Interrailing for Seniors!

Visiting the oldest city and the biggest city in Switzerland

I have been following Byway Travel on Instagram for a while; their advocacy of slow travel and of the journey being an important component of the travel experience matches my own view very well. As a company they not only promote this philosophy but help people explore it for themselves by selling curated or tailored trips by surface transport, notably rail. If you like the look of some of my adventures and would like help to do this sort of thing yourself, then Byway Travel might be worth a look (no, they are not paying me). My most recent trip to Switzerland could easily have been arranged booking travel from London to Zurich with Eurostar and then using a Swiss travel pass while there and booking my hotels with Booking.com, but we thought it would be interesting to give Byway a try. This adventure is how it worked out (and some of the new experiences began while we were still at home)!

On the Byway website we input the elements we wanted to include, First Class rail travel, three nights in Chur, two in Zürich and one in Paris, and a night in London before departure. They came back with a suggested itinerary which we adjusted slightly and then accepted. This was an interesting experience because by the time we had filled in our details on the booking form one or other part of the itinerary had become unavailable and we were invited to try again. Each time we were offered a different selection of hotels. Now I could not believe that they were all filling up that fast, so after several of these attempts I just went an ahead and booked anyway. It all seemed to work and eventually we received confirmation of our booking and information about tickets and timing. 

This was the next adventure! We were to travel using Interrail passes, and while we had used these before on a Great Rail Journeys escorted tour they were paper passes then and we had a tour manager looking after seat reservations etc.. Now the passes were digital and we were responsible for everything ourselves. I am, as you might guess from the amount I publish on line, quite comfortable with digital media on the whole and I often use digital tickets, held on my iPhone. But the combination of the digital pass and the journeys having been planned by an agency meant that there was plenty of room for error in getting the right journeys on the pass on the right days! Byway even provide a weekly seminar on using the Interrail app alongside their Journey Guide which contains all the information we need for our trip. Those journeys needing reservations, that is the Eurostar journeys from and to London and the TGV Lyria each way between Paris and Zürich, had pdf tickets supplied by Byway which we both printed and filed in iCloud for access on our devices: it was these printed reservations which opened the ticket barriers at St Pancras and Gare de Lyon. We attended the seminar and all was ready for departure. As we were travelling to London one day before our first international train, we had to buy tickets for that part of the trip, but we were to return home from Paris in one day which ment that our Interrail passes would cover the UK journey as well: that’s the way Interrail works!

And so we were off! It had been a while since our last international adventure and it was great to be setting out again. A normal Friday morning in Stamford, although no need to buy anything from the market, which was just as well because the Mid-Lent Fair made it a pretty minimal market. We did join the ecumenical Lent Lunch and then wheeled our cases down to the station to take a train to Peterborough for a simple connection to London, First Class on LNER. We did not need the rather delicious-looking meal on offer as we had dinner to come, but we had a drink and a biscuit, keeping the crisps for later.

Byway had booked us a stay at a Point A hotel in Grays Inn Road. We had never stayed in a Point A before, always tending to go for Premier Inn, and we were very impressed. Next time we need a stay in London I’ll see how the cost compares and will definitely consider it. We had been invited to our son and his family for dinner and set off there after checking in, then returned for a good night’s sleep and a good continental breakfast before walking down to St Pancras International station to check in for Eurostar. With dire warnings about queues and delays we had allowed far too long for the formalities which were over as quickly as ever, and we did not even need breakfast to pass the time! We did eventually have coffee (we don’t rate the coffee served on Eurostar trains, not as good as LNER!) and then, still with thirty minutes to go, boarding began. '

As we have discovered before, the light meal served on Eurostar trains from mid-morning is lunch, so, soon after breakfast we were eating our light lunch with the Eurostar signature refrigerated cutlery! (The meals are made up in advance on trays complete with napkin, cutlery, glass and cup and the whole trolley is kept chilled so everything is cold. I put the wrapped butter pat in my pocket to warm up …) The journey to Paris was uneventful - at least it was for those of us who have been this way so often: if you’re new to it the transit under the sea is probably quite an event! We were in coach 2 and the corollary of having a short walk in London to join the train was a long walk in Paris to leave the train. I had an electronic Metro ticket on my iPhone to use in Paris but my wife had none and try as we might we were unable to add one (even though at one stage the app did take some money), so at Gare du Nord we enquired about it and could not understand the explanation. She was sold a Navigo card (€2) and a single ticket loaded onto it (the normal €2.55 fare) I bought the same, ready for the journey home; I had thought that when we installed the Île-de-France de France app last year we were set up for easy purchase of Metro tickets, but the Paris Metro remains a mystery!

We do not like the experience of using the RER to Gare de Lyon even though it is quick and convenient, but we had time in hand (I think Byway are set up to help people migrate from flying to rail and go out of their way to make it stress-free!), so we went by normal Metro through to Gare d’Austerlitz, just across the river, and walked from there. We had coffee at the station and bought water to take with us and then boarded the TGV Lyria bound for Zürich where we were to change trains for Chur. We had First Class tickets on our Interrail apps and printed reservations for upper-deck seats. This was a great journey: no catering included but an excellent buffet from which we enjoyed a good salad dinner.

At Zürich we had about half an hour before our connecting train to Chur: this was a station we’d get to know in a few days’ time. By now it was dark, so the hour’s ride to Chur was not its usual scenic self, but the train was swift and comfortable and we were soon walking up Bahnhofstrasse towards the Hotel Stern where we had first stayed twelve year earlier on our first Great Rail Journeys escorted tour.

We checked in and went straight to bed, well after our usual bed-time, both excited and tired.

Our first day in Chur was Sunday, and although we had thought of attending church, circumstances were such that we changed our minds, not only because were we still recovering from the late night, but the choice of church was a bit problematic. St Martin's, the same dedication as our church at home, might have been good, but it is protestant, and Swiss protestantism is a bit extreme and I was not at all sure we'd have a clue what was going on. There is also the Roma Catholic cathedral and although we'd recognise the service (for it would be similar to our Church of England liturgy) the sermon in German would be opaque to me and technically we would not be welcome at holy communion. So a short lie-in and a slow start to the day prevailed.

