Slow Trains Around Britain

"Easy-going, discursive and digressive, even those to whom trains are a closed timetable will find this a charming travelogue." - Stuart Maconie

Join travel writer and self-confessed "train nut" Tom Chesshyre as he celebrates 200 years of passenger railways on a zigzagging tour around the UK - where trains (proudly) began

In a small market town in the northeast of England in 1825, something momentous happened: ticket-bearing human beings started moving along wrought-iron tracks on a contraption with engine-powered wheels. The contraption was called a "train". What happened in Darlington, along a 26-mile line to Stockton, would kickstart the worldwide railway revolution. Today, 1.3 million miles of tracks crisscross the planet.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of this groundbreaking event, Tom Chesshyre embarks on a journey around the country that invented trains, taking in many heritage lines maintained by armies of enthusiasts. On a long, circular series of rides beginning and ending in Darlington, Tom enjoys the scenery, seeks out the history, dodges delays (best he can), reports on the current (often shambolic) state of British railways, and lets the rhythm of the clattering tracks reveal what it is about trains - especially wonderful old trains - that we love so much.

Easy-going, discursive and digressive, even those to whom trains are a closed timetable will find this a charming travelogue. Stuart Maconie, author of The Full English: A Journey in Search of a Country and its People
What a pleasure to share this railway odyssey with Tom Chesshyre, whose intrepid wanderings and wry observations present an engaging portrait of Britain in 143 trains. Simon Bradley, rail historian and author of Bradley’s Railway Guide
This is a book to inspire even the most sluggish of armchair travellers. Not only a paeon to the many deep pleasures of train travel, it is full of practical details, hearty enthusiasm and quirky observations. In his 143 circular train visits all over Britain, Tom Chesshyre meets passengers, railway workers, bureaucrats and trainspotters, and listens to their stories of eccentric hobbies as well as their struggles with red-tape and timetabling and making things work. And although he conveys beautifully the romance of the golden age of steam travel, he never wallows in nostalgia, taking an infectious delight, for example, in the many Wetherspoons pubs he finds in railway stations all over the country. Lucy Lethbridge, author of Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves
Seasoned traveller that he is, Chesshyre still manages to give a fresh perspective to every new discovery on his journey round the nooks and crannies of the British rail network. Christian Wolmar, author of Blood, Iron & Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World
A splendid reminder that all (rail) roads lead to Darlington and that, as with food, so with trains: speed can be greatly overrated. Two hundred years on from the dawn of the railway, Tom Chesshyre brilliantly captures the enduring appeal of George Stephenson's world-changing creation. A must-read bicentennial tribute from a self-confessed railway 'nut' who is, mercifully, neither nerd nor trainspotter. Robert Hardman, author of Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story.
Tom Chesshyre has a gift for transforming the seemingly mundane world of trains into a thrilling ride. Slow Trains Around Britain left me itching to grab a ticket and set off on my own cross-country rail adventure. George Mahood, author of Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain

Tom Chesshyre is the author of thirteen travel books. He has travelled more than 40,000 miles around the world for his train books, which have included Slow Trains Around Spain: A 3,000-Mile Adventure on 52 Rides and Ticket to Ride: Around the World on 49 Unusual Train Journeys. His book writing has also taken him across North Africa after the Arab Spring, round the "dark side" of the Maldives on cargo ships, along the length of the River Thames, around the Lake District on a long hike, and on a journey through "unsung Britain" (for To Hull and Back). He worked on the travel desk of The Times for 21 years and is now freelance, contributing to the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The New European magazines. He lives in London.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.