A BRIDGE is to be opened on the route of the old Somerset and Dorset railway line for the first time in well over a century.

The Lord Lieutenant of Dorset, Mrs Valerie Pitt-Rivers, is to open officially the new 75-metre Fiddleford Trailway Bridge over the River Stour on Saturday, more than 40 years after the track that once ran there was closed to rail traffic.

Jan Templeton, from the North Dorset District Council-administered Liveability Fund, said: "It is one of the more impressive of the open spaces projects and it is certainly an aspiration of North Dorset to continue to develop the trailway and to open it all up, but it is one stage at a time.

"There was an old bridge across the river but it has disappeared and the only way to get over it for people on the trailway was to use a muddy path further down."

The old Somerset and Dorset Railway was gradually closed through the early decades of the last century and rail traffic finally stopped completely in 1966.

The district and county councils hope eventually to open up the entire line, but as a path for walkers, cyclists and other users, linking the towns and villages across north Dorset.

The bridge has been funded with a £200,000 grant from the Liveability fund and has been built by the county council, with the help of volunteers from the community.

Over the past 10 years small sections of the trailway in Charlton Marshall, Blandford, Shillingstone and Stalbridge have been upgraded and opened.

Each piece of possible future trailway is on land owned by different people and each section requires negotiation to either buy the land or secure public access through it.

The latest piece of trailway has been made possible with the agreement of the landowner, Anthony Pitt-Rivers.

Mrs Pitt-Rivers will carry out the official opening ceremony at 11am and the public are invited to come along and take part in a series of guided walks.