Looking for a small village on a train line.

I mentioned St Albans on another thread. I really liked going there for a day, but there was a lot I did not see.

If you want to take the train, it's about 25 minutes from St Pancras. However, it's more efficient to take the bus from Heathrow Airport most likely, which takes about 60-90 minutes.
http://www.londonbusroutes.net/times/724.htm
http://www.nationalexpress.com/

I haven't done the bus ride personally.

Since you have stayed at Elybefore, perhaps you have spent time in East Anglia already. Not sure about your interests, last month, from Heathrow,tube to San Prancas, I took train to Matlock Bath(about 3-4 hours), stayed one week for walking around Peak Disctrict. But probably it would be too cold in the winter.

Not a town or village,but Linclon is on my list for visiting this December for the abbeies/churches nearby. I visited the cathedral once before,really enjoyed it.

Norwich is nice - 2hrs on the train. You can then easily get links up North. Lots to see, good shopping, good food and nice people.

you could head south to Brighton, or south-east to Sevenoaks, tunbridge Wells, or Rye.

depending on your time of arrival, you might find some Christmas concerts in a cathedral city like Canterbury, or Salisbury or Winchester.

regards, ann

I can't see how anyone can define Lincoln, Norwich or York as "a smaller village/town".

So what IS your definition, what do you mean by 'winter' and does your 2-3 hrs include tube/coach time? If it does, you're limited to a max 90 min train journey from Reading, Euston, Marylebone, KX/St P or Liverpool St

Incidentally, why your anti-Deep South prejudice? If York meets your brief, Winchester, Salisbury and Chichester would be perfect

PS: Would your attitude to the Deep South change if you remember that High Speed trains are now operating from St Pancras to Kent? www.southeasternrailway.co.uk

So you can get from LHR to Canterbury in two hours - and back to St Pancras/KX in under an hour for a train to te NE/E Midlands

Regarding the South. I have found most towns to be much more full of tourist than the North during February.

I have found that I can get to a train station, from Heathrow, by 3:00/3:30. Last year I spend two nights in North Berwick after a flight to Edinburgh. Then St. Bees. These are what I mean by smaller towns. York was a base to visit Eden Camp, Whitby and Shildon. In the past I have done many places in the Southern area including Wool to visit the tank museum. Done Canterbury, Brighton, Exeter, Portsmouth, Whistable, and many others.

Stamford, maybe? North, small-ish, very attractive stone buildings, Rutland water . . .

Do you plan to go into London to catch a train? If not one of the easiest trips would be to take the bus to Oxford and then a bus to Woodstock. Woodstock would meet your requirements, I just don't know how much bus travel you want to do.

Salisbury would be a good choice too as it has good service to Reading which will get you northbound. The same is true of Winchester.You might also have a look at schedules for Evesham and Worcester.

East Anglia covers a large area and has very differing landscapes. How about Bury St Edmunds (my home town although I now live in North Yorkshire). 'Bury' as it is known locally (and not to be confused with the Bury in Lancashire) is a lovely small market town with lots of character, never troubled by tourists and with much to enjoy. An ancient ruined abbey, wonderful Cathedral, network of medieval streets, Georgian theatre, etc etc.
www.moreheart.info
15 mins away by train is Newmarket (National Stud etc) and a further 15 mins in the same direction is Cambridge.

If trains are essential, then Woodstock's out.

Great Malvern's just inside your isochrone, even using the Heathrow Connect into Paddington, and probably JUST small enough. Everywhere else on that line is either too big - Worcester and Oxford - too nothingy (Evesham) or too deficient in restaurants (Charlbury, but it's the best pub centre for its size anywhere in the universe, two do sell reasonable meals, and both of them have great bedrooms). On other lines, Stamford and Morgana's Bury are the only places so far suggested that qualify on size and train access.

Colchester (England's oldest town) might work, though Bury's a better place for trains elsewhere.

Others, maybe: Warwick (just), Leamington Spa - though it's scraping the barrel a bit, because it's a bit yukky IMHO.

It's not that easy. I'd think again about your anti-Deep South bias. Dorchester (Dorset) gets practically no tourists even in the middle of summer, for example. And the Flannerpooch gives Maiden Castle, on its outskirts, 11.5/10 as a place for walks.