At the hotel reception we picked up our tourist passes for the city, complimentary to hotel guests and covering free museum admissions and local buses. We had printed a city map before we left home and had a good idea of what we would do, starting with the Museum  where we learnt a lot about the history of the city and the canton. Chur qualifies as the oldest city in Switzerland because it was the first town to have a bishop appointed to it, and therefore the earliest to have a cathedral. There was a great view over the city from the top floor of the museum, and a decent cup of coffee to be had from the reception.

We had a stroll around the city, punctuated by a stop for beer outside a bar in the old part of the city centre - typically Swiss with outside tables supplied with blankets, but in the sunshine it was quite warm enough not to need these.

From the old city we strolled out along the riverside and then back towards the rail station area where we planned some of the following day's activities and then visited the city's natural history museum.

After a brief history of every beast known in Graubünden we went for a walk around the city centre following a published trail and found the "Chur Foot," a standard measure set into the wall of the town hall. The Foot is a familiar measure to us as British citizens but will be less familiar to locals these days!

We gradually made our way back to our hotel where we had dinner in the informal setting of a lounge bar trying some of the local Graubündner dishes on offer.

On Monday morning our plan was to complete our travel over every part of the RhätischeBahn by travelling up to Arosa on the line from Chur. I did not really know what to expect: the line began as a separate tramway, much like the Bernina Line further south, and was acquired by the RhB and absorbed into its network, and the destination was completely unknown to us (except that it was uphill!). These days the services are operated by Allegra electric multiple units towing a handful of older passenger cars and a driving trailer to enable them to work in either direction without shunting after each turn.

Our journey to Arosa began at 10:08 at the dedicated Arosa platforms at the front of Chur station, outside the main SBB/RhB building, with day return tickets bought from the station ticket office; our Interrail Passes were not set up for enough travel days to cover that day. The journey begins very much like a tram ride through the streets of Chur: once off the station forecourt we followed very much the route we had walked along the riverside the previous day. It begins as double track and we're riding on the same side of the road as the other vehicles, then after it singles out we are on the right-hand side which feels OK going this way, still with the traffic, but this is no tram: it is a train of six or seven full-length coaches! It is the same feeling you get in Tirano where the Bernina Express goes through the streets for a short distance. Eventually, well outside the town, and after an intermediate station in the street, the road and the railway do part company and we climb steeply into the mountains. 

Gradually we saw more and more snow on the ground and in the trees and by the time the train arrived in Arosa there was thick snow on the ground and a frozen lake covered with snow. As we walked around the town a few snowflakes began to fall. We called at a small café for coffee and nusstorte and then went for a walk around the lake, by which time there was a light, steady snow shower. It was quite magical. Arosa is a popular place for skiing, which is not something I had realised until I got there. We took the next train back at far as an intermediate stop at Langweis where I took a few photographs and made some notes for the intermediate station on my model railway. 

From Langweis there is a great view of the Langweis viaduct and a small display in the station about its construction. For me, though, much of the interest was in the way the station is used: the nearest track to the building is a siding and you have to walk over the siding (on a proper crossing) to the hard standing which passes for a platform (as at many minor Rhâtischebahn stations), but when our train arrived there we had to pass a late-running train on its way to Arosa, and when we descended it was all the way down onto the gravel ballast: there was no platform at all there! My model station Mitteldorf will definitely be built this way, complete with level crossing right through the station!

We took the next train down to Chur and Alison spent the rest of the afternoon shopping, having seen some things while exploring the preceding day. Dinner was again in the lounge bar at Hotel Stern.

On Tuesday morning we validated our tickets on the Interrail app and left Chur for Zürich, Switzerland's largest city (although very modest by British standards), and we were able to enjoy the scenery we had missed on our way there by night on Saturday. We arrived in Zürich mid-morning and decided to go straight on to Luzern for the day, leaving our exploration of Zürich for the following day. Our hotel was some distance from the station here, so we kept our luggage with us. We each had just one  modest-sized wheeled suitcase and these were no burden. From the station in Luzern we walked along the river and crossed one of the famous wooden bridges - not the shortest way across but it's what you have to do as a tourist! I am not ashamed to be a tourist: this trip was definitely a tour. As this was a day when we were travelling on our Interrail passes, we were able to include the trains to and from Luzern on our passes by searching for the trains and adding the tickets to the pass - so we were travelling First Class on a short journey which we'd never do if we were buying tickets. We had our lunch in Luzern at Wirtshaus Taube, a restaurant we had identified from Trip Advisor and made this our main meal of the day, the usual filling Swiss delicious-but-not-slimming meal that keeps you going for the whole day.

We returned to Zürich in peak travel time and avoided a crowded four-coach train in favour of the less-crowded eight-coach one that left a few minutes later. The we walked to the hotel - this was interesting, along a river much of the way, but involved quite a climb and in retrospect was a mistake. The trams were cheap and frequent so for the rest of our short stay we used these in both directions, having discovered that three tram routes stop right outside the hotel and one route just one block away in the next street. We checked in and had a good night's sleep ready for the next day's adventures.

Wednesday was our full day in Zürich and we explored the streets in the morning, roughly following a city trail we had found and incorporating a visit to the Globus department store where we bought a souvenir glass to replace one we had bought in Interlaken a couple of years before and had been dropped and broken at home. Our trail took us to streets of interesting old buildings and streetscapes, as well as through the world-famous financial district, home of the "Gnomes of Zürich".

After a morning's exploration we made our way to the Landesmuseum for lunch and afternoon's study of Swiss history.

We had earlier identified the restaurant at the Hotel Adler for dinner and booked a table, so we returned there at the end of the day and then took a tram back to our hotel. The weather had varied throughout the day, but the increasingly frequent rain showers in the afternoon had given way to a dry evening and nothing spoilt our enjoyment of this great city. After a good night's sleep and a decent breakfast we were ready for another country in the morning.

We left for Paris late morning on Thursday and had our coffee at Zürich main station while waiting for our train to be announced. There is a myth in Britain that Swiss railways always run to time and are never cancelled, but this just isn't true. On our many visits ti Switzerland we have found the railways to be, yes, a bit better than ours, but not perfect. Breakdowns and trespassers can happen anywhere and Switzerland is not immune. International trains to and through Switzerland are also affected, of course, and contrary to popular belief at home, snow in Switzerland does affect the running of trains and the condition of the roads. This morning the departure board showed several trains delayed and one cancelled, but not our 11:34 departure for Paris, the usual TGV Lyria, operated jointly by the Swiss and French national railways.

