MY column this week could more properly be titled 'from Devizes to Dubai' as, after a full round of Constituency visits on Friday and Saturday, I put on my Rail Ministerial garb and flew out on Sunday morning to attend the Middle East Rail Fair and meet some of the key investors in the United Arab Emirates – a region that, like Great Britain, thinks that rail is the transport solution for the 21st century and where, despite the oil price downturn, many British companies are successfully selling their goods and services into multi-billion pound transport projects.

I started Friday in Devizes Town Hall chairing a meeting between the town council, Devizes Football Club and the Wiltshire Football Association to explore ways that a new ground and facilities could be provided to give the club improved facilities for the senior team, more space for its hugely popular junior programme and link it better to other sports organisations in the town.

I then went to Holy Trinity School in Great Cheverell to talk to the whole school about the job of being an MP and helping them with their own ‘Clean for the Queen’ event in the school grounds and village (an event we repeated in my own village on Saturday morning). It was then back to Devizes to visit the team at Latchways, another great local company, who make world-leading fall protection products and who coincidentally have supplied their products to the Dubai metro stations – a fact I took great pride in relaying to my ministerial hosts.

Then it was off to Marlborough to catch up with Nicky Edmondson, the new headteacher at St John's and before going to Pewsey Station to officially open the new station footbridge – a much needed improvement and one that, along with the new high-speed hybrid trains that will be running on this line in the next two years, is tangible evidence that the Government’s record investment in rail is reaching all parts of the country.

We also took the opportunity to commend all the hard work that has gone into developing a great bus timetable from Pewsey to Devizes and around the villages of the Pewsey Vale. It has been carefully designed to link up with peak hour trains and the X5 bus timetable and the combination of the scheduled and ‘hail and ride’ services make it really viable for local journeys.

I am really impressed and intend to get my family using it as soon as possible – timetables can be found at www.bookaride.co.uk