Interrailing for Seniors!

Visiting the oldest city and the biggest city in Switzerland

I have been following Byway Travel on Instagram for a while; their advocacy of slow travel and of the journey being an important component of the travel experience matches my own view very well. As a company they not only promote this philosophy but help people explore it for themselves by selling curated or tailored trips by surface transport, notably rail. If you like the look of some of my adventures and would like help to do this sort of thing yourself, then Byway Travel might be worth a look (no, they are not paying me). My most recent trip to Switzerland could easily have been arranged booking travel from London to Zurich with Eurostar and then using a Swiss travel pass while there and booking my hotels with Booking.com, but we thought it would be interesting to give Byway a try. This adventure is how it worked out (and some of the new experiences began while we were still at home)!

On the Byway website we input the elements we wanted to include, First Class rail travel, three nights in Chur, two in Zürich and one in Paris, and a night in London before departure. They came back with a suggested itinerary which we adjusted slightly and then accepted. This was an interesting experience because by the time we had filled in our details on the booking form one or other part of the itinerary had become unavailable and we were invited to try again. Each time we were offered a different selection of hotels. Now I could not believe that they were all filling up that fast, so after several of these attempts I just went an ahead and booked anyway. It all seemed to work and eventually we received confirmation of our booking and information about tickets and timing. 

This was the next adventure! We were to travel using Interrail passes, and while we had used these before on a Great Rail Journeys escorted tour they were paper passes then and we had a tour manager looking after seat reservations etc.. Now the passes were digital and we were responsible for everything ourselves. I am, as you might guess from the amount I publish on line, quite comfortable with digital media on the whole and I often use digital tickets, held on my iPhone. But the combination of the digital pass and the journeys having been planned by an agency meant that there was plenty of room for error in getting the right journeys on the pass on the right days! Byway even provide a weekly seminar on using the Interrail app alongside their Journey Guide which contains all the information we need for our trip. Those journeys needing reservations, that is the Eurostar journeys from and to London and the TGV Lyria each way between Paris and Zürich, had pdf tickets supplied by Byway which we both printed and filed in iCloud for access on our devices: it was these printed reservations which opened the ticket barriers at St Pancras and Gare de Lyon. We attended the seminar and all was ready for departure. As we were travelling to London one day before our first international train, we had to buy tickets for that part of the trip, but we were to return home from Paris in one day which ment that our Interrail passes would cover the UK journey as well: that’s the way Interrail works!

And so we were off! It had been a while since our last international adventure and it was great to be setting out again. A normal Friday morning in Stamford, although no need to buy anything from the market, which was just as well because the Mid-Lent Fair made it a pretty minimal market. We did join the ecumenical Lent Lunch and then wheeled our cases down to the station to take a train to Peterborough for a simple connection to London, First Class on LNER. We did not need the rather delicious-looking meal on offer as we had dinner to come, but we had a drink and a biscuit, keeping the crisps for later.

Byway had booked us a stay at a Point A hotel in Grays Inn Road. We had never stayed in a Point A before, always tending to go for Premier Inn, and we were very impressed. Next time we need a stay in London I’ll see how the cost compares and will definitely consider it. We had been invited to our son and his family for dinner and set off there after checking in, then returned for a good night’s sleep and a good continental breakfast before walking down to St Pancras International station to check in for Eurostar. With dire warnings about queues and delays we had allowed far too long for the formalities which were over as quickly as ever, and we did not even need breakfast to pass the time! We did eventually have coffee (we don’t rate the coffee served on Eurostar trains, not as good as LNER!) and then, still with thirty minutes to go, boarding began. '