Arriving at Gare de Lyon, we made our way to our hotel, the Sleeping Belle, and then set out for a walk through the city, following the River Seine and passing across the Île de la Cité and on the the now-open Cathedral of Notre Dame (although we did not visit on this occasion). We then made our way back towards our hotel looking for somewhere to have dinner, settling on a steak at an art deco themed restaurant near to the Gare de Lyon.

Breakfast on Friday morning was at our hotel and then we made our way to Gare du Nord for the train back to London and thence home. We had all morning and although we had Metro passes on our iPhones we decided to walk. This whole trip had been about "slow travel" and this would be a way to enjoy Paris while on our way home. With wheeled suitcases this really is not a hard thing to do and the walk was very pleasant.

At Gare du Nord check-in for our train to London was just beginning and when the attendant controlling the queue for check-in saw my Sunflower lanyard she beckoned us across the priority queue normally reserved for Premier Class travellers and made sure that we sped through check-in: this was very welcome as although I can walk any distance, more or less, I do find standing and shuffling a bit hard and this was largely avoided. I had my usual difficulty with the passport machines and had to have mine checked manually at the French passport control. The we had a short wait with a cup of tea before boarding the train and speeding across to London. We were on our way home with a short wait at Kings Cross, our travel from London to Stamford covered this time by our Interrail passes as it was an international travel day on them. We arrived home late afternoon and had plenty of time to unpack and read our mail.

Full video of the whole trip is now here, and on my YouTube Channel, @Marks_Rail_Adventures

It had been a great break, and now my attention turned to the final preparations for exhibiting my model railway at the forthcoming Stamford Model Railway Show. No shortage of things to do in retirement!

Tour of the French and Swiss Alps by Train, part 2

The Mont Blanc Express to Chamonix

Monday morning dawned dull and damp but with the promise of some sunshine later. It was to be one of the more exciting days of the Great Rail Journeys itinerary for this holiday, the train into France to Chamonix Mont Blanc, our first mountain railway of the tour. Because of our base being in Lausanne rather than Montreux we had a slightly longer trip to get to Martigny where our train ride into the Alps was to begin. It was drizzling at Martigny as we left the main line train which had taken us there and walked to the platform where our narrow-gauge mountain railway train would depart. These were short trains and part of a coach had been reserved for our party. We were shown by a railway official where to board to ensure that we were in the right place for our seats.

The Mont Blanc Express is not what you think of as an express train! It is not even just one train, for it is necessary change trains part-way through the journey. The scenery is amazing, though, and the train starts to climb a few moments after leaving the station. 

Now we have travelled on many an international train, high-speed inter-city expresses like the Eurostar and the TGV Lyria on which we arrived in Geneva, the little branch-line train from Besançon into Le Locle and, for example, the Centovalli line between Switzerland and Italy, but the Mont Blanc Express is the only one we've used where a change of train is needed at the border: at the first station in France we left our train and crossed the platform to join an apparently identical one which took us the rest of the way to Chamonix. Another interesting feature about this route was that at a station part of the way between the border and Chamonix  the overhead electrical line ended and the train's pantograph was lowered, with electrical pick-up being from a third rail conductor. It is just like the procedure at Farringdon in London where Thameslink trains transfer from the overhead to third rail and vice-versa, but you do have to wonder why it is done here for just a few short kilometres of third-rail running, especially where deep snow is regularly expected!

We had a few hours to explore Chamonix and began with a trip to the tourist information office for a map. The drizzle had stopped by now but the day remained cloudy with occasional sunshine, but a trip up to the mountain tops would have been disappointing with all the cloud cover, so we opted to stay in the town, beginning with coffee! We had an interesting stroll around the town, France but not very different from Switzerland; indeed you would never know from the domestic architecture where the border is when you cross it on the Mont Blanc Express. Although we opted not to travel any higher in view of the cloud cover, we did go and look at a cable car station and saw that it had a healthy queue of potential passengers, so there were plenty of people who did decide to go up higher. We returned for lunch to the café we had visited earlier and enjoyed the advertised croques monsieur.  There was sunshine at times and the clouds shifted, revealing glimpses of the mountains that we knew were surrounding us. Chamonix was the venue for the first Winter Olympic games and athletes from the town formed the French team. There was a fascinating display of advertising posters for the Winter Olympics from the first time until the present.

We made our way back to the railway station to join the rest of the party and take the train back down to Martigny, changing trains just before the border, where we almost had an unplanned adventure: everyone piled off the train from Chamonix and crossed the platform to a waiting train, but no, apparently this was not our train but the next one back to Chamonix; why they had such a complex operation for a simple branch line I cannot begin to imagine. "It is France," was the best any of us could come up with ... And so, a few moments later the real train to Martigny arrived, we boarded and were taken back down the steep hillsides to take the connection back to Lausanne where dinner was at the hotel again. After dinner we prepared our luggage as far as we could for the following morning because we were to leave for the Golden Pass Express, and as we were in Lausanne and not Montreux we would have to leave rather earlier than originally planned in order to get our connecting train. 

Tour of the French and Swiss Alps by Train, part 1

Away at Last!

It was not until we settled into our seats on the train to London that we took in how much we had missed travel since our last trip in autumn last year. Sitting at our "club duo" seats in LNER's First Class and browsing the menu it almost felt like we had come home from a long absence rather than the other way around! The familiar rattle of the catering trolleys being pushed into the coach and the friendly hosts taking our order brought back many memories of past train trips as the countryside slipped past. Late spring and early summer is a brilliant time to travel in England: the greenness of the landscape is just fantastic, especially after the wet weather we had had this spring. The cold drinks came first and we both ordered rosé wine but there was not quite enough left in the bottle on the trolley to pour two glasses, so I volunteered to have white … and the host placed the rosé bottle on our table so that we could finish the last half-glassful between us! We ordered the homity pie, a delicious vegetable pie which came with a “bean salad”, and meanwhile the crisps for a starter and the lemon and elderflower pot for dessert were delivered off the trolley. By the tine we arrived in London all of this had been consumed and we knew we’d need no supper that evening. 