Sorry, meant to add another bit of info about Bury St Edmunds. There's a tiny brewery there which does Bed and Breakfast in the adjoining courtyard.
www.oldcannonbrewery.co.uk
It's just a few mins walk from the station (but uphill, it's a myth that Suffolk is flat).
The Brewery has a small restaurant attached to it which I absolutely love, and always eat out there when I return home. It does lots of beer related dishes - Lowestoft cod in beer batter, sausages in Gunner's Daughter gravy, that sort of thing. More info here.
www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g186383-d919347-Reviews-Old_Cannon_Brewery-Bury_St_Edmunds_Suffolk_East_Anglia_England.html

whilst I will be disappointed if you don't make it this far, you're getting great advice.

This is a tough question, especially as I presume you will want to move on by train from wherever you have spent the two days.

Sherborne in Dorset is a possibility, but you would probably then have to come back on yourself to go further. Warwick might be better, or perhaps Banbury. Bradford on Avon, near Bath, is not on a direct train line, but is a pleasant place to stay and wander around. The problem is that, these days, not many villages or small towns have local stations.

Dorchester (Dorset) gets practically no tourists even in the middle of summer, >>>>

Oh it does you know. It really does. But only when it rains. All the trippers abandon Weymouth and come into to Dorchester for the museums.

Incidentally, if you like military museums Dorchester has a corker in the old castle:

http://www.keepmilitarymuseum.org/

The big downside to Dorchester is all the stuff dedicated to Thomas Chuffing Hardy (second only to Jane Bloody Austen in the list of CW hates).

You could also go and visit my mum who lives in Poundbury (which is a interesting place - it's run by the Prince of Wales and is built to his rather idiosyncratic ideas)

http://www.duchyofcornwall.org/designanddevelopment_poundbury.htm

Here, courtesy of Flanders and Swann, are villages that you can no longer reach by train.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6OHD2uCpfU&feature=player_embedded#

"The problem is that, these days, not many villages or small towns have local stations"

Oh, come on.

Scarcely a single station in Britain has closed since 1970. A few of us are ancient enough to have used lines that aren't there any more - but for most people in Britain there are more stations open now than there were when they were born .

The problem with Roger's request isn't a shortage of stations in villages and small towns (there are hundreds - and not a single solitary one of them has faced a possibility of closure for decades). It's that he's set a max of 180 mins, Heathrow's a rotten place to start an all-rail journey, and he's ruled out southern England.

Cheltenham Spa, though not a small village or town, is a sweet regional town not far by rail from Heathrow

Roger also uses a railpass i believe and keep in mind that these are valid i believe on the Railbus to Watford Junction, from Heathrow - so even a town like Hatfield (Hatfield House) is within reach.

Well, some commuter lines have stations in villages and there are some odd lines like Oxford to Worcester, Bristol to Weymouth, and the Central Wales line which still have stations in some fairly small places. On the main lines out of London, however, the stations in small towns and villages were mostly closed well before 1970. Take a look at the Great Western main line. There are no longer stations at Langport, Somerton, Wantage, Corsham or Chipping Sodbury, and precious few trains from London stop at Frome and none at Bruton, although trains wizz past all these places at regular intervals.

Come on Flanner, take a look at any railway atlas published in the 1950s and you will see lots of village stations that no longer exist.

Thanks for all of the suggestions. To clarify, after my first two nights I will be off for a night or two for about 11 days. Not to visit castles or manors, just smallish places with perhaps a military or rail museum worth spending an hour or two.

Yes to a rail pass. Usually I validate it at Heathrow and once in London jump on the next train to where ever. Often, I do a shorter train trip the second day to see something of interest.

It looks like I could spend a couple of days in Chester, too large, but central to a day trip to Liverpool to visit the docks and Manchester for a visit to the IWM North.

Up to Aberdeen and then train/bus to Ullapool. Very possible that I will make my way South of London nd then to London for a night.

chester is also a great base from which to hop into North Wales - Mount Snowdon Railway - ever taken it - steam train goes up a barren pile to the highest summit in England i guess (or south England?) or to Llandudnot and the Great Orme - here a vintage tram takes you up to the top of the famous sheep- and goat-ful Great Orme, for vistas miles around. Can stop at Conwy, a really authentic village and one of the nicest ones in the U.K. i've seen - the ultimate walled medieval-looking town with its own great castle - the station is right inside the walls.

Chartley - there never was a station at Wantage. It had a tramline from Oxford, but never a railway line.

Palenque, did Conwy and found it to be a highlight.

hetismij - I suppose I should have written "Wantage Road", rather than "Wantage". Not quite as bad as those who write "Liverpool" when they mean "Liverpool Street".

