Ballingham tunnel and Fawley tunnel, with Fawley viaduct at The Black Mountains

Background

There are a good few tunnels to be found in the Wye valley, and Ballingham tunnel is the longest of them at 1208yards. It was opened in 1855 on the GWR line linking Gloucester and Hereford, and served for over 100 years, finally closing in 1964. Just to the south of the tunnel was Ballingham station, and from here the line soon crossed over Fawley viaduct (also known as Ballingham bridge) and in to the 537yard-long Fawley tunnel immediately after that. To the north, little Rotherwas tunnel was the last on the line before reaching Hereford, a mere 109 yards in length.

Visiting

Of the four relics mentioned above, most are frustratingly inaccessible. Fortunately, the most major tunnel (Ballingham) is not to hard to get in to. Firstly, we visited the southern end of Fawley tunnel; the ground leading in to the cutting is private and had a certain ‘Deliverance’ feel to it, so we opted for following the tree-line around the ever-deepening cutting, over the hill, and then squeezing through the brambles when we level with the portal. It wasn’t to be though, as we found ourselves looking into a *really* deep and sheer-sided cutting, and the portal was bricked up anyway, with a sturdy door.

We returned to the car and drove around to the northern end of the tunnel, but were to be thwarted again, this time by someone who simply had to have their house right at the end of the tunnel, and make the land private. Dejected, we headed on to Ballingham tunnel…

On the way there, we spotted the old pillars of Fawley viaduct marching across the river in the distance and decided to pay them a visit; such a nice spot, that we opted to have lunch here. A word of advice to anyone wanting to go to the top of the embankment and look across the tops of the pillars: don’t shed blood and sweat as I did, fighting my way through the bushes on the western slope, carry on round to the other side and there are steps right to the top. Needless to say, I wasn’t too impressed upon discovering this, when I had finally clawed my way to the top.

The southern portal of Ballingham tunnel is just beyond the old station, which is now some very lucky person’s house, so we didn’t try to get in that way. Wyevalleyhistory.net has some good then-and-now shots of this station.

Getting a bit fed up with this practice of people hogging tunnels all to themselves, we pressed on to the northern portal, and finally met with success! There was a convenient patch of grass to park on, just after the bridge over the road, and we headed up the bank and found ourselves on the old trackbed. It became more and more overgrown as we headed south, so eventually we decided to leave the trackbed, and walk alongside it through the fields on the west, and drop back into the cutting when nearly level with the portal. If you visit on a hot day, as we did, be prepared for an extraordinary drop in temperature when you go down in to the cutting; the hot summer air is cooled as it flows through the hill and the cold, dense air flowing out of the 1200yard chiller is completely confined by the cutting walls. The effect was amazing, and very welcome to two hot-and-bothered explorers.

We didn’t bother with Rotherwas tunnel as it’s apparently now used as a garage. Typical.

Condition today

Very good. There are small rockfalls emerging from some of the refuges, but no other structural damage to the tunnel is apparent. The floor is mainly dry, although there are lots of meandering channels cut into the mud, so at times it would appear a lot of water flows through the tunnel. There are also many straight, parallel cuts in the floor which I believe to be caused by drips falling from the ceiling at a single point, but landing at different points due to differing speeds of airflow through the tunnel. There are the same types of calcite deposits seen at Wenvoe tunnel, on the floor and encasing sections of wall, but they are not as developed as they are at Wenvoe. Upon reaching the southern portal, there was no sign of the station house or it’s garden anywhere nearby, so we headed a little way up the overgrown cutting for a look back at the tunnel.