We were on our way by train to London early on a Friday evening ready for a very early start on Saturday to check in for the 08:01 Eurostar train for Paris on our way to Switzerland on another Great Rail Journeys adventure. This one was new to the Great Rail Journeys catalogue, because it uses a train service which had only started a couple of years earlier, the Golden Pass Express which we were to use between Montreux and Interlaken. We had never visited Montreux before, or anywhere else on Lake Geneva, nor Chamonix in France which was included as a day trip by train in this tour. We had never really visited Interlaken, either, although we had changed trains there often enough, and although one of the day trips from there was something we had done before it still included lots we had not. Amazingly with a mix of four- and five-star hotels and First Class rail travel, this tour was not particularly expensive and I did not hesitate to book it as soon as I saw it advertised the previous year. It has been something to look forward to through all the health issues that have dogged me over the last several months, culminating in (yet another) cardioversion just two days before we left home. 

In London we stayed at the Hub by Premier Inn beside Kings Cross railway station. We have used this place once before: it is a touch cheaper less expensive than a proper Premier Inn, but to my mind is still very poor value. The room was very cramped and inconvenient and although this time we did at least have a room above ground (last time we were two floors below ground!) it was till very claustrophobic. We shall probably not use it again: the Premier Inn in Euston Road is also better located for St Pancras station and far more pleasant for just a few pounds more. 

We went to bed early but did not sleep especially well before we were up early and off to St Pancras International railway station to meet Richard our tour manager before going to the International Departures ticket gates to begin our continental rail trip. The station was extremely busy! Train travel has definitely resumed now and we look forward to more services being reinstated. After showing our tickets at the gates we were soon through the security checks and then showed our passports at both UK and French Passport Control - unusually it was the French controller who smiled and spoke to us and not the British one, very odd. Seeing that the preceding train to Paris was just boarding, we thought that if we made our way straight to the café area we might get seats at a table there for our breakfast: this turned out to be correct and while my wife looked after the luggage at our chosen table I went off and bought a couple of black coffees which we drank with the fresh fruit salads we had bought from the Little Waitrose at Kings Cross station before we went to our hotel the previous evening. Before long the boarding of our train was announced and we were off on the travelator to the platform to board the train.

We were in coach 3, towards the rear of the train, and our section of the coach was where the wheelchair spaces were located, separated from the rest of the coach by a partition with a couple of private coupes, so it was a cosy area with just nine people in it, and around our table of four there were just us and one other couple on the Great Rail Journeys tour, so we had met the first of our travelling companions already. Before long our Eurostar E320 train slipped out of the platform and began accelerating along High Speed One towards the Channel Tunnel and on to Paris. A continental breakfast was served soon after leaving, as usual in Standard Premier Class on a morning departure. We had finished breakfast by the time we emerged in France, and for some reason the train slowed down and even stopped briefly causing us to arrive a few minutes late in Paris. This was not a concern as we had about three hours to change stations and have lunch before travelling on. As always with Great Rail Journeys we were taken across Paris by coach to Gare de Lyon; if we had been travelling alone we'd have used the RER or Metro, but it would be hard to keep a group together that way. At Gare de Lyon we bought a salad lunch at Monop' Daily as we so often have and ate our lunch outside in the sunshine while we awaited the departure of our train, a TGV Lyria direct to Geneva.

The first part of the TGV journey is unremarkable apart from its high speed, soaring across France down towards Lyon. Here I began typing the first paragraph or two of this blog post, and paid a visit to the buffet bar for drinks. We were with the rest of the group, some two dozen others, on the top deck of a duplex First Class coach and it was all very comfortable. The journey came into its own once we left the high speed line and started wandering towards Switzerland. We were threading our way through the hills where the Jura and the Alps come together and where France, Switzerland and Italy start to share mountains and lakes, and it is all very pretty. At Geneva we were changing trains to take an Interregional service to Lausanne where we were to stay the first three nights. We had changed trains at Geneva before but had been travelling in the opposite direction and taking a French train out of Switzerland. As with going the other way, however, there was no passport control at the EU border (although the facilities were there) and no customs check (although, again, the facilities were there, and we did see someone having their suitcase searched but no-one even looked at us).

Lausanne turned out to be a very interesting city to visit, although it was not originally planned to be part of this tour. We were supposed to be staying in Montreux and for many of us on the tour, ourselves included, Montreux was part of the attraction, but for some reason the hotel there was not available and Great Rail Journeys had booked the Lausanne Palace Hotel for the group instead, a better hotel, apparently, but not quite where we had expected to be. The itinerary otherwise remained the same, although it was not quite as efficient and convenient, but I think we can put up with that as a trade-off for the standard of the hotel. Getting to it from the station was fun: it is a very short walk to the station from the hotel, but the walk to the hotel from the station would be up a very steep hill so we travelled just one stop on the Lausanne Metro. The hotel minibuses took our luggage (and had room for four passengers, too) and we were handed public transport passes for the city which the rest of us then used on the Metro, alighting at Lausanne Flon station opposite our hotel. Well, I say opposite, but it was still four storeys below the hotel entrance, but there is a public lift from the Metro station to the street and we eventually all made it up to street level and were checked into the Palace Hotel. Our room was fantastic. This was a five-star hotel and was well-equipped: unusually for Switzerland there was a coffee maker in the room and the minibar was free to use (although the only alcoholic drink there was beer, but still a great part of the standard offer). By the time we had sorted out our luggage (brought up to our room by the porters) and showered it was time for dinner at a hotel restaurant and then bed. It is always helpful when dinner on the first night is included in these packages especially on Saturdays (busy) or Sundays (half the places closed), and dinner at the Lausanne Palace was great!

On Sunday morning we set of to explore some of the city centre of Lausanne, taking the Metro just two stops to the opposite side of the ravine in which the city's shopping streets are located, from where we were able to cross a bridge to Lausanne Cathedral. As it happened we were there between the Sunday morning services and were able to pop in to look at the building. We did not have time to stay to worship as there was a programme of activities for the rest of the day, but we did spot a likely restaurant for a fondue and kept that in mind as a possibility for the evening unless something even better turned up. We walked back through the quiet Sunday morning shopping streets to our hotel and met the rest of the group for the first group tour. As we were not now staying in Montreux our capable tour manager, Richard, arranged for the group to take an earlier train than necessary for the included tour of the Château de Chillon. The ride along the shore of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman in the local language, French) was wonderful with an almost continous view of the lake, with hills beyond and a series of towns, villages and vineyards between the railway and the lake. At Montreux railway station, standing at the platform was the train would be taking later to Interlaken, the Golden Pass Express, looking very splendid.

