Slow Trains to Venice: A 4,000-Mile Adventure Across Europe

Description

Do you love trains? Do you love adventure? If so, join Tom Chesshyre on his meandering rail journey across Europe from London to Venice. Escaping the rat race for a few happy weeks, Chesshyre indulges in the freedom of the tracks. From France (dogged by rail worker strikes), through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, he travels as far east as Odessa by the Black Sea in Ukraine. With no set plans, simply a desire to let the trains lead the way, he heads back via Hungary, the Balkans and Austria. Along the way he enjoys many an encounter, befriending fellow travellers as well as a conductor or two. This is a love letter to Europe, written from the trackside.

Tom Chesshyre is the author of ten travel books. He has travelled 40,000 miles around the world for his train books; most recently for Slow Trains Around Spain: A 3,000-Mile Adventure on 52 Rides. His book writing has also taken him across North Africa after the Arab Spring, round the dark side of the Maldives on cargo ships and on a journey through unsung Britain (in To Hull and Back). He worked on travel desk of The Times for 21 years and is now freelance. His train column Tickets, Please appears in The Critic magazine. He lives in London.

'We love reading about train travel... Pick up Slow Trains to Venice by Tom Chesshyre' * Sunday Times Travel Magazine * 'He casually, and beautifully, bats away the earnestness of travel literature' -- Caroline Eden * The Literary Times Supplement * 'There is something nostalgic about the clatter of wheels and sleeper trains... by the end, the reader will struggle to resist the urge to follow his lead.' * The Economist * 'Bristling with vitality, Chesshyre's new tome is a joyfully rudderless romp through Europe's railway system... It's a work of brilliant geekery, but for the most part it's a love letter to the continent, a Eurocentric work for our Brexit-beleaguered times' * National Geographic, Top Ten Travel Books for Summer 2019 *