… and I really took advantage of it by going on this walk.

There isn’t all that much to see in La Cellette – a hamlet that receives its name due to there having been a religious hermit living here in Merovingian times.

Many years ago they actually discovered the cell in which he lived and it is still extant but it’s incorporated into the cellar of a private house and not available to the public, which is a shame.

But the views from up on the top of the hills behind the village were terrific – including this impressive long-hop of the towers of the churches of La Cellette and Pionsat.

The railway is much more interesting.

It ran from Montlucon via Neris-Les-Bains and Pionsat to Gouttieres and hence to Clermont Ferrand and was the last major railway line to be opened in France (TGV tracks excluded of course),

Planned in the 1880s, construction started in 1913, was held up during the First World War and the line finally opened in 1931.

All of this area was a railway bottleneck. A whole series of coal seams running from Lapeyrouse to Gouttieres had been discovered and developed, and coal trucks clogged up the rail network

As a result, they kept on building a series of railway lines to by-pass the congestion. Unfortunately each time they did this, they discovered yet another coal seam that they then exploited, leading to more coal trucks, which led to more congestion, which led to more by-passes.

But not long after this line was opened, the coal seams exhausted and the infrastructure collapsed. The closed during World War II, reopened after a fashion once the war was over, but passenger traffic ceased shortly after, the last passenger train being a Paris-Neris “special” in 1957

The line beyond Pionsat, where we are walking, was abandoned quite quickly, but a goods service ran to Pionsat three times per week until 1973. How about that for a short-lived railway?

Of course it goes without saying that the earlier lines had all of the best routes, and the later lines ran over more and more difficult terrain. If you read what I wrote about the Waverley Line you’ll notice that I wax lyrically about the constant 1 in 75 gradient.

That is a mere bagatelle compared to the long slog up from Pionsat to the tunnel that passes under the Font Nanaud. That tunnel, the Tunnel des Bouchards,

is 585 metres long and there are no rumours or conspiracy theories about it. No steam trains in working order ready to return to the rails when the oil runs out – no knights of King Arthur waiting to emerge when Drake bangs on his drum – just a protected site for a colony of rare bats.

It was a good day out today and I really enjoyed it.

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