Cornish Riviera Steam Train Adventure with Friends

A Holiday with Steam Dreams

Last September we took our first holiday with Steam Dreams, to the English Lakes. We had had one day trip with them before, on the Royal Windsor Steam Express. We were so delighted with the Lakes holiday that we wasted no time in booking for this September's Steam Dreams holiday, which was to Cornwall. We opted for St Ives rather than the alternative of St Mawes as the destination because we would have the opportunity to travel from St Ives by train to other places if we wished to do so, and we chose the Carbis Bay Hotel from the options for that destination. Then we just had to wait for the date to come around, a whole year, and keep sending money as Steam Dreams needed it. This year we were able to invite a couple of friends to come along with us which enhanced the experience considerably.

As last year the train left London behind a vintage diesel locomotive, in this case from Paddington station, and our steam locomotive took over en route, this time at Taunton where it had been prepared on the West Somerset Railway. Our steam locomotive was no, 71000 Duke of Gloucester, a unique locomotive that was intended to be standard design for British Railways express passenger locomotives until the modernisation plan resulted in steam being dropped in favour of diesel and electric traction. "The Duke" remained the only member of the class and was awaiting scrap when rescued and painstakingly restored, and improved, by the BR Class 8 Steam Locomotive Trust.

We travelled to London with LNER in good time and stayed with our friends in the Montcalm Chilworth Townhouse hotel (which I can thoroughly recommend if you ever need a hotel in west central London) near Paddington station ready for the early start, handing over our suitcases on platform 1 and boarding the train with just hand luggage. our suitcases would be transported separately and be awaiting us in out hotel rooms when we arrived. The train consisted of a long rake of British Railways Mk 1 first class carriages from the 1950s or 60s, painted in BR crimson and cream livery. The passenger coaches were interspersed with catering vehicles to provide the "Pullman Dining" experience for which we had signed up. There was also an option of First Class which included only light catering and the option of a buffet car or bring-your-own lunch.

For us the day began with peach bellini as the train left Paddington followed by a choice of starter and main courses of breakfast with coffee etc.

At Taunton we were able to walk on the platform and watch the change of locomotive as the Class 50 which had brought us that far was taken to a siding to await our return three days later and The Duke with its support coach backed onto the train. You can watch this, and the whole holiday, in the following video:

After Taunton as the train, now steam-hauled, chuffed its way west and south, morning coffee and pastries or cake were served and then at Exeter we had a two-hour break. We went off for a walk along the river and Duke of Gloucester went off for more water before tackling the notorious hill climbs in Devon, and the tables were set for the main meal. This was billed as dinner with wine (which it was) but time-wise it was not long after the time when lunch might normally be served. Although early, it was enough to sustain us until bed-time, though!

The train stopped briefly at Truro to drop the passengers who had opted for hotels at St Mawes and then took us on to Penzance where road coaches were waiting to take us on to our hotels at St Ives. (There are stations at Carbis Bay and St Ives but they would never take a train of this length and you would also never fit an extra train into the intensive timetable on the St Ives Bay branch!

After winding its way down a narrow, winding hill, our coach delivered us and a couple of dozen other guests to the Carbis Bay Hotel where we were shown to our rooms, with out luggage waiting for us, and what a room we had, a huge bay window overlooking the beach ... and bath within the room! There was also a private shower room en suite. Our friends had the next room with two small balconies and also with a view over the beach. We were all very pleased with the accommodation. No dinner was necessary after the meals on the train and we went for a stroll on the beach in the dark. The Carbis Bay Estate ensured that there was sufficient light to see our way around and yet it was still dark enough to enjoy the autumn night. There were cocktail bars and restaurants open at the back of the beach but we did not need those that night.

After a good night's sleep and a good (but not too huge!) breakfast we investigated the hotel's spa pool. Amusingly we had to walk through the restaurant in our swimwear and bathrobes to reach the pool: the hotel is adamant that it is a spa hotel and you should expect to find people dressed like that anywhere, but we didn't see anyone else that morning! It was a lovely pool. I am not a huge swimming enthusiast and do it mainly for the exercise but I did enjoy swimming there, in warm water in the open air with a view over the Bristol Channel. The planting around the pool area gave it a Mediterranean air: we really did feel that we were on the Cornish Riviera. And in September 2026 it was almost warm enough, too. 

