the times Saturday December 18 2021
Travel 35
veering inland through woodland and
farmland towards Arthur’s Seat. You just
wish it could all roll past a little slower.
Stay at the Balmoral above Edinburgh
Waverley station.
Details Room-only doubles from £295
(roccofortehotels.com)
Exeter to Barnstaple
The only British railway line named after
an otter, the Tarka Line leads north from
Exeter, puttering at snail’s pace through
gently contoured hills to the north
Devon coast. There’s more than a
whiff of pre-Beeching nostalgia on this
magical route: services chunter past
Adlestrop-like stations, ruddy country
inns, parish churches and single-track
sections where overgrown foliage
thwacks the carriages in high summer.
At Barnstaple you’re just a (very wiggly)
bus journey away from the golden sands
of Woolacombe and Croyde. Stay at
Watersmeet Hotel in Woolacombe.
Details B&B doubles from £150
(watersmeethotel.co.uk)
Shrewsbury to Swansea
The Heart of Wales Line is a beauty of
a branch line that Beeching couldn’t
quite kill off — pacing lush river valleys
between the Brecon Beacons and the
Cambrian Mountains. Departing from
Shrewsbury’s mock-Tudor station,
passengers pass through the territory
of the Marcher Lords in Knighton (the
town is in Wales, but the station is in
England). Thereafter the ride has
moments of rapturous loveliness: the
castellated viaduct at Knucklas and
the curving spans at Cynghordy, the
cavernous tunnels that burrow under
the Black Mountain and the summit of
Sugar Loaf in Carmarthenshire — a
grassy rise with views to match its
namesake in Rio. Stay at the Grand
Hotel right by Swansea station.
Details Room-only doubles from £50
(thegrandhotelswansea.co.uk)Pwllheli to Machynlleth
Mighty mountains, forbidding castlesservices race the tides of the Hayle
Estuary and pass the turquoise shallows
at Carbis Bay before making a dramatic
approach to St Ives along granite
clifftops. Stay at Trevose Harbour House
in St Ives.
Details B&B doubles from £440
for two nights (minimum stay;
trevosehouse.co.uk)Settle to
Carlisle
Northern England
is of course the
spiritual home of
railways — and
no lines are more
revered up here
than the Settle-
Carlisle railway.
Trains follow
the spine of the
Pennines northward,
ploughing through the
Dales, rattling across the
majestic Ribblehead Viaduct
and beneath the holy trinity of Yorkshire
peaks: Ingleborough, Whernside and
Pen-y-Ghent. Passengers might feel
their ears go pop at Dent — the highest
operational station on the British
network — before the line swerves amid
moorlands and Cumbrian fells, ending
in the great Gothic station at Carlisle.
Stay at the Halston in Carlisle.
Details Room-only doubles from £140
(thehalston.com)and the company of the churning sea —
the Cambrian Coast Line offers a wild,
poetic ride along the Welsh shore.
Setting out from the seaside town of
Pwllheli, trains encounter the puffing
steam engines of the Ffestiniog Railway
at Porthmadog, with views to
Portmeirion on the opposite shore of
the Dwyryd Estuary soon after.
South of Harlech Castle,
trains skirt the sea and
are sometimes hit by
stray waves, passing
too under Cader
Idris, Wales’s great
poetic mountain.
Disembark into
a cloud of
incense in the
hippy haven of
Machynlleth. Stay
at swish Ynyshir in
Machynlleth.
Details Half-board
doubles from £420pp
(ynyshir.co.uk)St Erth to St Ives
St Ives station sits at the far frontier of
the British railway network — with an
unassuming platform set high over a
crescent of Cornish sand. To get there,
hop off the mainline at St Erth and
change for the St Ives Bay Line: a
four-mile stretch of single-track railway
where trains shuttle up and down in
about 12 minutes. What it lacks in scale
it makes up for with superlative scenery:Settle
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ploughin
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andbeneath the holy trinastle,
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gpptIves
Conwy Castle, north WalesBull Inn, Totnes, DevonDawlish, south DevonALAMY; RACHEL HOILE PHOTOGRAPHYmost scenic railway journeys
Ribblehead Viaduct, North Yorkshire