Montreux, billed as "stylish Montreux" in Great Rail Journeys' publicity, was a lovely place to visit, especially on the waterfront. Some of the party were excited by the statue of Freddie Mercury along the promenade! We bought a take-away salad lunch from the local Micros supermarket and sat by the lakeside to eat it in the warm sunshine. It was an idyllic time, and like most of the group we opted to walk along the lakeside footpath to the Château de Chillon rather than take the train (the plan, had we been staying in Montreux, had been to take the trolleybus there, apparently). We all arrived eventually at the entrance to the Château for the booked guided tour in which we learnt the fascinating history of this building, built on a natural rocky island just off the lake shore by the Savoy family to claim duty on traffic on the lake and conquered by the Bernese a couple of centuries later. While we were being taken around the interior the rain came, and came heavily. By the time we were ready to leave, mercifully the rain had almost ceased, and soon did cease. We made our way to the nearby pier from where a paddle-boat took us back along the lake to Lausanne, with a view of "stylish Montreux" and a few other places where we docked on the way. the weather by now had turned quite good again and we were able to sit on the forward deck with a super view of the surrounding hills and mountains. Most of us then used the Metro again to return to the hotel. We showered and changed and made our way back to the restaurant we had discovered in the morning and enjoyed our classic Swiss cheese fondue with Swiss wine served by attentive staff at the Café L'Evêché, after which we returned to the hotel, with help of the Metro, through the rain which had returned, but was OK for the short times we had to be outside. 

And so our first, brilliant, day of this Swiss "adventure" came to an end. We had visited a cathedral and a castle in two different towns and enjoyed a traditional Swiss supper and we were staying in a wonderful traditional Belle Epoque hotel. We looked forward eagerly to what more new experiences the subsequent days would bring, beginning with the Mont Blanc Express, back into France for the day!

The Italian Lake District

Lake Maggiore by Train via London and Colmar

Our third (and possibly last) holiday based in Italy was booked almost as soon as we were home from the previous one, and again it was a Great Rail Journeys escorted tour. They offer a selection of holidays by train in the Italian Lakes but the one that stood out for us was a week or so in Stresa, on Lake Maggiore, because it included a trip on the Centovalli Railway which we had done once before in poor weather and wanted to visit again in the summer. It also included a stopover in Colmar (where we have stopped before and enjoyed) on the way there and Dijon (which we have never seen before) on the way back. It also included quite a lot of free time and would therefore be quite a relaxing holiday as well as a further exploration of Italy and eastern France. And although we would not be stopping there, a passage through the Alps would be good to do in a year in which, for once, we had not visited Switzerland!

We had tolerated a cool, fairy wet, summer and had been looking forward to getting away to some sunshine, and as we were about to leave the sunshine suddenly resumed, temperatures rose and England started enjoying summer at last, although, if anything, it was a bit too hot and we began to look forward to the slightly lower temperatures on the lake shore in Italy!

We began with London, as always when bound for the continent, but this time instead of going late in the day (Sunday, when we have no local trains until lunch time) simply to stay overnight we went earlier so that we could take the chance to see the King's and Queen's coronation robes on display at Buckingham Palace. In order to fit this in we asked both of our sons for favours: one to drive us to Peterborough to catch a Sunday morning train to London, and the other, in London, to look after our baggage while we visited the palace: it is always nice to see the family anyway, especially those in London whom we see only occasionally.

We had our usual breakfast at home before leaving by car for Peterborough station, but on boarding the train the smell of bacon rolls required me to have another breakfast on board the train! With orange juice and coffee this was a very satisfying start to the day. Sunday engineering work had closed the Hammersmith & City Line, so our journey to Shepherd's Bush for the personal left-luggage facility was more complicated than usual, but the Underground still delivered and we arrived there via a short visit to the Westfield shops where my wife had some pending business ...

Free of encumbrances, then, we made our way to Buckingham Palace, via an ice-cream break in The Green Park, and although we were half an hour early for our ticket time we were admitted and after the security check we were handed our audio-visual personal guides and began the tour of the Palace state rooms, which included the coronation robes displayed in the ballroom and quite a lot of information about the coronation service, the work of the monarchy and the life of King Charles III. It was all very well done but slightly amusing that the commentary spoke several times about what His Majesty normally or usually does each year, but he has not been doing it for a year yet! Clearly it is a description of what the monarch normally does, based upon what Queen Elizabeth II had established and often what the King has done just once.

We had tea with cake and sandwiches before leaving the Palace and returning to our son's home. We stayed a short while and took up their offer of dinner, although we did not need a lot after our royal tea.

For our overnight accommodation in London we try to get as close as possible to St Pancras International station and have often stayed in the Premier Inn opposite the British Library in Euston Road, but even the Premier Inn can be expensive in central London, so this time we tried The Hub (by Premier Inn), an even more budget hotel, and slightly further away, on York Way, east of Kings Cross station. Our room was two floors below street level but it had all we needed just for a night's sleep: a bed and an ensuite shower/wc, with space beneath the bed for two cases. There were mains and USB sockets for charging our devices (interestingly, continental as well as UK mains sockets), air-conditioning (no window, of course) and huge towels. We did not book breakfast and from getting up on Monday at 6am we were at St Pancras, after a ten-minute walk, just after 6.30 to check in with our tour manager before making our way to the Eurostar departure area.

I could not believe how efficient the operation at St Pancras had become! There was no queue at the ticket gates and I was caught off guard, not having bothered to have my ticket ready because I am used to taking five minutes to get to the barrier: still, with no-one behind me it did not matter that I had to ferret for my ticket before scanning it at the barrier. The security check was only slow owing to the need to put all my metal stuff, including my belt, onto the tray and then take it all back again after passing through the scanner. Then before I has time to get my passport ready I was being ushered towards the UK border post, fumbling now for my passport, for there had always been a queue here in the last few years, plenty of time to get ones passport ready. Once through the UK check at least I was now ready for the French border police who inspected and stamped my passport quickly and efficiently All done in less than ten minutes from turning up to being ready to go - with still an hour before departure. My wife had come through even faster and had found a couple of seats in the waiting area and then I went to buy coffee and we had our first breakfast: coffee and the apples we had brought from home, and in my case a croissant from the coffee shop.

