Simon Calder looks at the impact of Beeching's closure of lines in the Bristol area. He talks to a commuter who faces a two-hour journey by car from Portishead to Bristol, to do a journey that the train used to do in half an hour. He then meets strawberry growers near Cheddar who used to export their fruit by train on the line from Wells to Yatton and then to the Midlands and London but who now have to use lorries which cause more damage to the strawberries. Finally he travels from Taunton to Minehead along the preserved steam line which would attract a lot more holidaymakers if the missing section from Taunton to Bishops Lydeard, to connect it to the national rail network, was reopened.
—Anonymous