As we have discovered before, the light meal served on Eurostar trains from mid-morning is lunch, so, soon after breakfast we were eating our light lunch with the Eurostar signature refrigerated cutlery! (The meals are made up in advance on trays complete with napkin, cutlery, glass and cup and the whole trolley is kept chilled so everything is cold. I put the wrapped butter pat in my pocket to warm up …) The journey to Paris was uneventful - at least it was for those of us who have been this way so often: if you’re new to it the transit under the sea is probably quite an event! We were in coach 2 and the corollary of having a short walk in London to join the train was a long walk in Paris to leave the train. I had an electronic Metro ticket on my iPhone to use in Paris but my wife had none and try as we might we were unable to add one (even though at one stage the app did take some money), so at Gare du Nord we enquired about it and could not understand the explanation. She was sold a Navigo card (€2) and a single ticket loaded onto it (the normal €2.55 fare) I bought the same, ready for the journey home; I had thought that when we installed the Île-de-France de France app last year we were set up for easy purchase of Metro tickets, but the Paris Metro remains a mystery!

We do not like the experience of using the RER to Gare de Lyon even though it is quick and convenient, but we had time in hand (I think Byway are set up to help people migrate from flying to rail and go out of their way to make it stress-free!), so we went by normal Metro through to Gare d’Austerlitz, just across the river, and walked from there. We had coffee at the station and bought water to take with us and then boarded the TGV Lyria bound for Zürich where we were to change trains for Chur. We had First Class tickets on our Interrail apps and printed reservations for upper-deck seats. This was a great journey: no catering included but an excellent buffet from which we enjoyed a good salad dinner.

At Zürich we had about half an hour before our connecting train to Chur: this was a station we’d get to know in a few days’ time. By now it was dark, so the hour’s ride to Chur was not its usual scenic self, but the train was swift and comfortable and we were soon walking up Bahnhofstrasse towards the Hotel Stern where we had first stayed twelve year earlier on our first Great Rail Journeys escorted tour.

We checked in and went straight to bed, well after our usual bed-time, both excited and tired.

Our first day in Chur was Sunday, and although we had thought of attending church, circumstances were such that we changed our minds, not only because were we still recovering from the late night, but the choice of church was a bit problematic. St Martin's, the same dedication as our church at home, might have been good, but it is protestant, and Swiss protestantism is a bit extreme and I was not at all sure we'd have a clue what was going on. There is also the Roma Catholic cathedral and although we'd recognise the service (for it would be similar to our Church of England liturgy) the sermon in German would be opaque to me and technically we would not be welcome at holy communion. So a short lie-in and a slow start to the day prevailed.

At the hotel reception we picked up our tourist passes for the city, complimentary to hotel guests and covering free museum admissions and local buses. We had printed a city map before we left home and had a good idea of what we would do, starting with the Museum  where we learnt a lot about the history of the city and the canton. Chur qualifies as the oldest city in Switzerland because it was the first town to have a bishop appointed to it, and therefore the earliest to have a cathedral. There was a great view over the city from the top floor of the museum, and a decent cup of coffee to be had from the reception.

We had a stroll around the city, punctuated by a stop for beer outside a bar in the old part of the city centre - typically Swiss with outside tables supplied with blankets, but in the sunshine it was quite warm enough not to need these.

From the old city we strolled out along the riverside and then back towards the rail station area where we planned some of the following day's activities and then visited the city's natural history museum.

After a brief history of every beast known in Graubünden we went for a walk around the city centre following a published trail and found the "Chur Foot," a standard measure set into the wall of the town hall. The Foot is a familiar measure to us as British citizens but will be less familiar to locals these days!

We gradually made our way back to our hotel where we had dinner in the informal setting of a lounge bar trying some of the local Graubündner dishes on offer.

On Monday morning our plan was to complete our travel over every part of the RhätischeBahn by travelling up to Arosa on the line from Chur. I did not really know what to expect: the line began as a separate tramway, much like the Bernina Line further south, and was acquired by the RhB and absorbed into its network, and the destination was completely unknown to us (except that it was uphill!). These days the services are operated by Allegra electric multiple units towing a handful of older passenger cars and a driving trailer to enable them to work in either direction without shunting after each turn.