After our swim we met our friends in the lobby and set off together to walk to St Ives along the coast path. It looked easy on the map but our map did not show contours ... it was a bit hilly in places but we were in no hurry. The only business we really had in St Ives was to buy and consume a Cornish ice-cream!

The weather warmed up and by the time we walked around the harbour at St Ives it was hot and sunny, and with the number of people around you would think it was high summer rather than the start of autumn. We located the ice-cream shop where we had bought a rather special ice-cream several years before and ordered the same: vanilla double-cream ices cream with clotted cream on top and a chocolate flake - although we had cones they came with a recyclable spoon. We left the shop carefully, guarding our purchases with a hand over them, having had the experience of theft by seagull the last time we were there. This time we all managed to eat our own ice-creams.

We wandered across the isthmus which separates the harbour from the Atlantic-facing Porthmeor Beach and paid a quick visit to the Tate St Ives Gallery. I had visited this gallery before, and the rest of the party was not interested enough in the art for it to be worth the time and money for another visit, but everyone was interested in seeing the wonderful building, and we were able to go to the top floor café and enjoy a beer looking out over the beach where there were many people enjoying swimming and surfing. We then took a walk down through the town, bought some gifts and began to make our back to Carbis Bay, then men by train (we do like a ride on a train) and the ladies on foot. The St Ives Bay Branch is often rated as one of the most scenic lines in Britain, even though it is so short, and in has a half-hourly service in each direction throughout the day. The station platform at St Ives was very busy and the four-coach high-density diesel train was pretty full when we boarded. It is amazing to think that this line was once proposed for closure, and it is dreadful to contemplate how the town would have coped if all of these people had tried to drive in by car: a large park is provided at St Erth station so that car-borne visitors can leave their cars there and take the train into the town.

Our train took just a couple of minutes to return us to Carbis Bay station from where we had a downhill walk to the hotel and rejoined our wives then went and prepared for our hotel dinner, included in the Pullman Dining package.

The following day we decided to visit Truro, just to see the city and to sample the other Cornish food item, a Cornish pasty. OK, a city may not be the best place to try this rural speciality, but with only two days there was a limit to how many places we could visit. I did play with the idea of going on to Falmouth as well but we decided to stick to one place and take life a bit easier: it was supposed to be a relaxing holiday, and we did have a good room in a good hotel, so there was no need to spend all of our time packing in as much exploring as possible. We fully intend to return some time anyway.

We took a train from Carbis Bay station after breakfast and swimming and changed trains at St Erth for a local stopping train  to Truro. St Earth station has had a new footbridge installed with lifts since we last visited, giving step-free access to all platforms. It has also become the park & ride station for St Ives in place of the station at Leland Saltings, and this keeps in business the half-hourly shuttle service on the St Ives Bay Branch line.

It is a few minutes' walk from the station to the city centre at Truro and we were ready for coffee at the cathedral café when we arrived. We then went for a stroll to explore city' little streets and then started looking for that pasty ... all the pubs you might imagine would serve such a thing were far too high-end for that: quite indistinguishable from the posh nosh at city centre pubs in any other city, We were not looking for haute cuisine, just traditional pub grub. Desperate, we finished up at the Cornish Pasty Shop which we could have visited in any other decent town including at home in Stamford! The pasty was good, though, but beer had to wait until later because this was a tea or soft drink place.

We ensured that we then walked back to the station via a pub with local ales.

Back at the station we were in time to catch a train before the one we had planned to get. This was an inter-city train from London to Penzance and we had no reservations for it because they were on the next train, but we managed to find a table for four in Standard Class with no difficulty and enjoyed our ride back to St Erth and the change there for Carbis Bay. It was a lovely warm, sunny day and quite pleasant waiting for the  St Ives shuttle train to take us home. Apart from the new footbridge, St Erth is still a typical old GWR station, complete with lower-quadrant semaphore signalling controlled from a local mechanical signal box. There are not many of these left now on main lines, and this is definitely a main line, taking fast expresses to and from London!

