Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.

Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.

Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!

Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.

Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/

It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.

Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.

30th November 2024 and the first two specials (there will be eight in total) bring visitors to Bath Christmas Market. These are the Steam Dreams and Railway Touring Company specials pulled by Black 5 no. 44871 and BR Pacific no. 70000 Britannia respectively.

We wandered back along the towpath of the Kennet & Avon to catch sight of the returning Railway Touring Company Special and Black 5 44871 at Hampton Row (which used to be a halt in Victorian times)

Now we move on to 4th December 2024 and BR Pacific no. 70000 Britannia is heading a Bath Christmas Market Express up the Limpley Stoke Valley on the Heart of Wessex line. The train will return along the mainline passing Chippenham at about 17:15.

6th December 2024 and a Steam Dreams special from Southend-on-Sea behind Bulleid Pacific no. 34046 Braunton heads up the Heart of Wessex line for Bath Spa and the Christmas Market.  

Bulleid Pacific no. 34046 Braunton approaches Glasses Crossing (Bathampton) on the Heart of Wessex line with a Bath Christmas Market Express from Three Bridges (West Sussex) on 9th December 2024

11th December 2024 brings the penultimate Bath Christmas Market express - this one from Staines. I had intended to take photographs from Meadow Lane Bridge but the bleedin' bus (X31) didn't turn up so I was running late. As I was passing the George on the Kennet & Avon towpath, I (luckily) heard the engine whistle in the Limpley Stoke Valley... the train was ten minutes early! I ran to the Mill Lane bridge and just caught it emerging from the Heart of Wessex line. Hence the somewhat shaky video (a bad workman and all that).

For the return leg, I wandered along the Kennet & Avon towpath to the footbridge at Hampton Row but twas dark by then! The intervening period was spent mainly in Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights in John Street followed by pie and mash in the Ram at Widcombe (away from the crush of the Christmas Market).

14th December 2024 and the final Bath Christmas Market special from Three Bridges was a spectacular anticlimax as Bulleid Merchant Navy Pacific no. 35028 Clan Line was in charge of the train only as far as Salisbury. A type 47 diesel then brought the train, pictured below approaching the Meadow Lane bridge at Bathampton, on to Bath and Bristol.

I then sought my steam fix from a narrowboat on the adjacent Kennet & Avon Canal - see photo below

My plan was to video the return leg of the train at Hampton Row - the site of a halt in Victorian times. I made do with a couple of photos taken from the Hampton Row footbridge, one looking 'up' (towards London) and the other 'down'. I had walked from Rudloe so following the railway (mis)adventure I lunched at the Curfew in Cleveland Place and thought that the prospect of the London Road townhouses was quite appealing. Strange that I missed getting Jeremy Guscott in the frame as he walked past just seconds later. The route to the Curfew took me down Rockcliffe Road in Bathwick where 'we' (the family) spent our first night following our move from Warrington in 1959. This was at the guesthouse of Mr & Mrs Davies where I still recall one of those 'snapshots in time' of the lights of Camden late in the evening.