Our journey to Arosa began at 10:08 at the dedicated Arosa platforms at the front of Chur station, outside the main SBB/RhB building, with day return tickets bought from the station ticket office; our Interrail Passes were not set up for enough travel days to cover that day. The journey begins very much like a tram ride through the streets of Chur: once off the station forecourt we followed very much the route we had walked along the riverside the previous day. It begins as double track and we're riding on the same side of the road as the other vehicles, then after it singles out we are on the right-hand side which feels OK going this way, still with the traffic, but this is no tram: it is a train of six or seven full-length coaches! It is the same feeling you get in Tirano where the Bernina Express goes through the streets for a short distance. Eventually, well outside the town, and after an intermediate station in the street, the road and the railway do part company and we climb steeply into the mountains. 

Gradually we saw more and more snow on the ground and in the trees and by the time the train arrived in Arosa there was thick snow on the ground and a frozen lake covered with snow. As we walked around the town a few snowflakes began to fall. We called at a small café for coffee and nusstorte and then went for a walk around the lake, by which time there was a light, steady snow shower. It was quite magical. Arosa is a popular place for skiing, which is not something I had realised until I got there. We took the next train back at far as an intermediate stop at Langweis where I took a few photographs and made some notes for the intermediate station on my model railway. 

From Langweis there is a great view of the Langweis viaduct and a small display in the station about its construction. For me, though, much of the interest was in the way the station is used: the nearest track to the building is a siding and you have to walk over the siding (on a proper crossing) to the hard standing which passes for a platform (as at many minor Rhâtischebahn stations), but when our train arrived there we had to pass a late-running train on its way to Arosa, and when we descended it was all the way down onto the gravel ballast: there was no platform at all there! My model station Mitteldorf will definitely be built this way, complete with level crossing right through the station!

We took the next train down to Chur and Alison spent the rest of the afternoon shopping, having seen some things while exploring the preceding day. Dinner was again in the lounge bar at Hotel Stern.

On Tuesday morning we validated our tickets on the Interrail app and left Chur for Zürich, Switzerland's largest city (although very modest by British standards), and we were able to enjoy the scenery we had missed on our way there by night on Saturday. We arrived in Zürich mid-morning and decided to go straight on to Luzern for the day, leaving our exploration of Zürich for the following day. Our hotel was some distance from the station here, so we kept our luggage with us. We each had just one  modest-sized wheeled suitcase and these were no burden. From the station in Luzern we walked along the river and crossed one of the famous wooden bridges - not the shortest way across but it's what you have to do as a tourist! I am not ashamed to be a tourist: this trip was definitely a tour. As this was a day when we were travelling on our Interrail passes, we were able to include the trains to and from Luzern on our passes by searching for the trains and adding the tickets to the pass - so we were travelling First Class on a short journey which we'd never do if we were buying tickets. We had our lunch in Luzern at Wirtshaus Taube, a restaurant we had identified from Trip Advisor and made this our main meal of the day, the usual filling Swiss delicious-but-not-slimming meal that keeps you going for the whole day.

We returned to Zürich in peak travel time and avoided a crowded four-coach train in favour of the less-crowded eight-coach one that left a few minutes later. The we walked to the hotel - this was interesting, along a river much of the way, but involved quite a climb and in retrospect was a mistake. The trams were cheap and frequent so for the rest of our short stay we used these in both directions, having discovered that three tram routes stop right outside the hotel and one route just one block away in the next street. We checked in and had a good night's sleep ready for the next day's adventures.

Wednesday was our full day in Zürich and we explored the streets in the morning, roughly following a city trail we had found and incorporating a visit to the Globus department store where we bought a souvenir glass to replace one we had bought in Interlaken a couple of years before and had been dropped and broken at home. Our trail took us to streets of interesting old buildings and streetscapes, as well as through the world-famous financial district, home of the "Gnomes of Zürich".

After a morning's exploration we made our way to the Landesmuseum for lunch and afternoon's study of Swiss history.

