The Railway Touring Club

Spot on, that's a noble cause

There is Marriotts Way in Norfolk that runs between Norwich & Aylsham and follows 2 disused railway lines. It includes paved path, gravel, sand, dirt and a fair bit of mud in winter! 26 miles of lovely non traffic riding (and its also part of the Sustrans Route No.1).

Edit: Wikipedia has a good amount of info about the railway history of the route.

There is a nice 53 mile gravel route on the Formartine and Buchan way from Aberdeen to Fraserburgh with a spur line to Peterhead.
Info
Map

Ridable in summer on a road bike or something 30mm plus at other times. Has the added benefit of a railway museum in Maud at the junction of the spur line.

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Can even get the train to Dyce junction.

Problem is, Why would you want to go to the Broch or Blue Toon, Some lines were closed for a reason :)

Think I've ridden parts of this from Mintlaw, if memory serves....was a bit hike a bike in bits from memory, but that was around 2001 so could have changed.

Just invested in this book, so I will doing some exploring at home, past the Aberfeldy branch, that's my local lost route.

From Grandtully its footpath mostly but from Ballinluig - Hough of Grandtully its a mix of roads, tracks, fields and exploration through woods. Links a few MTB trails as well.

Takes in the Logierait Bridge as well, which is awesome

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Haha. Lighthouse museum in the Broch or onward adventures along the Moray Firth Coast. A few different old small railway lines exist as paths now a days. in particular from Banff along to Spey Bridge.

Banff along to Spey Bridge.

This sounds wonderful.

There were loads of little branch lines up there at one point

Has nobody mapped all the repurposed tracks?
Would be an awesome tool when planning distance touring around the UK, one map with all of the off road railway tracks

not in the way would suit us, but this is the closest thing I know of.

If someone who can work computers knows a non manual way of doing it, grand. if not we can piece it together on RWGPS, which would be fun actually.

Very kind of you to volunteer :)

I should have mentioned the Gowerton - Blackpill route or the Clyne Cycle Path, to give it its proper title, runs through the Clyne Valley MTB Trails, which are always worth a visit, for those of an off-road persuasion:

https://exploresouthwales.com/listing/797/

Luckily I'm shite at computers

Would be good to add them into a big map on RWGPS though, or something like it.

Might ask about, see if any none Luddites know what to do to make it efficient

Rode that on a 300k last Friday night.

Jack Thurston might have used some in his various Lost Lanes books?

Anyone using OS Maps to map them out?

There some links in the early post from this thread that might be useful. Waymarked trails shows the Marriotts Way route I mentioned so there might be others that could be culled from their to add to RWGPS.

Found this on Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_trails

...and this thread might be useful in that you can add GPX files to create routes. @Yemble Is it possible with your RouteCheck to have a single map that multiple people could add routes to to create a large super map of all the old railway routes we've been talking about?

a fair bit of mud in winter!

And dangerous wildlife

Good shout, I found that book whilst unpacking boxes this weekend so will look on Friday. Didnt he drop the routes into a website as well, is that what you mean by the OS maps?

@jdp & @Pifko they are both interesting for further reading, both miss some tracks i know about though,but its probably because they aren't 'official' trails but are rights of way of some kind.

Sweet! Not seen one before (a real one that is...) so might pop down one evening. Where abouts is this?

The aforementioned Ebury Way

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It wasn't far from Reepham, so guessing it's this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-26769516

The Flitch Way is a well maintained railway trail going from Braintree to Bishop's Stortford in Essex (although it does it's best to make you get lost in Great Dunmow). Good quality surface and lots of original halts, tunnels and cuttings along the way. Rayne station has been turned into a cafe and you can have a coffee on the old platform.

There are loads that are less well maintained though and you can spot them fairly easily on google maps, just look for long thin lines of trees. I went on a mission a couple years back to find and check out as many as I could in Essex/Suffolk, the only other really notable one is the Blackwater Trail that runs between Witham and Maldon.

My humble contribution - the Belmont Trail -a former rail line between Wealdstone and Stanmore.

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No, my mistake, I'm thinking about the Cuckoo Trail:

https://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/leisureandtourism/countryside/walks/cuckootrail/