We made our way early to the travelator up to the platforms, our tour manager having had a tip-off about the platform number. We were the first people up to the platform when the train was announced: never done that before, although we have been the first off when arriving.The train left London on time and our second breakfast was soon served, the usual Eurostar light meal on an early train, included in the price of our Standard Premier tickets. Engineering work in France made us just a few moments late into Paris, but that was not significant as we had a couple of hours there to walk to Gare de L'Est, have some lunch and board the train to Colmar where we were to spend the first night of the escorted tour. 

Bob the tour manager asked me to walk at the back of the group as I happened to have hat like his and he would know where the rear of the group was if he looked back and saw me, and he could tell the group to stay between the two hats! I have been chosen for many things in my life, some more pleasurable than others, but this is the first time that my headgear has been the criterion of selection ...

The TGV to Colmar was very comfortable, as TGVs generally are, but it was very disappointing that the bar car was not open ("il y a une problème"), so no after-lunch coffee. Colmar is a place we have stopped overnight a few times before, and it was good to have a chance to walk round for a bit before dinner. Just as on the last few visits the weather was very hot. In one shop we even managed to do a very little very early Christmas shopping! Colmar is a lovely town, and one of the great benefits of overland international travel over flying is that you do get the chance to see other interesting places on the way to you main destination.

Dinner, a good night's sleep and a decent breakfast completed our stay in Colmar and then we met the rest of the group and crossed the road to the railway station for the train into Switzerland on Tuesday morning. This was a local train to Basel (Bâle in French) and we were all together in the First Class coach at the rear of the train. We had about an hour between trains at Basel, a station we have used several times in the past, both on group tours and on our own: it is really two stations in one, a French section and s Swiss section. We sat in the sun for a while outside the station and then joined the next train which would take us on through Switzerland to Domodossola in Italy. The original plan has been to stay on this train all the way to Stresa, but engineering work on the line had cut this particular train service short and so we had to take a coach for the few kilometres to our hotel on the lake shore in Stresa, but not before we had seen the beautiful Swiss Alps and several towns we have visited in the past, including Brig which was our first Alpine destination almost ten years ago.

We had a beautiful hotel room on an upper floor with a balcony (where I am sitting typing this post!) overlooking Lake Maggiore and the islands we would be visiting the following day. We went for a walk around the town and then returned for a shower and dinner with the rest of the group at the hotel. And so to bed. It had been a fairly murky evening after a sunny day, but the sky was beginning to clear by sunset and held some promise for the morning, but with very thick curtains to our room we would not see the weather until we opened them after a good night's sleep ...

Dazzling Sun, and A Dazzling Palace

Our room had very thick curtains and when we finally awoke, on our alarm at 07:30 on Wednesday I opened the curtains and immediately had to close my eyes and back off as the sun was shockingly bright, straight across Lake Maggiore and into my face! Once I had recovered my composure and my eyes had adapted to the light I could see that it was a wonderful sunny morning and a brilliant day was beginning. 

The morning and early afternoon were completely free and so after breakfast I spent some time in the morning writing my weblog on the balcony and then we walked into town again did some of the Town Trail of interesting buildings, with a stop for a gelato at a place where we bought one last time we were in Stresa, but to be honest, not many of the buildings were particularly interesting ... then we sat by the poolside (or, rather, I did: Alison swam, after much grimacing at the cold, in the pool) at the hotel until it was time to get showered and dressed ready for our first included excursion.

We all gathered in the hotel reception and Bob the tour manager led us out to the landing stage opposite the hotel where, a few moments later, a hired launch arrived to take us to Isola Pescatori for a brief visit - we had been there before for a slightly longer visit, but it was good to see it again - and then we were taken by another launch across to Isola Bella, the island we could see from our balcony and which we had never visited before. Isola Bella is the island on which the Borromean Palace stands. We had a swift guided tour around tha palace, which is still in use by the Borromeo family and in which the current Princess was actually in residence when we visited. The place was stunning. Buckingham Palace was still in our minds as we had been there just a couple of days before, but although the Borromean Palace was a lot smaller it beats anything else I have ever seen for decoration - except possibly some of the rooms at Burghley House ...

After the tour of the palace we visited its gardens and were served Prosecco and nibbles there before returning by another boat to our hotel for a later dinner and straight to bed to recover from the day: it did not seem that we had done a lot, but it all added up to some miles of walking and a lot of sunshine.

Freedom and Adventure

Normally on a Great Rail Journeys tour the free days are interspersed among days with included activities but for various reasons of non-availability on certain days it turned out that our two completely free days fell together, and immediately followed the first full day in Stresa when there had been only the island tour beginning late in the afternoon. Unfortunate in some ways but a free day is a free day and there was plenty we could do to fill them, or we could sit and do very little as I had tried in vain to do on Wednesday morning! We had toyed with the idea of visiting another lake, but the railway works which had caused us to use road transport for the last stretch to Stresa would also make reaching another lake rather long-winded, and in any case, there is much to see around Lake Maggiore without travelling so far. We decided to go to Verbania, the largest town on the lake and just across from our hotel. It could be reached easily by public boat service, by bus or, according to the timetable, by train. We decided to take the train, although I soon realised from the map that Verbania station was some kilometres from the town centre, indeed from the town, and even then I was daft enough to buy return tickets ...

Stresa station was about a ten-minute uphill walk from the hotel, pleasant enough, and although a little tatty in places with a faded splendour, a nice little station. We bought our tickets and went via the subway to the opposite platform to await the train. With a minute to go I remembered that the tickets had to be validated before travel so I nipped back and inserted them in the validation machine and returned to the platform just as the train was drawing in. No-one checked the tickets in any case.  Our train was a semi-fast from Arona to Domodossala, the first stop being Verbania. The station there was modern and pleasant but now we needed a bus to the town. Apple maps showed a bus stop on the main road nearby with a bus in a few minutes' time. It took a while to find the stop, but find it we did: nowhere to stand but the newly-mown verge (which must have resembled a meadow before mowing. The bus picked us up and then took us via a stop right adjacent to the railway station, but on the other side of the tracks and which we had not noticed, and would have been much more convenient. It was about twenty minutes into town and we were pleased we had not attempted to walk. We were already beginning to reassess the value of the return halves of our train tickets, the distance from the station to Verbania being roughly the same as the distance we had travelled on the train! I am not complaining: this is supposed to be an adventure, and an adventure it was! 

