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Isambard Kingdom Brunel - Engineering modern Britain
6
days
from
A$5,710
Book today with a deposit from
A$857
19th - 24th September 2027
Tour highlights
- The extraordinary range and ambition of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, from railways and bridges to tunnels and ocean-going steamships.
- Most of Brunel’s major surviving works in London and the South West, including Paddington Station, Clifton Suspension Bridge, SS Great Britain and the Royal Albert Bridge.
- A private tour of the Brunel Institute, by special arrangement.
- We stay in two former GWR hotels, including the one conceived by Brunel at Paddington and the historic 5-star Bovey Castle.
- Stays in two former Great Western Railway hotels.
Few figures embody the confidence and ingenuity of Victorian Britain as vividly as Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Engineer of the Great Western Railway at just 27, he worked on an astonishing scale and across an exceptional range: tunnels, bridges and viaducts, railway stations and dockyards, and three pioneering ocean-going steamships. His career was short – he died at only 53 – but the landscape of Britain still bears his imprint.
Brunel’s genius lay not simply in thinking big, but in solving problems that had scarcely been encountered before. Trained by his French father, Marc, he combined technical imagination with formidable energy and determination. The graceful brick arches of Maidenhead Bridge remain the widest of their kind in the world; his bridges still carry trains far heavier and faster than he could have envisaged; and the SS Great Britain helped transform ocean travel. Even his failures – most famously the atmospheric railway in Devon – reveal the audacity of his thinking.
The tour traces this remarkable career through the places and structures that best tell its story. It begins in London, where the young Brunel worked with his father on the hazardous construction of the Thames Tunnel, and at Paddington, the magnificent terminus of his Great Western Railway. Travelling west follows the trajectory of Brunel’s great railway enterprise, through Maidenhead and Swindon to Bristol and Devon, culminating at the Royal Albert Bridge across the Tamar.
Along the way are outstanding monuments of nineteenth-century engineering: the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Brunel’s original Temple Meads station and the SS Great Britain, returned to the dock in which she was built after an extraordinary rescue from the Falkland Islands. A private tour of the Brunel Institute provides privileged access to collections illuminating both the engineer and the man.
The journey itself is part of the experience: travelling on Brunel’s railways, encountering a surviving broad-gauge locomotive and crossing the Royal Albert Bridge before returning to Paddington along the spectacular coastal railway between Dawlish and Newton Abbot. The hotels add another connection: the former Great Western Railway hotel at Paddington was conceived as part of Brunel’s vision of an uninterrupted journey from London to New York, while Bovey Castle later became a GWR hotel.
More than a survey of engineering achievements, the tour reveals the coherence of Brunel’s vision – railway, stations, bridges, hotels and steamships conceived as parts of a new system of travel. Nearly two centuries later, much of it can still be experienced.
Itinerary
Begin with an early afternoon lecture at the hotel before a walk around Paddington Station, little altered from its opening in 1854. Travel by train to Wharncliffe Viaduct, the first major structure designed by Brunel for the GWR. First of two nights at Paddington.
The Brunel Museum at Rotherhithe tells the story of two of Brunel’s London projects, the Thames Tunnel and the SS Great Eastern, and includes access to the tunnel’s vast former entrance shaft. Travel by train through the Thames Tunnel to see the launch site of the Great Eastern, before returning to central London by river, passing three Brunel bridges.
See Maidenhead Bridge, whose graceful arches remain the widest brick spans in the world, and the GWR and broad-gauge collections at STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway in Swindon. Continue to Bristol for the first of two nights.
The majestically sited Clifton Suspension Bridge was not completed exactly to Brunel’s design, having been adapted to reuse the chains from his Hungerford Bridge in London. Continue to Brunel’s original Temple Meads Station, now disused. Visit the SS Great Britain, pioneering transatlantic steamship, now brilliantly restored in the dock in which she was built. Next, Being Brunel, an award-winning museum, followed by a private tour of the Brunel Institute, by special arrangement.
The South Devon Railway’s museum contains Tiny, the only surviving broad-gauge locomotive. Travel by steam train to Totnes, passing one of the surviving engine houses of Brunel’s failed ‘atmospheric caper’. Cruise on the Kingswear Castle (boat to be confirmed), the last remaining coal-fired paddle steamer in operation in the UK. Overnight at Bovey Castle.
View Brunel’s great Royal Albert Bridge across the Tamar from several vantage points before crossing it by train on the return journey to London. The section beside the sea between Newton Abbot and Dawlish is one of the loveliest stretches of railway in Britain. The tour ends at Paddington Station in the late afternoon.
Expert speaker
Mr Anthony Lambert
Historian, journalist and travel writer. He has worked with and for the National Trust in various capacities for almost 30 years. His books include Victorian & Edwardian Country House Life and he writes regular profiles of country houses for the Historic Houses Association magazine. He has written numerous travel and guide books, and contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines.
More tours led by Mr Anthony Lambert
Practicalities
Two sharing: A$5,710. Single occupancy: A$6,720.
Hotel accommodation; private coach throughout; tube, train and boat travel (including first class rail travel from Plymouth to London Paddington); breakfasts, 3 lunches and 3 dinners with wine, water, coffee; all admissions and donations; all tips; the services of the lecturer and tour manager.
The Hilton, Paddington: planned by Brunel as the start of a journey to New York, it was built by the GWR and opened in 1854. It is now a functional business hotel. Hotel Du Vin, Bristol: 4-star, in a recently refurbished historic building with an excellent view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Bovey Castle, Devon: 5-star hotel in a Grade II* building that was bought in the 1920s by the GWR to become one of its hotels. Single rooms are doubles for sole use throughout.
A good level of fitness is essential. Unless you enjoy entirely unimpaired mobility, cope with everyday walking and stair-climbing without difficulty and are reliably sure-footed, this tour is not for you. Average distance by coach per day: there are two days without any coach travel, but there is an average on the remaining four days of 78 miles.
Between 10 and 24 participants.
Dates & prices
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2027
Date
Speaker
Price
Date:
19th - 24th September 2027
Speaker:
Mr Anthony Lambert
Price:
from A$5,710
(Based on two sharing)Testimonials
“The hotels were well chosen to give contrasting experiences: London mainline terminus, spectacular scenery in Bristol and a night in deepest Devon.
”
“As usual with MRT, lecturer was well informed and able to relate to his audience.
”
“Consistently high quality of tour content, leadership and organisation.
”
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