Our slow travel expert picks her favourite off-season trips by train to France, Germany, Austria and Italy. I travel through Europe by rail in all seasons and all weathers, and my more memorable journeys are often in that slack period between Epiphany on 6 January and Easter. Fewer travellers are on the move. Empty trains and plentiful accommodation make a winning combo for those who relish spontaneous travel. And winter weather often lends a special hue to landscape, be it creeping dusk as a slow train rattles through the forests of Bohemia or a sudden snow shower cutting off the far horizons of Flanders.
Interrail passes often offer the best deals for European rail trips. This makes for a fine opportunity to plan a winter adventure across Europe by train, so here are three trips worth making in early Buy a digital Interrail pass during the current promo and it can be used any time in the next 11 months. The Moselle and Rhine rivers enjoy some protection from the worst winter weather and are easy to reach by rail from Britain.
Eurostar will speed you from London to Brussels in two hours. From there, it is a shade over four hours by train via Luxembourg to Trier in Germany. This city by the Moselle makes a mellow base for off-season rambles through vineyards and riverside villages. Bernkastel-Kues and Bullay, respectively reached by bus or train from Trier, are lovely.
Judge for yourself as, after a couple of days in Trier, you take the slow train through the valley to reach the Rhine at Koblenz. A day trip to Bonn is a must. This stretch of the Rhine was in the premier league of destinations for English travellers in the 19th century, who usually toured with their sketch pads, recording Rhenish landscapes with varying degrees of competence.
Not all were as good as JMW Turner, whose sketches of Drachenfels Castle helped inscribe this region on the romantic imagination. Round off your German trip with a night or two in Aachen, one-time hub of the Frankish empire.