We had coffee at a café at the town hall and then went for a long walk along the lake shore, enjoyed a cold lemon drink overlooking the lake and then walked back into the centre of Verbania for a gelato and a bus back to Stresa. For our evening meal we had promised ourselves a cocktail and a pizza at a lakeside pizzeria near our hotel and that was what we did. While we were there two other pairs of people from our Great Rail Journeys group turned up, and we had seen another couple there earlier in the day. I hope they all liked it as much as I did. A good meal for two, with cocktails and coffee, €53.00, that's under £50: brilliant.

Friday was the last of the free days and we had decided to take a bus in the other direction to Arona, farther south along the lake. Buses around Stresa were not a big tourist thing and it was not easy to find all the information we needed; stops were not always easy to find and the online data available to Apple Maps and CityMapper, our usual public transport information sources, was patchy and difficult to understand, but we were able to get a timetable and information from the tourist office. The buses were actually quite useful once we found them and stops included one at the rail station (we'd alighted there on our way home from Verbania) and one by the lake boat terminal, so there was some effort at integration, but not a lot. After a quick look around Stresa Friday market, we waited at the (unmarked) stop by the boat terminal, soon encouraged by local people turning up to wait for the bus, too. It was a little late which would have made us concerned if it had not been for the others at the stop. The vehicle was more like a coach than a bus and was very comfortable. Like the buses we had used the day before, they did not take card payment as we were used to in Britain, but only cash, although they did offer change so were able to pay with no difficulty.

Arrival in Arona was by the rail station in the centre of the town, by the boat terminal there, where there was also a tourist office where we were able to pick up a map of the town. Again we walked along the lake shore and stopped for our morning coffee at a little restaurant that was just opening for the day. We decided that from there we would walk up to the statue (described as a "colossus"!) of St Charles Borromeo, a member of the ruling Borromeo family who had become a Cardinal and Archbishop of the Counter-Reformation and was very popular locally. When you read of his reforms to the Church in his diocese you wonder if he had come a little earlier in history the Reformation, with its great divisions in the Church, might never have happened. It was a long, uphill walk to the church and the great statue, sometimes along the roadside, sometimes a long stepped footpath, sometimes on the road itself. It was hot and sunny, but we got there! Apparently this is second in size only to the Statue of Liberty in New York of the type of statue that one can climb up inside: I did not try that ...  We returned to Arona town centre by a different route which was a lot easier going but just as hot and sunny and with much more walking on the carriageway. On arrival in the town a gelato was the most urgent thing to find, and we sat looking over the lake and recovered from our exertions of the morning before taking the bus back to Stresa - once we had found it! We  knew it would go from the rail station forecourt but did not really know exactly where: a bus in the right livery stood among about ten others but with its engine running, so we walked to the front and saw that the destination was, among other places, Stresa, and the door was open. So we asked the driver, paid him and sat down. About three local people were already aboard and one more joined us. It was not at a bus stop but just among a pack of coaches and would have been easy to miss! The adventure continued ... back in Stresa we bought salad and fruit for our evening meal at our room and one to relax. We would be up a little earlier the next day for what would be, for me, the centrepiece of this exciting holiday.

The Centovalli Line in Sunshine at Last - and in Its Centenary Year

We last rode the Centovalli Line almost ten years ago, but it was in winter and on a wet and murky day. Winter is not a bad time to travel a scenic line, actually, when the deciduous trees are bare and there might be snow highlighting some features, but the rain and mist were, well, a dampener. We looked at doing it again one summer but on that particular day the forecast, although warmer, was not much sunnier, so we didn't even try. Third time lucky: the inclusion of this scenic line in Great Rail Journeys' itinerary for this holiday was one of our reasons for booking it, and it was sunny. Along with the rest of the group we walked up to the station from the hotel and awaited a train to Domodossala where we had just under an hour before taking the Centovalli Line train, just right for the morning coffee break. The station buffet operated the traditional Italian coffee bar system where you pay at the till and take the receipt to the barista who then makes the drinks listed on the receipt. We had become used to the concept on out earlier visits to Rome and other cities, but it was the first time we had come across it on this trip, the first time, I suppose, that we had been at a bar not specifically aimed at foreigners. The entire transaction was conducted in Italian; we are getting there.

The group had a block of seating reserved on the Centovalli train, Second Class in this case: I suspect there would not have been enough First Class seating on the four-coach multiple unit that comprised this train. It is a two-hour ride to Locarno on the express service we were on, and it is scenic for all but the first and last couple of kilometres. I did not take photographs because they would never do justice to the scenery: if you want to see it you'll have to travel the line yourself, well worth doing!

There was a party atmosphere in Locarno when we arrived, with a large music festival happening in the streets, a sort of urban Glastonbury.

Above: Locarno market place this summer

Right: Locarno market place on our previous visit

In Locarno we revisited the pizzeria Al Portico where we had had lunch the last time we were there, but this time we could speak to the staff in Italian. On my iPhone I showed the waitress my blog post with a photograph of the restaurant. It had barely changed, although we did notice that the menu now had a German translation of each item - not that that was any use to me. By the time we had eaten our salads and enjoyed the coffee it was the to wander back to the rendezvous with the group to await the boat ride back to Stresa. Our tour manager was keen to ensure that we boarded the boat fairly early in order to give us the best choice of seating, and as it was so hot and sunny we chose a shaded area on deck, bt eventually moved under cover with an iced drink from the on-board bar. It was a three-hour journey back to Stresa, the boat calling at several places on both sides of the lake on the way, including two stops in Verbania, which it was nice to see again from a different angle. By then the sun was much lower in the sky (we arrived at Stresa at seven o'clock), so we were out on the sundeck for the last part of the voyage, from which we could see the side of the Borromean Islands that we not visible from Stresa, and could spot our hotel among the buildings as we approached the town. Dinner was back at the hotel after a very quick shower.

