I was hours from death… now I’ve taken on risky new challenge to give something back, says Homes Under the Hammer star
DURING 20 years on TV’s Homes Under The Hammer, host Martin Roberts has witnessed 3,000 property projects — the good, the bad and the ugly.
But he has just taken on a doer-upper that is bigger than anything anyone on his TV show has tackled before.
We can reveal that Martin has tunnel vision.
He plans to re-open as a tourist attraction a two-mile stretch of railway tunnel that has been closed for more than 50 years, its entrances buried under thousands of tons of soil and rubble.
I turn the tables on Martin and pose the two questions he asks everyone undertaking a project on his hit daytime show: “What’s your timescale?”
“Two years”, he replies.
“What’s your budget?” I ask.
His reply is an astonishing £15MILLION!
The Sun was given exclusive access to Martin’s tunnel of love last week.
Access to the closed-off excavation, below a 1,000ft mountain at the top of the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, is down a terrifying hole in the ground.
At the bottom of the 35ft shaft is a tiny pipe, just 2ft wide, which you enter by lying down in a water-filled 3ft-deep trench.
I have to be dragged through on a skateboard like Charles Bronson on his makeshift trolley in classic movie The Great Escape.
At the end of the claustrophobic 6ft-long run you emerge into a very well preserved railway tunnel that Victorian builders completed more than a century ago — two years behind schedule and over budget.
Nothing, it seems, is new in engineering.
Amazing people
From 1895 until 1970 the Rhondda Tunnel was used by steam trains taking coal from the Glen Rhondda mine to Swansea docks, to be shipped all over the world.
In darkness and lit only by miners’ lamps, Martin — who came close to death with a heart problem just a year ago — reveals his hopes that this two-mile tunnel will be the unlikely star of a new TV show to rival Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds’ Netflix series about his takeover of Wrexham football club.
The incredible story that former I’m A Celeb contestant Martin hopes to make into a programme began when he went with son Scott, 15, on mountain bike rides in the South Wales valleys.
Martin fell so in love with the scenic area and its friendly people that he bought a rundown farmhouse — one he later found out was haunted — close to the former mining village of Treherbert.
Martin, 59, says: “When I was renovating the house I really fell in love with this beautiful area and its amazing people. I’m not kidding, they are amazing. They are the salt of the earth.
I’ve tried to inject celebrity sparkle into the project. £15million might sound a lot but it would bring the area tourism, jobs and pride.
Martin Roberts
“When the mines were going, at least they had an economy. But since they closed it has been tough.
“It is Category One on the scale of deprived areas in Europe.
“So what has developed is a community of people who might not have a lot of money, but they are warm-hearted and support each other.”
It was because of his brush with death that Martin decided to try to make a difference to the lives of the new neighbours he has come to love.
He suffered a terrifying build-up of liquid around his heart last April.
He was lucky to survive, and had only minutes to live before doctors managed to treat him.
His first chance to step in to help the community came when his local pub in the nearby village of Blaencwm came up for sale last September.
Martin bought it lock, stock and barrel to keep it trading.
But there was a problem.
He had not told wife Kirsty he had bought a boozer, nor of his plans to spend £1million transforming the property into a gastro pub, eight-bedroom hotel and a village shop.
Martin says: “I thought she might talk me out of it. So she found out about it pretty much when we had completed and I went, ‘Oh well, I have bought a pub, darling’. That was a little bit sticky. I was in the second bedroom for a while.
“She’s a lot more pragmatic and realistic than me. I think she is a bit frightened about the financial implications and that I have zero experience of running a pub.
“It’s without doubt my riskiest ever venture. We are going into it at a time when around 20 pubs a week are closing, energy prices have gone through the roof and people have got less to spend to go out.
“So much could go wrong. It would make great telly and I decided it would be fun to make a TV documentary out of it.”
Martin has made a pilot show with the working title Oops I Bought A Pub and is in talks with broadcasters about getting it on the box.
He says: “I’m relishing it. I love a challenge but I’m not so silly that I just reckon I can do it on my own.
“I am gathering a team of local business advisers, people who run pubs, people who design restaurants.
“How do you make a meal, how do you price a burger, how do you choose what goes on a menu?
Wonder of the world
“I don’t know. Most importantly it is about showcasing the locals.”
Among those locals are a team of retired miners and engineers who have a dream — to reopen the incredible railway tunnel they played in as children and where they once believed a dragon lived because of the billowing smoke from the trains that used it.
Now pensioners, they meet in the front bar of Martin’s pub, the Hendrewen Hotel, to work out how to turn the historic tunnel that links the Rhondda with the nearby Afan valley into a top attraction.
The Rhondda Valley, where miners hewed the best steam coal on the planet, is now a magnet for mountain bikers who flock to the area’s 90 miles of cycle trails. A high-thrills zip wire also recently opened.
Reopening the tunnel would bring a boom in tourism and jobs.
It would not only be the longest walking and cycling tunnel in Europe, but the second longest in the world.
Ex-miner Steve Jones, 68, who retired from the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service in 2014, says: “It’s the eighth wonder of the world.”
The tunnel was the brainchild of Sydney Yockney, who had learnt his trade from Victorian engineering genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Teams of navvies blasted their way from either end through sandstone rock, and when the crews met in the middle the two sections were out by only half an inch.
Despite being closed since 1970, much of the tunnel — the height of a double decker bus and 13ft wide — is still perfect.
The only parts that are wet are the ends, where 26,000 tons of earth were dumped into the railway cuttings to keep out locals.
Martin, patron of the Rhondda Valley Tunnel Society, is helping the charity’s 6,000 members to raise £15million from the Government’s Levelling Up scheme and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
He says: “I’ve tried to inject a bit of celebrity sparkle into it, getting people talking about this incredible project. It’s a project that has been stuck in a drawer. We’re trying to get it out of that box and on to the table. All the community is behind it.
“Two years to complete is ambitious and £15million might sound a lot but they gave £30million to Cornwall for a space centre.
“Given what it would bring to this area — tourism, jobs, prosperity and pride — it is a relatively small amount.
“I have the bit between my teeth. I really want to make this happen. It comes from the reality that none of us are here for ever.”
And then he cracks a smile and says: “I will have a plaque when I’m dead. ‘Martin played some small part in this tunnel. Sadly he was eaten by the dragon that really did exist!’ ”
- To find out more and to become a supporter: rhonddatunnelsociety.co.uk.