Six of Europe's Best Slow, Scenic Rail Journeys

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Editor's Note: European river cruises seem to be the latest "must do" travel craze. While they eliminate the hassles of managing luggage over multiple days, they can be expensive. There are other ways to see Europe. A recent article in The Guardian by Nicky Gardiner highlights six rail journeys that may provide a good alliterative to a river cruises. Rather than multi-day tours, most are single day excursions. Following is a quick excerpt that lists the journeys, with a link at the bottom of the page where you can view the full article, with pictures, more details, and links to booking information.

Few pleasures compete with relaxing on a comfortable train and watching the landscape slip by beyond the window. Here are six of my favourite routes, ranging from under four to over nine hours, so easily completed in a day. Interrail passes are valid on all these journeys, although a small supplement (€1.50 to €4) is payable by passholders on the French, Polish and Spanish routes.

Cologne to Basel

Departs 10.53 from Cologne (daily)
Journey time 4h 43m (318 miles)
Fare Discount from €29.90, full €135

Rail travellers heading south from the German Rhineland to the Alps are spoilt for choice. Most opt for high-speed trains on new-build lines that defy the warp and weft of the land. But it’s more interesting to take the traditional route south, following the classic Rhine gorge railway upstream from Koblenz.

Zurich to Graz

Departs 08.40 from Zurich (daily)
Journey time 9hr 34min (451 miles)
Fare Discount from €33.10, full €111.50

Pressed for my favourite north-south route through the Alps, I’d opt for the Bernina Railway from St Moritz in the Engadin region of Switzerland to Tirano in Italy. But for longer Alpine journeys, look for east-west routes; my top choice is the daily Transalpin train from Zurich to the Austrian city of Graz.

Dublin to Tralee

Departs 08.30 from Dublin Heuston (direct train Sundays only)
Journey time 3hr 52min (208 miles)
Fare Discount from €26.99, full €33.99

Dublin’s Heuston station, a handsome building in Corinthian style, is most inviting on a quiet Sunday morning. I pick up coffee and breakfast as there’s no catering on the 8.30am to County Kerry. It’s the only train of the week from Dublin giving a lunchtime arrival in Killarney and Tralee in Ireland’s south-west. The Dublin station is named after Sean Heuston, the Irish republican hero executed by the British in May 1916 at Kilmainham Gaol, which is just to the left as our train sets off from Heuston station.

Béziers to Clermont-Ferrand

Departs 08.30 from Dublin Heuston (direct train Sundays only)
Journey time 3hr 52min (208 miles)
Fare Discount from €26.99, full €33.99
Buy Irish Rail

Dublin’s Heuston station, a handsome building in Corinthian style, is most inviting on a quiet Sunday morning. I pick up coffee and breakfast as there’s no catering on the 8.30am to County Kerry. It’s the only train of the week from Dublin giving a lunchtime arrival in Killarney and Tralee in Ireland’s south-west. The Dublin station is named after Sean Heuston, the Irish republican hero executed by the British in May 1916 at Kilmainham Gaol, which is just to the left as our train sets off from Heuston station.

Béziers to Clermont-Ferrand

Leaves: 07.35 from Warsaw (daily)
Journey time 6hr 6min (228 miles)
Fare €20

Mockava is a wee place of no more than 100 souls, just over the Polish border. There wasn’t a direct train from Warsaw to Lithuania for a decade, so the launch last month of a once-daily intercity from the Polish capital to Mockava came as a surprise. The train is called the Ha?cza, after a river and lake in north-east Poland.

It is a journey through wistfully beautiful landscapes, passing villages and towns that reflect the cultural mosaic of the Polish-Lithuanian borderlands: old Jewish shtetls, wooden churches which can be Roman Catholic, Greek-Catholic or Orthodox, and Baltic Tatar communities with small surviving Muslim minorities.

Madrid to Seville

Departs 10.55 from Madrid (daily)
Journey time 8hr 3min (403 miles)
Fare €50.70
Buy Renfe

The fastest Spanish high-speed trains dash nonstop between these two cities in just 2½ hours. But there’s a fine alternative for slow travellers. A daily Media Distancia (MD) train takes a deeply rural, very pretty route to Seville. This daily regional service slips out of the underground suburban platforms at Madrid Atocha and tracks west through the Extremadura region, affording good views of the Tajo and Guadiana valleys before cutting south through the Sierra Morena to reach Seville.

I rate the final three hours of the trip as one of the finest Iberian train rides. For an overnight stop, opt for the walled city of Cáceres – a fine place for casual wandering – before continuing to Seville the following afternoon.

Nicky Gardner is an author and co-editor of Hidden Europe magazine

Read the full article, with additional picutres, detials, and links to booking ifnformation.