A fabulous train journey

I’m back from an Interrailing trip around Europe. I’d recommend it; you can buy a pass that doesn’t cost too much and gets you a few travel days. You activate each day as you use it and get unlimited train travel for that day.

There are other passes which give you unlimited travel for a set period of time, but I think these are poor value. In practice you’ll want to stay in a place for a few days and if you want to travel locally, buying train tickets is often quite cheap.

There are caveats - some countries are very unfriendly to Interrail pass holders, with large booking fees and limited seats available on high-speed trains. But in other countries it’s fantastic, you just activate your pass and can go from Geneva to Munich in a few hours.

But the best journey I made was from Barcelona to Lyon.

There’s one train a day at 8:14am. If you’re using your Interrail pass, the booking fee is €10. Barcelona Sants is a bit of a shit station so allow some time to get through the security checkpoint (your luggage has to be X-rayed on all high speed lines in Spain) and buy snacks from the one café on the other side.

The trains themselves are AVE trains run by Renfe. They’re quite grand and have a sort of old-world feel to them, with an interior that harks back to the plum and spilt milk colours of yore.

You leave Barcelona and do a bit of trundling along through various tunnels; nothing too impressive. But once out of the city there’s some stunning scenery. You pass the Pyrenees and can see Mount Canigou zooming past.

The train stops once it crosses the border to France and French border police board to check everyone’s documents (odd). After Perpignan, there are beautiful flooded plains (I think lakes) which run right beside the tracks.

At this point I went to the restaurant car to have an espresso with the train crew as the landscape sailed by.

You go past vineyards, and across the Rhône. And then, once you get to Vallence TGV, you hurtle towards Lyon at full line speed.

One of the best trains I took. I really felt like a journey, rather than just going from place to place.

I post photos of my travels on my Instagram.