All the intermediate stations between Didcot and Swindon were closed in 1964 - within living memory for some of us.

rogeruktm,

You haven't given us a full itinerary yet, but I guess it's still early planning. By any chance will you be going through Rannoch Moor? I recommended The Rannoch Moor Hotel for your last trip, but I believe they were closed when you planned to be there. Any chance of a stop this trip? It is a special place IMO. There are also some small villages on the train route from Inverness to Thurso (and through out the Highlands) that might appeal.

"It looks like I could spend a couple of days in Chester"

In which case see whether Ledbury fits your timetable for your recovery base. You'll then be able to get the train onwards, changing at Hereford and Shrewsbury, up The Marches.

" a day trip to Liverpool to visit the docks "
Prepare yourself for a MAJOR letdown. Apart from a containerport 10 miles downstream, what were once the docks are now just one dirty great huge Victorian shopping centre, and a few mournful quays with great dumps of scrap machinery off to China. Liverpool's infinitely varied attractions don't include docks any more.

Rogeruk, don't have anything to add to the many good suggestions above but am watching this thread as this is exactly what I enjoy doing also in winter, wandering by rail through small towns and villages.

flanneruk - Port Sunlight (perhaps ill-named one time factory town i think but with impressive relics from its heydey?) and envrions has always been on my radar - do they count as Liverpool docks?

How's about BARNSTAPLE or EXMOUTH?

sorry should have added the railway line between the 2 has some nice villages to visit.

"Port Sunlight (perhaps ill-named one time factory town i think but with impressive relics from its heydey?)"

Is not a port. Or a dock, though Bromborough dock was built on the river to service it, and there's an inlet up to the old factory.

It's an inland Model Village, built (on the model of many of Britain's other Model Villages, from New Lanark through Welwyn Garden City to Bournville) to house company employees (in this case working for Unilever, one of whose original products was Sunlight Soap)

There are no "relics from its heyday". It does have an art gallery in the middle with the Unilever founder's (and world's best,depending on whether Andrew Lloyd Webber's buying or selling this week) collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. The gallery is surrounded by very pleasant houses which are now much sought after and a few nice village greens: it feels more like a thriving, if over-managed and over-designed, Cotswold town than a monument to dead industry.

It's also the site of Ringo's first appearance with the Beatles.

Infinitely nicer and quirkier than the dull suburbs of Cincinnati, where employees of Unilever's rival, P&G, toil with teutonic predictability. The First Flanner, BTW, married his childhood sweetheart (who was in service for a Big Soap) a mile or so down the road.

thanks flanner for that.

And for villages or smaller towns accessible by train i enjoyed de-training at, on the East Coast mainline to Edinburgh Berwick-on-Tweed - a fortified military bastion town with still impressive Victorian fortifications overlooking the sea. A nice enough regional town in a sweet setting - i used it as a base to take buses to the Scottish Border Abbeys. I adtually stayed at the Station Hotel, smack by the station - kind of a nicer than normal B&B.

Stopped twice at Berwick-on-Tweed and then bus to Melrose for the night, then off to Carlisle. Can't remember where I went after that.

If any interest, my last trip report is somewhere under "reports"

You went up the west coast to Troon and Turnberry confusing half the taxi drivers in Ayrshire, as I recall.

You ARE coming here, then? Have you got dates yet? Can we sort this so you go to Ullapool at a weekend and we can come with you?

Sheila, no dates yet. Will let you know first thing. A weekend would be GREAT!

roger - don't you know that a British railpass is NEVER a good idea? That's what nearly every Brit here says - a waste of money!

"That's what nearly every Brit here says - a waste of money!"

Completely untrue. Passes are almost certainly a waste of money if you've got specific journeys in mind (Network cards save you more within 100 miles of London, and flying's cheaper beyond Manchester) and regard trains as ways of getting round.

Not necessarily always - but since the pass retailers consistently lie about point to point prices, you have to assume they're lying because they'd lose business if they told the truth, so THEY know their product's a ripoff, even if their mouthpieces on this site delude themselves

But if you come from some backward part of the world where trains are exotic, there's presumably some value in just turning up, getting on any train and seeing what happens. Just as most of us think the London Ritz is a waste of money if you just want a clean bedroom in central London, people prepared to pay through the nose for a bit of grovelling from a few dozen flunkeys aren't necessarily wrong.