After another good dinner at the Carbis Bay Hotel it was time to start packing our bags ready for the return trip to London in the morning. Our cases would be placed outside our room before breakfast, ready to be loaded into the van to return to London by road while we made or leisurely way back. Toothbrushes, medication and other necessities were packed in our backpacks to ensure they were available.

After the hotel breakfast our road coach took us to Penzance station where we awaited our train of crimson-and-cream Mk1 saloons and Duke of Gloucester for the return trip. There was excitement on the platform when the plume of smoke was seen in the distance and once the service train to London had departed Duke of Gloucester reversed the train into the platform, assisted by a vintage diesel leading the train in.

Boarding the train we had the same reserved seats in the same coach as on the way out, and were attended by the same staff. It was good to be back on board and we looked forward to the Tastes of Cornwall menu which would be served course by course all the way from Truro (where those who'd been staying at St Mawes would be joining the train) almost to London.

Coffee and pastries came first, mid-morning, of course.

Outside the window there was excitement as the train approached the Royal Albert Bridge to leave Cornwall and pass into Devon, and then we stopped at Plymouth to take on water in preparation for the steep (by railway standards) hill our locomotive was to face.

Back on the train it was soon time for the aperitif and nibbles, followed by soup before another water stop at Newton Abbott. Whereas at Plymouth there was water available from standpipes at the platform (presumably because trains sometimes terminate there and water is needed for the washing and toilet facilities on board), at Newton Abott a road tanker stood beside the line and a hose was passed through the fence to the train - a bit makeshift but it did the job nicely.

Again we raced along the Devon coast on the approach to Exeter while eating our meal. There was an amazing array of photographers along this stretch and I have since seen video on YouTube showing the train from above the sea, so although I did not spot a drone at the time, there must have been one out there!

At Taunton Duke of Gloucester left us and our Class 50 diesel returned to take us on to London - no fuss this time and we were not even at the platform so we could not get out and take pictures, but the job was done and the journey continued.

Some time was lost somewhere (two water stops?)  and by Reading it was clear that we would be quite late getting into London, but this really did not bother us. It was a great ride in so many ways, and we were staying overnight in Paddington anyway. We collected our luggage which had preceded us by road (an ancient on the motorway meant that it had been a close-run thing!) and made our way back to  the Montcalm Chilworth Townhouse hotel where we discovered that both couples had been unexpectedly upgraded to Club rooms, with more space and same goodies that we had had on the way out. The four of us gathered in our room with our little bottles of Prosecco and had a final drink together to celebrate a great trip to Cornwall. 

The following day we had lunch together with our west London family and then parted company with our friends to make our respective journeys home to Stamford and Chichester. It all started well, but some issue or other had arisen on Thameslink which meant our expected train was "delayed" at St Pancras, so we scooted over to Kings Cross and boarded a Great Northern train instead (later but faster) only to discover later that our Thameslink was not very delayed but was delayed enough to run non-stop to Peterborough instead of its usual stopping pattern and therefore had overtaken us ... The line through to Stamford has engineering work in progress (it was Saturday) and so there were no trains. Rather than pay a rail fare and travel on a replacement bus, we popped over to the bus station at Peterborough and travelled back to Stamford on a service bus using our pensioners' passes. All very neat, if not fast.

We do have other Steam Dreams trips planned which I'll be posting in due course, as well as a couple of Great Rail Journeys tours. Meanwhile do take a look at this trip on my YouTube channel, and subscribe to that if you'd like to follow all the trips I post there. Comments are welcome here or on YouTube. Who knows, one day we may meet on a train somewhere: do say, "Hello" if you see me!

