offpeakfang

Liechtensteiner Alps, March 2020 We had originally planned a hiking-through-microstates holiday where we would fly to Ancona, Italy, then go hiking through San Marino. We would then take a sleeper train from Bologna to Salzburg and connect through to Feldkirch, whence we would hike through the whole width of Liechtenstein. That was the plan, until Covid-19 hit Northern Italy and this whole chunk of the journey fell through.  But Liechtenstein and Switzerland were still fine at this point, and I had already booked a day pass for the Swiss railways for the journey, so at the last minute I booked a cheap flight from London to Geneva to spend the day seeing the scenery through Switzerland and Liechtenstein.  Southwold, Suffolk from a light aircraft.  My Saturday morning that week started with leaving home at 7am, and included two local buses, a cross-country flight in a light aircraft, another bus, a train, a rail replacement bus service, the Tube, a visit to the British...

The Côte d'Azur near Cannes from the TGV, March 2020 Having had an interesting morning surrounded by the money of Monaco and having visited two new countries (truncated from the original plan of three), it was time to get back to the UK. The boring way would have been to fly back from Nice, but then I'd get home late in the evening and get back to work the following day. But once I added in the cost of getting an airport coach home, it would have cost very similar to getting back over land by train. Of course I'd choose the latter, and actually see much more of France on the way back. Then there's also the extra bonus of being able to bring wine back from France... Incidentally, had I done this trip  a few years ago , SNCF would have still been running their sleeper train from Nice to Paris - the direct descendent of the former ultra-luxury  Train Bleu , the great symbol of the  belle-epoque  period used by the rich and famous to get to the French Riviera, with...

The Passerelle du Collège looking moody in the evening, Lyon, March 2020. Continuing with my truncated microstates itinerary, my next journey was from Geneva to Monaco. Any form of transport between the two involved changing at Lyon, so I took the Transport Express Régional (TER) from Geneva to Lyon. It runs every few hours with old but comfortable carriages, going along the Rhone valley through the Jura mountains. As a TER service, the tickets cost the same on the day as booked in advance and so I just bought my ticket from the SNCF machine in the France-bound section of the station.  Preparing to leave Geneva station from the customs-controlled platforms.  As Switzerland is part of the Schengen area but not part of the EU customs union, travelling between Switzerland and the EU can involve customs checks but not immigration checks. The trains to France leave from special customs-controlled platforms accessed through a customs control corridor, where the customs officers just...

Loading from the beach at Felixstowe, June 2020 River ferries are a dying breed. A look at the excellent Ordnance Survey map archive on the National Library of Scotland website shows river ferry crossings all over the rivers of East Anglia, but in an age where cars are the most common form of transport, only a few remain for the benefit of walkers and cyclists.  The foot ferry between Felixstowe, Harwich and Shotley was started in its current three-destination form by the Great Eastern Railway in 1912, with its services passing to the London and North Eastern Railway and eventually to British Rail . For much of the 20th century until 1996, the route was served by  MV Brightlingsea, now on the National Historic Ships Register . The Harwich and Dovercourt history website gives lots of history on ferries around the rivers Stour and Orwell.  Today, the Harwich Harbour Ferry is an ex-lifeboat from the former ocean liner Canberra. While it now lands onto the beach at Felixsto...