I saved so much money by buying my tickets to midland England from London in advance. So if you are considering a railpass, also consider the savings from buying tickets in advance. It was quite common to see a ticket purchased in advance for 10 pounds, and the same journey for 38 pounds bought on-site.

Regarding the rail pass. With the winter discount I can purchase an 8 day pass for $35 per day or around 20/23 pounds per day. I am not looking to save as the option to catch any train at any train is important to me. Sometimes I like to just take off on the whim.

$35/day or about what in pounds - 20 pounds a day for unlimited fully flexible travel on any train anytime - now how can going the online discount route beat that for any real rail trip around Britain - it can't

yeh for those taking a few trips and knowing exactly when they want to go and wanting to suffer from horrible IMO British train second class travel - think Greyhound Bus but worse IMO then yeh you can save some money - but the average tourist don't think like the average Brit, who usually has but sporadic train trips or may commute daily into London - locals don't always think like tourists or what tourists may desire IMO

And what about the Party Pass where the 3rd thru 9th passenger on one pass pays $50 of what the first two adults pay - in Roger's case the 3rd thru 9th passenger on his pass would pay only 10 pounds a day for UNLIMITED UNRESTRICTED travel and all kids under 16 get a free pass - the Family Pass - factoring these things can make a railpass a no-brainer for many, even if limited trips.

OK roger - trying to find a village like town which you can reach by train that you have NOY been to - how about Hexham, on the somewhat scenic Newcastle-Carlisle train line? I've stayed there as a base for Hadrian's Wall.

And how is Hexham w/i 2+ hours of London? Most services would take 4 hours

Stamford is 1.5 to 2 hours depending on the service (Kings Cross or St Pancras)

About the same to the places mentioned in East Anglia.

janis - it ain't and if you read the little back and forth we've had you would have realized that i was not talking about the OP Q - please read the entire thread before making your pithy criticism IMO

cheers

Stayed at Haltwhistle to visit the Wall, then an afternoon in Hexham. Thanks though.

I pulled out my rail map and noticed Abergavenny as a possibility. Any comment? The plus side is I could take the Express to Paddington and then off, saving a lot of time. I could try for the 2:45 and if not the 3:45 which takes 2:14 and arrives at 5:59.

And during your flight over, if you haven't already read it, you might enjoy reading "Kingdom by the Sea", Theourx. I suspect written when there maybe were more little places accessed by rail.

bookmarking

I would agree on Bury, lovely ruins and beautiful cathedral and the Angel Hotel right across from it. It is my favorite small village I have come across. It has the smallest pub in England The Nutshell that is fun to stop in for a 1/2 pint. I also would recommend Ely a one hour train ride from Kings Cross. Again a lovely cathedral, beautiful little town with nice shops and several B&B's. Both are good for a feel of the local life. Hope to return in 2010. Pam

Whatever you do - don't try and buy a ticket from Newquay to the Kyle of Lochalsh. It will cost you over £1000:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8340561.stm

I like the fact that the "cheap" fare is £561.00

If you haven't already read it, try Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson - he travels around Britain almost exclusively on public transport. Maybe one of his stops would appeal to you?

Abergavenny may well suit you, it is a small market town with a castle, and good scenery close by. You can even visit/stay at a avineyard!

actually, CW, you can fly from Newquay to Newcastle with airsouthwest for £91, and then get the train to KoL for £38!!!


mind you it takes about 24 hours, which makes £38 seem like quite a bargain.

Whatever you do - don't try and buy a ticket from Newquay to the Kyle of Lochalsh. It will cost you over £1000

well the BritRail Pass is looking like a better deal all the time - in light of such huge fares for fully flexible travel, which to me, and i think Roger and others is a key - a priceless key and for such travel an absolute bargain, esp in first class.

Would the BritRail Pass cover that £1000 journey?

Why wouldn't it - they are talking about a rail ticket and BritRail Passes are valid on every one of the 28 or so rail franchises

At any rate, this would be one instance where britrail.com is a relative bargain. If I go to that site and set it up to buy a Newquay to the Kyle of Lochalsh return ticket, for tomorrow and returning Saturday, the price is only $662 Canadian dollars (worth almost as much as US now). The problem is that there'd be no way to ship it to you in time for the journey.

That was for a first-class ticket, btw, on BritRail.

I went to the www.virginrails.co.uk site and pulled up the 1002-pound ticket myself. It's also a very long journey - about 29 hours each way.