We had earlier identified the restaurant at the Hotel Adler for dinner and booked a table, so we returned there at the end of the day and then took a tram back to our hotel. The weather had varied throughout the day, but the increasingly frequent rain showers in the afternoon had given way to a dry evening and nothing spoilt our enjoyment of this great city. After a good night's sleep and a decent breakfast we were ready for another country in the morning.

We left for Paris late morning on Thursday and had our coffee at Zürich main station while waiting for our train to be announced. There is a myth in Britain that Swiss railways always run to time and are never cancelled, but this just isn't true. On our many visits ti Switzerland we have found the railways to be, yes, a bit better than ours, but not perfect. Breakdowns and trespassers can happen anywhere and Switzerland is not immune. International trains to and through Switzerland are also affected, of course, and contrary to popular belief at home, snow in Switzerland does affect the running of trains and the condition of the roads. This morning the departure board showed several trains delayed and one cancelled, but not our 11:34 departure for Paris, the usual TGV Lyria, operated jointly by the Swiss and French national railways.

Arriving at Gare de Lyon, we made our way to our hotel, the Sleeping Belle, and then set out for a walk through the city, following the River Seine and passing across the Île de la Cité and on the the now-open Cathedral of Notre Dame (although we did not visit on this occasion). We then made our way back towards our hotel looking for somewhere to have dinner, settling on a steak at an art deco themed restaurant near to the Gare de Lyon.

Breakfast on Friday morning was at our hotel and then we made our way to Gare du Nord for the train back to London and thence home. We had all morning and although we had Metro passes on our iPhones we decided to walk. This whole trip had been about "slow travel" and this would be a way to enjoy Paris while on our way home. With wheeled suitcases this really is not a hard thing to do and the walk was very pleasant.

At Gare du Nord check-in for our train to London was just beginning and when the attendant controlling the queue for check-in saw my Sunflower lanyard she beckoned us across the priority queue normally reserved for Premier Class travellers and made sure that we sped through check-in: this was very welcome as although I can walk any distance, more or less, I do find standing and shuffling a bit hard and this was largely avoided. I had my usual difficulty with the passport machines and had to have mine checked manually at the French passport control. The we had a short wait with a cup of tea before boarding the train and speeding across to London. We were on our way home with a short wait at Kings Cross, our travel from London to Stamford covered this time by our Interrail passes as it was an international travel day on them. We arrived home late afternoon and had plenty of time to unpack and read our mail.

Full video of the whole trip is now here, and on my YouTube Channel, @Marks_Rail_Adventures

It had been a great break, and now my attention turned to the final preparations for exhibiting my model railway at the forthcoming Stamford Model Railway Show. No shortage of things to do in retirement!

Lincoln by LNER

I have been waiting all my life for this level of service

(Still not perfect, but very useable and very pleasant)

I had another trip to make to Lincoln, and as I had some say in the time of the meeting I was able to ensure that it would be both convenient for rail travel and that the day could proceed at a reasonably leisurely pace as befits my status as a retired person! Better still, I could choose my travel times in the hope that I’d be using LNER’s “Azuma” inter-city trains in both directions between Peterborough and Lincoln, with reasonable connections from and to my home in Stamford at both ends of the day. It worked like a dream …

I took the 09:03 from Stamford on a lovely sunny morning, really looking forward to a good trip. By way of a bonus, the train was one of Cross Country’s recently refurbished Turbostar units (this one in Pride livery), of which I think they only have two so far. Even more comfortable! It was on time and although busy was not too busy and it was easy to find a seat. At Peterborough the northbound main line trains leave from platforms 4 or 5 where there is a handy café and I bought coffee there, but the weather being so splendid I drank it outside on the platform while I waited for my train to Lincoln which was again on time, a few minutes later. On board in standard class I plugged in my computer and did the final preparation for my meeting. LNER trains to and from Lincoln are normally five-coach sets and for some reason always stop at the forward end of the platform, the north end going north. Five coaches is plenty for this service and I had a large table to myself for my work. 