Another Lake

Sunday dawned with another sunny morning but we had a chance to recover from the three preceding days' adventures in the heat as the included tour to Lago Orta did not start until 13:30. After a snack lunch in our room we joined the rest of the party for the coach trip to the small town of Orta San Giulio: it was not far as the crow flies, but was in the next valley and so further by road (and would have been even further by rail!). From the coach park we took a little road train down to the town centre and lake shore where we had a few minutes (another gelato stop!) before we all boarded a boat to visit the tiny island of San Giulio on which stands a church founded by Saint Julius and in which his body is buried. The church is beautifully decorated with wall paintings throughout and well worth a visit. The island is densely packed with homes and a large Benedictine convent and there is a walk around the island, the "Walk of Silence" in one direction, with plaques about the value of silence, and the "Walk of Meditation" in the other direction with plaques of platitudes which really did not make a lot of sense to me. Either way round, though, and we had ample time to do both, was a very pleasant walk. Lake Orta itself is much smaller than Lake Maggiore, much more the size of the lakes we know in England and Scotland. The boat to the island took us the long way round so that we could see something of the lake and the island's numerous boathouses where the residents keep their boats. The boat back took the shortest route and we were soon walking back to the little road train and our coach back to the hotel for dinner and bed.

Food and Wine

Bob the tour manager had warned us to have a light breakfast on Monday morning because we would be fed amply during the day! It was quite a long day out by coach into a wine-producing area some way south of Lake Maggiore, and began with a visit to Ghemme, including a tour of the Rovellotti winery, which must be unique, followed by a tasting, with accompanying nibbles. The winery is situated in the town centre in a collection of building which began as a fortress in which the citizens could try to hold out in the event of an attack on the their town when it was situated between two warring dukedoms but which become surplus to defensive requirements when peace broke out between those families. We were shown around by a young member of the Rovellotti family who have had premises in the former fortress since its founding in the medieval period Two generations of the family and a couple of other employees currently run the wine-making business and we sampled four varying wines accompanied by light bites to suit them - trying to keep consumption of food as low as possible because of what was to follow ... but needing something to stop this being nothing but wine, and before noon, too!

This followed by a drive through the countryside (which was possibly gorgeous but most of us slept through most of it after all that wine) and lunch, a generous lunch, with wine, at Cascina Monchucchetto, an agriturismo even farther south. The views from the agriturismo were fantastic but it was so hot in the sun that we did not want to enjoy the sun for long. It was necessary to go a bit steady on the food and wine as well after the morning's indulgences at the winery. No dinner was necessary that evening.

We spent some time that evening packing our bags, for this was our last night in Stresa: the next day we would begin the journey homeward, and although it would be quite possible to get home in one day (as we have done from, say, Neuchâtel when travelling on our own), we still had one more interesting place to see.

Burgundy

We were all taken by coach with our luggage to Stresa railway station where we caught a Geneva-bound express through the Alps to Lausanne where we changed trains for a Paris-bound TGV as far as Dijon, a city we had never visited before. We arrived in Dijon on-time mid-afternoon and after finding our room at the hotel, the Oceania le Jura, a short walk from the rail station, we set off for a stroll in the city centre. We bought a gift, mustard, of course, for our kind neighbours who have kept our plants watered in our absence, and by then a little rain had begun, so we started back in the direction of the hotel, past the miniature version of the Arc de Triomphe which graces the city centre, and went for a drink in the hotel bar. By the time I had ordered the rain was very heavy and we were soon joined by other members of the tour who had baled out of walks around the city centre, looking considerably more bedraggled that we were. Later we heard tales of those who had ventured farther and who developed a sudden need for coffee or for prayer, sheltering in a café or the cathedral ... 

The evening meal was a fixed menu of local specialities at a nearby restaurant and the eggs in a burgundy sauce were especially good in my opinion, as was the cassis-flavoured sorbet with which we finished. Unlimited water, and coffee, were included but we had to buy the wine and I must say that for a cheap house red the wine was magnificent. My opinion of Burgundian cuisine and wine has been enhanced by this visit. We brought a selection of mustards home for ourselves, too.

The rail station at Dijon has a large cylindrical booking hall very reminiscent of Charles Holden's inter-war designs for the London Underground, in white concrete rather than brick as in London. We were back there in the morning to take a TGV train to Paris (it was the same service, earlier in the day, as the one on which we had arrived the previous afternoon from Lausanne). This time we arrived at Gare de Lyon and Great Rail Journeys had provided a coach to take us through the streets to Gare du Nord, where we arrived neatly in time to check in for our Eurostar train to London. By the time we had all been through passport and security checks (and, like London, this all seems to have become much slicker now) it was almost time to board: I don't think I sat down in the departure lounge at all!

Taking a seat on Eurostar now I almost feel like I'm already home even though I still have two more train rides after this one and a time zone to cross! The light meal, lunch to us, was soon served and we had our final conversations with the people who had shared (some of) our adventures of the past week and a half and before we knew it we were in the familiar space of St Pancras station. It was a long walk from the last coach of the train to the exit, but that did mean that we got to enjoy the vast and glorious railway station that London St Pancras has now become. We walked across to Kings Cross and although I had booked seats on a train to Peterborough at 16:06 we had a look at LNER's app and saw that pairs seats were still available on a train that would be leaving in about twenty minutes, and hour earlier than that, so I reserved a pair of seats on that, cancelled the ones I already had and by then its platform was announced and we took our places. Again, a light meal was served, although I kept the pudding course to eat later at home since it did not seem long since Eurostar had fed me! There were only four minutes in the timetable between the arrival of this train at Peterborough and the departure of the train to Stamford, so we knew we might not make that connection. The idea was that we would shop at Waitrose in Stamford if we got it and in Peterborough (it's right by the station) if we didn't! As it happened our train from London slowed down to a crawl on approach to the station and we began to give up hope of getting the tight connection (so tight it was not advertised) but by being first at the door, and choosing a door near the footbridge steps we were able to get over the bridge and be going onto platform 7 for the Stamford train just as the whistle blew, and the kind dispatcher had the doors opened for us to board. For whatever reason it was still held at the platform for several more minutes, so perhaps the haste was not necessary after all ...

Back in Stamford we took the familiar walk across the Meadows and stopped for tea at the open-air Italian restaurant at the Sheepmarket square, a last little glimpse of Italy as we made our way home. While we had been away there had been a heatwave at home, and we were actually less hot (high twenties Celsius) than England, and specifically Lincolnshire, had been. Now both places were beginning to cool down and autumn looked like it was coming at last!