Europe Revisited

This was going to be the year to spend lots of leisure time in mainland Europe.  

Early on in the year we booked three trips - and then added a fourth - all to various places in the Alps, with the expectation of being a bit pampered and getting the opportunity to wander in the mountains. And we'd decided to do it this year while we still had EHIC cards and travelling was supposed to be easy.

All the trips were booked through Inntravel (lovely folks, highly recommended) - and used a mix of trains and planes - and one flightless trip (to mark a landmark birthday) involved the luxury of the NightJet sleeper trains.  With the benefit of hindsight we were lucky to have managed the first of the trips before travel went completely haywire on the back of Covid-19, and very fortunate that Inntravel were able to refund the various deposits we'd paid for the other three (thank you, Inntravel).

The trip that happened (to Pertisau in Austria) was revisiting a trip from 2016 (first time in the summer, this time in the snow).  And the sleeper-based trip was partly revisiting previous day-train-based trips to Austria and Switzerland - and sleeper journeys in Scandinavia in 2011 and (I'm old enough to have used) a sleeper from Oxford to Edinburgh.  

The theme of revisiting previous travels has been bubbling around in my head for a couple of weeks.  Maybe that's related to the inaccessibility of travel at the moment (at least the lottery of cross-border travel and quarantines), and the hope that eventually it'll be possible to use the words 'travel' and 'relax' in the same sentence (although I fear that the time when these can be linked with 'EHIC' and 'No-Roaming Charges' might have already gone). 

So, let's assume that we are back to 'normal' - where in Europe am I going to revisit?  And in the spirit of my recent Long-Haul blog post, let's assume that I'm going to do the travelling without flying. 

1. Alps / Pertisau

I've already done this by day-trains, so I really would like to re-book the sleeper-based version that didn't work out this summer. This involved a morning Eurostar to Brussels, day-train to Cologne and sleeper to Innsbruck - and gets you into Innsbruck station just after 09:00 the next day, refreshed and ready to head on into the mountains.

Pertisau and the Achensee

Achensee in Winter

2. Lofoten Islands

I've been to the Lofoten Islands twice so far - and the travels were mostly surface based (with only the UK legs involving planes), so next time I'll dump the planes entirely.   The first time was using the train from Oslo to Bergen then the Hurtigruten (the Norwegian coastal steamer) up the coast from Bergen, and the other time using trains from Oslo to Trondheim and then to Bodø before getting a local ferry across the Vestfjord to Lofoten.  The third option for getting to Lofoten involves train journeys up through Sweden, then the 'Iron Ore Line' to Narvik (there's a little bit of rail track into Narvik, completely disconnected from the rest of the Norwegian rail network). All three of these routes (if I'm going to avoid flying) involve starting with the Eurostar - and going via Brussels, Cologne and Hamburg - and probably Copenhagen too.

Typical Lofoten

Narvik Station

3. Denmark / Copenhagen

And since we've figured out that any surface based route to Lofoten involves going through Denmark this would be an excellent place to add back into the future plans list - it's a lovely city to spend time in.

Nyhavn, Copenhagen

4. Iceland

Although there are no ferries from the UK to Scandinavia (dreadful shame), there are ferries between various bits of Scandinavia. There are boats from Denmark to Norway, and there is also a ferry from the north end of Denmark to both the Faroe Islands and the east coast of Iceland. I've been to Iceland a couple of times but only to the area around Reykjavik - it would be good to do a complete lap of the island next time.  The ferry to the Faroes and Iceland is run by the Faroe-based Smyril Line using the MS Norröna, which once upon a time did used to regularly stop in both Bergen and Shetland - and it's high time it did so again!

Ice and Rainbows

The Geysir at Geysir

And Beaches

Norrøna, getting close to Shetland

5. Spain / Madrid

Long ago I did a travel writing course in Cordoba and Seville (yes,  really) - on that occasion I tried to make enough time to do the entire trip by train.  Unfortunately work got in the way and there was only time to fly to Madrid before finishing the journey by train.  Next time I'll avoid the air miles and go via Eurostar to Paris and then onto Barcelona by TGV.

Madrid

Seville

6. Italy / Sicily

And now we're into nostalgia - long, long ago I spent a couple of summers Interrailing around Europe - in 1981 I used trains to explore the mountains in France, Switzerland, Austria and northern Italy, and in 1982 explored Italy from Venice in the north right down to Sicily.  This was in the old days when crossing the Channel meant a boat, TGV was just three letters, sleepers (at the budget I afford) were six-berth compartments and the train to Sicily went on the boat. Trains may be faster now than they were in the early 1980s, but that doesn't always help when you're using the train as an alternative to a hotel night, and you really don't want to arrive in the wee small hours. However the train to Sicily does still go on the boat, and when I do the trip again it'll probably involve going via Paris and Milan before getting the direct train all the way to Palermo (in about 20 hours)

East Coast of Sicily

7. Shetland

But in the short term, it's much more likely that I'll be heading to Shetland - and rather than flying I'll be either driving or getting the train to Aberdeen before the overnight Northlink boat to Lerwick.  

It would be good to try the Caledonian Sleeper to Aberdeen one day, but I'll not be using the Sleeper bus again.

MV Hrossey in Lerwick Harbour

Sumburgh Head at the south end of Shetland