the meal in what was rather smart surroundings and then went on our way.

* Yes there was a Taunton-Inverness train in those days (probably 1980s).

 

I avoid booking.com for probably similar reasons (reinforced by its irritating presence on the National Rail journey planner).

Here, search engine algorithms are not our friend, as the "native" website of the B&B can be well down the list.

 

Amazing how many maps used on accommodation / booking sites don't have a scale bar.

 

Scottish B&B person who had had a portmanteau career before running a B&B business that having husbanded its reputation had grown along with the old stationmaster's house there - and now also included a freestanding holiday home constructed in part on ground that he'd cleared by removing a scoop into the long-abandoned railway embankment that bordered his land. He indicated that yes, the booking sites took a substantial bite out of the transaction, and for the holiday cottage this was 22%.

 

Booking Agency Commissions ... indeed, that 9% quoted was low, and the 22% is high from my (historic) memory. Sounds a lot - ranging from "high" to "profiteering" perhaps?   But yet, I'll give you a modified view, increasingly historic but not totally replaced.  We paid, in commission, somewhere between those quoted figures when we ran Well House Manor. We did so with full prior knowledge, and willingly. How do you reach people from far, far away to come to your little B&B in an obscure town in Wiltshire? 

The days are gone of advertising in magazines and holiday brochures, the walk ins to the TIC have faded to zero, and money spent on advertising and a commission to the TIC are no longer paid.  So the move to the online booking agencies can be viewed as a changed cost and not a new one. 

Whilst we preferred the commission rates to be lower rather than higher (who wouldn't?) we did not resent the agency payments.  Worth it for a good, easy to use and secure service that sold rooms only at times we otherwise had a surplus without having to field loads of enquires for rooms when they aren't available (negative marketing effect). We had control over what and when we offered, and indeed "Late Rooms" only offered them quite close to the date, required payment up front / not cancellable, and sometimes applied a minimum stay; Saturday night only available as part of a stay of 2 or more nights.

Potential direct customer question "We know you pay a commission to Late Rooms - will you take our booking, please, at a slightly lower rate than is offered there?"  Suprisingly, no, not if you're looking for just a night or two as a first time guest.  Our agreement with Late Rooms was that we had to offer the lowest rate there. But there was much more to it; the agency booking with "no cancels" reduced our no-shows and late drop outs.  And it secured payment ahead of time and saved us the admin that was done by the central agency.  And a "can you do it cheaper / direct" request was a flag of a potentially "squeaky wheel" customer - double edges sword there, since it could also indicate a thoughfulness on the part of the potential guest.

Are there are parallels, these days, in taxi bookings and Uber, and in split ticketing, where the obvious / rack rate price can be bargained for / undercut as we look to save money?

 
Thanks for those insights. For a while, my go-to check on the performance of the online booking engines was a quick search for rooms in the closed and derelict for some time Glenfield Hotel in Ullapool. Some site or other would usually have something on offer even after its site was redeveloped for housing.

Mark