Baltic Adventure by Land, Sea and Air, 4

LONDON, BREMEN, COPENHAGEN, STOCKHOLM, RIGA, TALLINN, HELSINKI, LÜBECK, COLOGNE

Part 3, Finland, the Baltic Sea and Home via North Germany

(see Part 1 here)

(see Part 2 here)

(see part 3 here)

We were taken on Thursday morning to the harbour at Tallinn by coach and after a short wait boarded a Tallink ferry, the Megastar, to Helsinki, across the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. This was quite a large ship with several decks for vehicles and a couple of decks, well-equipped wth catering outlets and a shop which resembled a department store, far bigger than any I have seen on board a ship before (not that I have seen all that many). The crossing was only two hours, and our Tour Manager booked a cabin before we boarded in which we could all store our luggage for the crossing so that we were free to enjoy the ship unencumbered. We arrived early afternoon at Helsinki, having had a snack lunch from one of the on-board bars. Too early to check into our next hotel we were taken first for our guided tour around Helsinki, by coach.

The first place we stopped to visit was "the rock church," a Lutheran parish church built into a hillside and carved out of the rock. It is a stunning building with simple modern decor just as a new Anglican or Roman Catholic church would be and is well worth a visit. 

We moved on to a park where a fantastic memorial has been erected to Jean Sibelius the composer (see header picture), one of Finland's best-known sons.

The final stop on the coach tour was the library, Oodi. Now when it comes to book collections the British Library is hard to beat, along with several others across Europe. But this library in Helsinki is something else. Yes, it has a lot of books (more Moomins than you'll see anywhere else ...) but also has an enormous amount of other things to use either on site or to borrow and take home. Playspaces for children, soundproof rooms for playing music (and instruments to borrow for the purpose), computers, large format printers, 3D printers and much more that I cannot remember now ....

Children's play area in the central library

The most amazing literary staircase

Who would imagine that such a small country with such a niche language, and which has had such turbulent recent history, would house such a fantastic public library? It had plenty of publications in English, of course, the most international of languages, very handy for British visitors.

We were then taken to our hotel and checked in, having been driven past the harbour and through the city centre. Another Radisson Blu hotel - they had all been very different - on the edge of the city centre with easy access on foot to everywhere we wanted to visit. We went for a walk before dinner and finished up visiting the Stockmann department store because heavy rain began just as we reached it ... the rain ceased and we walked back for dinner with intermittent light showers. This was the first rain we had encountered on the entire tour and was actually very welcome. Dinner was at the hotel again this evening.

Friday, our full day in Helsinki, was a completely free day with just breakfast laid on in the hotel. We spent it on a walking tour of the city centre and the harbour area. Starting out early, we began by popping into the rather splendid railway station: although we were on a Great Rail Journeys tour, we had arrived by ship and would be leaving by ship, so we had not actually looked at this dramatic edifice. It was grand on the outside and grand on the inside and worth a visit for anyone interested in urban architecture whether interested in railways or not. 

From there it was a short walk to the Lutheran Cathedral. There we not only spent some time admiring the main interior but then visited the crypt where there was a lovely little café where we had a drink before moving on.

Helsinki Cathedral dominates the city's central square and university quarter

It was a short walk across the square to the City Museum, although we did have to descend an enormous flight of steps and wait for a marching band to pass before we could actually cross the square, then negotiate a complex tramway junction with our eyes looking all ways in order to cross the road to the museum. We learnt about the history of Helsinki and indeed quite a bit about the whole nation. There were some very interesting ways of displaying things, often showing modern and old things together, and we could appear to take part in the displays, separated from them by transparent screens. So here am I apparently taking tea with a Finnish lady several decades ago. 

It was interesting to see how the nation has moved between German and Russian domination to its current freedom and how the languages used have varied over the ages. This is quite eye-opening for British visitors whose nation has been more-or-less stable since 1066: even when we did have a revolution and executed our King we soon invited his son to come and put everything back as it was! But so many nations in the Baltic region have had complex political lives and countless violent episodes with foreign domination for good or ill.

