Monthly Report, October 2026

I've been travelling.

Trains on Tracks (Val Camonica)

Trains on Boats (Strait of Messina)

I left Oxford on the Oxford Tube on 1st October and got back on the 31st October (also on the Oxford Tube), having travelled on four buses, four boats, six taxis and 29 trains.

Numbers

Reporting Days: 31

Locations: Italy and Malta

Distance Walked: 269 km

Distance Trained: 5179 km

Distance Driven: 0

Days including a train ride: 16

Part One: Back in Boario

Always good to be back in Boario to spend quality time with the folks at REGEN.  This visit was similar to most of the previous ones - lots of gym time with support from a personal trainer, and lots of time doing exercises to improve my posture and gait - including boxing, nordic walking and Power Moves too.

Brief stop in Turin en route to Boario

Liberty Dome in Boario Terme Park

Old Montecchio Bridge

Pisogne, Lake Iseo

Part Two: South to Sicily

We often add a bit of pure holiday time to the REGEN visits, this time adding on a few days in Sicily (travelling all the way south by train). 

 

Taormina

Smoking, Mount Etna

Greek Theatre

Part Three: Malta

And having come all the way to the southern tip of Italy, why not pop across to see Malta too (to add another European country to the 'visited' list).

Valletta Waterfront

Grand Harbour

Valletta Skyline

Turrets & Forts, Valletta & The Three Cities

Part Four: Back North

Siracusa - Milan - Basel - Strasbourg - Paris - London - Oxford.

Having travelled south slowly, we headed back by a rather more direct route.

Archimedes in Siracusa

Duomo in Turin

Logistics

This trip was a little bit more complex than some of the railway jaunts that I've done recently so I decided to ask Tailor Made Rail to lend a hand.  

It was my first Interrail jaunt since Summer 1982 - back in the 1980s most of the trains, except for couchettes, didn't need pre-booking you could just turn up and travel (as far as I can recall) - nowadays most of the long haul trains need to be reserved.

The itinerary this time between London and northern Italy was essentially the usual 'London - Paris - Turin' option (which is more often than not subject to variation).  This time the closure (for maintenance) of the Frejus rail tunnel meant that we needed to go to Turin via Zurich, Lugano and Milan.

REGEN is in Boario Terme in the Val Camonica, which is easy to get to by train from Turin (changing at Milan and at Brescia).

The journey south from Turin to Taormina in Sicily was by day-trains (with an overnight hotel stop in Naples) and the return north was a direct (18 hour) sleeper from Catania to Milan.  I remembered (from 1982) that the trains between mainland Italy and Sicily went onto a special train-boat, and I guess that I just assumed that either a bridge or a tunnel would have been built at some point in the last 44 years. I was rather pleased to find that the bridge plan hasn't yet come to pass, so the trains still get shunted onto the boat for the 45 minute crossing.

The onward travel to and from Malta was by train (and bus, and taxi) to the port of Pozzallo on Sicily and into the Grand Harbour in Valletta by high-speed catamaran.

Next month

Not so much train travel...