You'd be better off driving - GWR axe through trains to Pembrokeshire
'London to Wales, but only so far. While Paddington to the West country services extend all the way to Penzance, in Cornwall, GWR's West Wales trains terminate in Carmarthen, missing out popular Pembrokeshire.'
Tourism has marked Cop 26 fortnight with a call to make the sector more sustainable, and fit for the tight carbon reduction targets to come. The 'Glasgow Declaration’ launched a commitment to a decade of climate action in tourism. 300 tourism stakeholders pledged to cut emissions by half by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050, by decarbonising and other measures.
But how to bring this about? There are the obvious targets on the checklist – more renewable energy, better insulated hotels, greener catering. But what about those trickier issues – the corners of tourism where there doesn't seem to be a problem, which might not even be apparent to those working close to them? I give an example of something less obvious, a missing service which, by not being there, encourages more car use.
Putting this particular omission right isn't going to solve the crisis, but it is one example of how comprehensive the solutions will have to be, and of how tourism isn't going to achieve its targets with a simple box ticking exercise.
I spent a few days in Devon last month, travelling by train and staying in a guesthouse in Brixham. My journey, on a new GWR Class ?? train, was smooth and comfortable. The train continued on to Penzance in Cornwall, a county well served with through services from Paddington. Courtesy of a frequent service in comfortable buses in Torbay, we were able to do and see what we needed to without resorting to car.
GWR runs a shorter, but in other respects parallel, service from Paddington into South and West Wales. Or, correction, it did, until 2019. The service was understandably suspended in 2020 because of Covid, but it did not reappear in 2021. In the year of home holidays, with Pembrokeshire bursting at the seams with tourists, when the imperative was for more public transport not less, a train operator ended it services into the county.
It's a central truth of the railway system that the principal express trains start in London and radiate out to all parts of the realm. As well as trains to Penzance, there are services to Holyhead, Aberdeen and Inverness, Liverpool and Hull. But no longer to Tenby and Narberth, Manorbier and Pembroke Dock, all once famous stops on the holiday trains from Paddington.
The original GWR trumpeted the many attractions of Pembrokeshire in its advertising. The Tenby Express, which it launched in Queen Victoria's reign, evolved into the Pembroke Coast Express. That prime summer service lost its famous name, but it continued to run, Paddington to Pembroke Dock. Until 2019.
According to Google, driving from London to Tenby takes 4 h 57 min (240.2 mi) via the M4. In reality it’s a lot longer, because you have to stop, and summer jams on the M4 and A40 are notorious. The direct train, albeit holiday Saturdays only, was a relaxing alternative, a convenient mid-morning departure, taking well under five hours. That train was discontinued this year.
There are still passenger services into Pembrokeshire, but these are prosaic little diesel stopper trains, originating from Manchester and Birmingham.
If you wanted to replicate that mid morning journey last summer, this is what Trainline proposed. The first part was as usual; board the GWR train at Paddington. But then change at Newport onto the stopping train to Carmarthen. And boy, does it stop. 14 times in all. It is actually quicker to drive from Newport to Carmarthen. (There is an earlier direct train to Carmarthen - and for holidaymakers with suitcases, the change can be awkward -
requiring a much earlier start for people across the Southeast.) But Pembrokeshire is off the timetable. Now the county isn’t even mentioned on the GWR website.
Passengers who simply want to reach their destinations have to suffer the frustration of the slow drawl of the stopping train. Many could be excused for defaulting to the car. And more pressure on S Wales roads strengthens the case for the £2 bn M4 bypass at Newport.
Seven million tourists visit Pembrokeshire each year (2017-2019 figures), according to report on the economic volume and value of tourism in the county. Tourism is a key employment driver in the area, with 12,000 people directly employed in the industry; that’s 21 per cent of the workforce. Tourism body Visit Pembrokeshire is planning to grow tourism over the next five years.
But, and more than ever after Cop 26, such growth must come with an expanding, not declining, public transport.