It was time to move on, with a view to eventually having some lunch, and we had identified a café by the sea, quite a long walk out past the old market hall, to which we intended to return later, with views out to sea. The sea here is quite unlike anything we have experienced in England, with many islands and inlets, and rather confusing. We were heading to Café Ursula which had traditional Finnish salmon soup on its lunch menu. The problem was that by the time we got there the salmon soup had sold out ... so we had a snack and a drink and thought the salmon soup would do nicely for tea later on ... We took a different route back, starting through a park rather than just straight back along the sea front, but made sure we finished at the Old Market Hall which now was home to myriad catering establishments. We walked around inside and chose the place where would finally have our salmon soup, and a second place for a cup of coffee and some cake to round off the meal. This would then be it for the day, no dinner necessary!

Finland is known for many products, mostly timber but also mobile telephones and scissors and, most important but probably least known outside the arctic and antarctic areas, icebreakers! Finland produces most of the world's icebreakers and many of them work in the Baltic Sea keeping shipping moving where the sea freezes solid - and the Baltic Sea having very low salinity freezes frequently. There were several berthed at Helsinki while we were there (in July, so not busy!) and we walked along to see them. There were information boards by their berths where we could learn about them (which is why I know what little I do know!).

On Saturday morning our homeward journey was to begin. Most of the party was returning by land and sea via Germany and Belgium, but the American group was to fly home from Helsinki and a few of the British group were also flying back, which was the default option on the Great Rail Journeys website. For us, though, a visit to Lübeck was an important part of the tour, and the overnight sea voyage from Helsinki to Travemünde an experience we did not want to forego, so we were happy to take two more days and pay a little more for this extension to the holiday. As it was the last night that we would all be together, most of us met in a bar by the harbour to say farewell to the groups with whom we'd spent a couple of weeks and from whom we would part in the morning. Most of them had a meal there, but we needed no more to eat and after enjoying a drink with them we made our way back to bed.

The Voyage Over the Baltic Sea

We went for a walk after breakfast to explore another part of the city, a park not far from the hotel and yet another part of the seaport, and then a coach picked us up and took us to the check-in for our ship at a different port from the one at which we had arrived. This was at some distance around the bay and it was an enormous freight port with a very small passenger facility. 

Having checked in and been given our boarding passes by our tour manager we followed the "To the ship" signs out of the terminal building and were loaded onto a coach which drove us some distance to a ship resembling the model in the terminal window, where we took a lift up to the passenger decks of the ship. This was a much smaller ship than the one on which we had arrived from Tallinn two days earlier, but it had all the facilities we needed, including, of course, cabins, for this was a 30-hour voyage and sleep would be essential.

Dinner, breakfast, lunch and another dinner were all included in our tickets and we were issued with meal passes for these. Our tour manager, who had done this trip several times before, assured us that the food was very good and that as it was a buffet we should be able to eat as much as we needed; even unlimited wine was included, which is quite unusual for all-in meals.

One thing that was not on offer was lunch on embarkation, but we were able to buy a drink and a sandwich which we enjoyed on deck while awaiting departure. It was fun to watch the freight loading operation on the open portion of the rear deck from our vantage point several decks above. Lorry trailers were brought on board by small, highly-manoeuvrable tractors which placed them neatly in close-packed rows where they were firmly chained down and power was connected to those which needed it for refrigeration etc..

We went to our cabin and unpacked what we needed. It was an inside cabin with no window, but although this bothered me at first it soon dawned on me that all we would do in the cabin would be sleep, so we really did not need a window. This was not to be a cruise and there would be no scenery for most of the trip anyway, just sea and more sea!

Soon the ship slowly slipped out of its mooring and picked its way among the islands into the Bay of Finland and off into the Baltic Sea. We spent some time watching the land disappearing into the distance and exploring the facilities on board, which took a lot less time on this ship, the Finnmaid, than on the much bigger Megastar on which we had arrived. Most of the passengers were drivers of the lorries, vans and cars on the vehicle decks below, and there was a huge number of languages being spoken on board.

Dinner was at a fixed time, canteen-style, and we handed in our meal pass and were shown to our table. Everyone was allocated a table for the whole voyage and we had a pair of tables for the group. We went and queued for our meal course by course (or all at once if you could carry it) and helped ourselves to wine from a tap! I had three large glasses of this wine (which tasted quite reasonable) and did not feel in the slightest bit intoxicated, so I don't think there was a lot of alcohol content! (Fine by me, I am not a fan of being giddy and talking rubbish.)

