Crumbs... another tunnel!

Less than a month after my post about tunnels, I'm at it again.  The excuse this time (if excuse were needed) was a day with Lucy Melford, who was sojourning at a campsite in Cirencester. 

The first thing to organize was where to have our evening meal — an easy choice... The Tunnel House Inn, of course! I enjoyed a pleasant lunch there in December 2013, vowing to return before too long. The inn takes its name from the nearby Sapperton Tunnel, on the former Thames & Severn Canal.

No day with Lucy would be complete without a short ramble in the countryside.  Thumbing through my old book of Family Walks in the Cotswolds (long out of print, but still available from Amazon for the extortionate price of 1p, plus postage), I discovered a pleasant footpath that followed the course of the canal and could easily be extended to include the other end of Sapperton Tunnel from the aforementioned inn.

We parked in the picture-postcard village of Sapperton and made our way down into Sapperton Valley, via a kissing gate (photos inadmissible). Soon we found ourselves at the castellated northern portal of Sapperton Tunnel.  

If you share my interest in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, you'll enjoy Googling Sapperton Tunnel and reading its history. This link is especially interesting: http://www.cotswoldcanals.net/sapperton-canal-tunnel.php. When completed in 1789, it was the longest tunnel in England, at 3817 yards (a little over 2 miles). The canal prospered for several decades, but eventually lost out to the railways and closed in 1927. 

A plaque on the tunnel mouth, reads THE DANEWAY PORTAL SAPPERTON TUNNEL RESTORED BY THE COTSWOLD CANALS TRUST. UNVEILED BY LORD APSLEY SEPTEMBER 21 1996.  The Trust has plans to reopen the entire canal and has already made considerable progress in Stroud area, though they'll have their work cut out here as the tunnel roof has collapsed in several places. 

Here, Lucy surveys the remains of one of 7 locks that led up to Sapperton Tunnel.  

One can, however, have too much historical research, so thankfully we spotted a swing, beneath a tree on the opposite side of the valley.  The three of us may have a combined age of 192, but I assure you that we're still kids at heart!

So to the evening, and my return to the Tunnel House Inn.  Here are a pair of 'then' and 'now' selfies — slightly younger Angie on the left; 2015 version on the right.

And here's one of Lucy and me, ready for our evening meal. The weed-choked canal looks pretty impassable, though (according to Wikipedia) the canal trust operates boat trips into the tunnel in winter months. For tunnel lovers like me, that sounds fun and almost as good as my venison pie at the Tunnel House Inn.