VISIONARY entrepreneur Stephen Ballard had been thinking about a tunnel under the Malverns since 1836. He was to spend the next nine gruelling years finishing the Hereford and Gloucester Canal.

The day the canal opened amid deafening indifference, Ballard left his last base at Withington to take up a two-year post as resident engineer on a drainage scheme in the Fens.

The man from Malvern Link was the brain behind a one-mile embankment which carried the London to Peterborough railway over a floating bog at Whittlesea Mere, where he met his future wife Maria Bird. After working on the Rhenish railway, drainage schemes in Ireland and water tables in the Low Countries, Ballard resisted a lucrative contract in Canada to settle on the farm estate which he acquired at The Winnings, Colwall, near point six on our walk.

In 1856, Ballard’s chance came when the Worcester and Hereford Railway company appointed him chief engineer.

In order to connect Worcester to Ledbury via Malvern it was necessary to tackle the immovable object of the Malvern Hills.

Ballard knew the best way to do it – even if it meant tunnelling through some of the hardest rock on earth.

Progress through the red marl at the Malvern end and the limestone shale at Colwall beneath the Ballard home was positively express at about ten yards a week. But it was in the middle part that he was up against the pre- Cambrian sienite which had been formed 700 million years ago.

Eschewing the use of primitive mechanical tunnelling devices, the navvies recruited from the mines of south Wales dug their way through by hand. Each time they intercepted one of the famous Malvern springs, they drained water from the wells above and almost drowned themselves.

Their toil and sweat gained them just six inches a day, but by 1861 the nearly one-mile tunnel was completed beneath the aptly named Perseverance Hill.

The railway prospered and the area known as Colwall Stone became the busy nucleus of the village. Coal trains from south Wales to industrial Birmingham clattered through the village every 20 minutes. But the narrow bore and a clearance of just four inches between the smoke stack of the largest steam trains and its roof meant that Colwall tunnel took a serious pounding. A rock fall in 1907 caused a brief closure and, after the First World War, a decision was taken to construct a new tunnel parallel with the existing one. It has a wider bore and a significantly easier gradient of 1:90.

Longer by a cricket pitch exactly, it ushers players to the festival of women’s cricket inaugurated in the year of its opening, 1926, by the owner of the Colwall Park Hotel, Molly Scott-Bowden.

Our easy excursion leaves platform one by the hotel and Charlie Ballard’s Nature Reserve. It calls at the topiaried hamlet of Evendine under British Camp, not the scene of his last stand, but where Elgar’s cantata Caractacus placed the scourge of the Romans. It contours gently beneath Jubilee Drive which Ballard’s men hacked out of his land with pick and shovel in 1887; then through parkland close to Ballard’s final resting place on unconsecrated ground directly above the tunnel on his former estate.

The old tunnel now provides a home for bats, not made from willow, but the rare lesser horseshoe variety which hibernate in its alcoves during the winter months. Having crossed its mouth in Ballard country we, too, gradually descend to alight at the end of the tunnel. “All change”.

The Route 1 Colwall railway station. Cross pedestrian bridge to pass to L of Charlie Ballard Nature Reserve. Go through kissinggate and bear R in field, through gate. Follow R edge/hedge, through gap, and at 2nd gap and marker post, TL to put hedge on your L. Go through next gap and keep on the same line ahead across a long crop field. Go through metal k-gate, putting hedge on your R, cross stile to L of Old Meadow, thus joining path on same line, R of Camp View, all the way to road.

2 Evendine. TL at The Hartlands, with impressive thatching and topiary, and after 100m, TR over stile into orchard. Favour R edge over f/bridge, stile and f/bridge out of orchard. Bear L to an elbow, cross two plank bridge and stile (or simply walk through gap) into field on L. Follow R tree-lined edge, initially along brook, bend L in front of scrub area to marker post, then T very sharp L to put fence on R.

Reach post at elbow and cross towards two dwellings, thus completing three sides of same field. Pass through gate into tree-lined lane, through gate back on to road at Upper Evendine.

3 Upper Evendine. TR along road beyond Upper House to Spindrift sign and take lower L fork along surfaced path. Just beyond ford, keep L up surfaced track, narrowing to grass beyond Spindrift and cross stile into Hanway’s Coppice. Favour R fence edge up through trees to marker post and TR over stile into the open. Immediately TL (with British Camp behind you and Pinnacle Hill up to R), through metal k-gate in fence ahead and bear R of trees.

Cross stile, bear R up through trees to marker post. TL to wooden k-gate.

4 “Colwall Station one mile”

signpost. Go through k-gate, downhill (with The Kettle Sings up to your R), bend L at marker post in R corner and carry on downhill for 100m. Now TR over two planks, through “Miles without Stiles” gate. Descend path, with hedge L and fence R, through wooden gate and cross stile in R corner on to Geopark Way. Bend R under trees.

5 Linden. Directly below the imposing residence, take R upper fork and cross stile by gate to join surfaced track.

Bend L (with Perseverance Hill up to R), and 75m beyond a path going R, TL across stile down tree-lined path. Cross 2 more stiles, but before last one look out for shaft over to your R which marks position of Colwall Tunnel. TR on drive, over grid in gateway, (cross tunnel), sec- ond grid to road at Winnings Lodge, with The Winnings opposite.

6 Winnings Lodge. TL on near pavement for 100m beyond bus stop, then TL on to Broadwood Drive. Cross the mouth of Colwall Tunnel and just before modern houses, TR across stone stile. Just beyond barn go through gate, cross stile by gate, ahead 35m to cross another stile, keep ahead favouring upper L edge for 85m, then drop towards hedge below R to wooden gate at path junction.

7 Gate. TR through gate and follow R edge of fine meadow down through gate and kgate, back to railway station.