After dinner I made some more progress on writing this blog and sorting my photographs and then we retired to our little cabin and went to bed. The ensuite shower was very good, although somewhat cramped, and the only downside to our cabin was a smell in the shower room which always seemed to be present there. I don't know if that would have been a common problem or if we were just unlucky with our cabin, but it did not spoil the experience anyway.

After breakfast we thought we would try the TV in the cabin and see what we could get. We stumbled upon a Mass in German and decided to watch that as a substitute for church attendance (for it was Sunday morning). The sermon had already taken place before we tuned in, but I would not have understood it anyway. The service, of course, is much the same in any language and these days in most denominations. This one was Roman Catholic but Anglican or Lutheran would have been much the same and we did not know the denomination until the credits at the end of the programme. 

Much of my time on the voyage was spent sitting in one of the public areas preparing the blog: out at sea I was off line and could not type straight into the web interface as I normally do, but prepared the text elsewhere ready to paste in as soon as I had the opportunity.

Lunch followed much the same pattern as dinner, complete with wine. Dinner that evening, though, did not have the wine or beer available. Given that most of the passengers would be driving within a short time after docking, Finnlines did not supply alcohol for the last meal. I am not sure they needed to worry, considering the strength of the wine.

Soon land came into sight and we slowed down for entry into the river at Travemünde. As this was early July it was still daylight as Finnmaid manoeuvred to moor beside one of her sister ships and disembarkation began. We were not taken straight off the ship but loaded onto a shuttle bus on one of the vehicle decks. This was the only unsatisfactory part of the whole experience, for the bus was too small for all the foot passengers and luggage. Some people were clearly not used to being out in public, or, at least, they had no idea of manners, but we did eventually arrive at the terminal building and find our coach that would take us to our hotel at Lübeck, nicely in time for bed.

Rain and Marzipan

For me Lübeck was an important part of the trip, home to the famous German marzipan made and sold by Niederegger, and we had a morning to explore the town. We did not send all of it in Niederegger's shop and museum, but it was certainly the centrepiece of our time there and it was there we bought the last of our gifts for people at home, and for ourselves.

This morning was marked by a shower or two but nothing to stop us exploring, and by the time we walked back to the hotel for the start of the journey home the sun was shining and the day was warm again.

We were taken by coach to Hamburg where we boarded a ICE for Cologne. To our relief it departed more-or-less on time and we had a pleasant journey southwards.

It was early evening when we arrived at Cologne for an overnight stop in a hotel not far from the railway station. Here we had our last meal together as a group, and it was good to see people buying drinks for each other and enjoying time together. It had been a brilliant and varied experience. I think it was the longest escorted tour we'd ever done and it included so many new experiences, quite apart from al the new places we'd visited. We had not flown for several decades, we had never had a long sea voyage before, we had never visited a former Soviet country before (although we had been to a few for communist bloc countries) and we had never swum on the top floor of a skyscraper!

On Tuesday morning we began the last leg of our homeward journey and it was uneventful (which, considering that it began with a DB train, was remarkable). Our train arrived in Brussels more-or-less on time  after just a four-minute late departure and we were soon checking in for our Eurostar departure for London St Pancras. The Brussel Zuid channel terminal had a substantial makeover after Brexit to provide a huge duty-free shop, which I ignored, but it did still include a comfortable, if somewhat boring, waiting area.

As usual, the Eurostar train was comfortable and a very pleasant light meal was served during the journey, and we were soon on the platform at St Pancras saying farewell and making our way down to the arrivals area where, as ever, the Border Force watched us pass without a flicker of interest.

I had booked First Class Advance tickets on a suitable train from Kings Cross to Peterborough and had allowed a wide margin in case of delay, so there was no haste to make our way out off the platform and across to Kings Cross, and then we could relax in the First Class Lounge while awaiting departure. On the way I booked tickets for our connection from Peterborough to Stamford and we arrived at home at 19:30, with plenty of time to sort out our things ready for the next adventure!

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