Things started to feel wrong as the train slowed down at Tallington and didn’t really get going again. Eventually the train stopped and the Train Manager announced that a train ahead of us had broken down at Grantham and that we were fifth in a queue behind it - the line is only double track there and overtaking is not really an option. The upside of being fifth, though, is that the broken-down train was well on the way to being moved by the time my train actually stopped, so quite soon after that we drew into Grantham station about twenty minutes down. Once away from Grantham we were back to normal, although we never made up more than a minute or two of the lost time. At Newark Northgate the pantograph was lowered and the diesel engines under the floor were started in order to take the train on to Lincoln on the unelectrified line, which is also considerably slower than the East Coast Main Line, although there were no more stops. The Cathedral appears on the right hand side of the train on approach to the city and then swings around to the left as the train turns to make the approach into Lincoln station.

Even though the train was delayed, I had plenty of time in hand and made my way over to Lincoln Bus Station to take a bus up the hill - if I am very short of time I take a taxi, but at my age buses are free of charge in England so I use them when I can (they're cheaper than taxis for anyone travelling alone or in pairs anyway). I had plenty of time to prepare for my meeting, which went very well and very swiftly so it was clear that I would indeed be able to get my planned LNER train back to Peterborough for a decent connection home to Stamford.

I walked back down the hill to the station, always good to do. A lovely afternoon with my scarf packed away. It felt very much like Spring, considering that we were still in February. At Lincoln station I bought some lunch from the Costa Coffee Shop: I had been going to eat this at a table in the café but my train was already at the platform with its doors unlocked, so I made my over to the platform, found a table and ate the lunch in comfort there while I waited for departure. 

The journey back was without incident and after writing up the notes of the meeting and sending them out to the others I was on time at Peterborough, where there was a short wait, sitting outside in the warm sunshine, before taking the on-time train to Stamford.

It had been, as I had hoped, a lovely day for travel. I had got some work done, I did some gazing out at the passing scenery and I had enough exercise walking through Stamford and down through Lincoln even though I needed to ride up the hill in Lincoln. Anyone who thinks Lincolnshire is flat has never been to Lincoln (or Grantham, or Stamford, come to that)! And if you've never been to Lincoln you are missing a lot: a castle, one of the world's best cathedrals, some good shopping and some great bars and restaurants. And, as you see, it's easier than ever now to get there by train. East Midlands Railway runs hourly services from Nottingham and through the county of Lincolnshire from Peterborough, and LNER run five or six times a day from London on the route I used for this trip.

It's Been a Busy Few Days

 Booking trips for 2026

As you'll have seen if following this blog, I did have some things booked for this year, but now I have quite a bit more! I have just booked with Great Rail Journeys for a few days on the Isle of Man, for example. Never been there before and the trip includes most of what I want to do - with enough free time to fit in the rest. On the way I can stay at the wonderful Midland Hotel in Morecambe for a couple of nights, another thing I've been wanting to do since seeing it restored a few years ago.

I have also booked my first trip with Byway Travel, to Chur and Zurich in Switzerland, who put together an itinerary fitting (more or less) my own spec. I await the tickets, which are all electronic and mostly done using an Interrail Pass, I understand. It all looks a bit complicated and although I have read the Byway and the Interrail websites it is hard to grasp how it works until the final confirmation from Byway arrives with all the details.

I have also been making any outstanding hotel and train bookings for trips already booked, as far as I can: some of the train tickets are not on sale yet. All this can be quite complex, ensuring there are no gaps requiring us to buy expensive tickets en route or end up with nowhere to stay one night. Meanwhile travel insurance has been renewed, and with all my medical conditions that took a while as well!

Theatre tickets have just arrived for this summer's visit to Chichester to see our friends, after which we'll visit Hastings which I have only ever seen briefly from a car before, so that will be interesting.

Meanwhile, I think we're all set for Scandinavia, Cornwall and Edinburgh (not all in one trip!) during the year.