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International and off island travel from Melksham

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2013-09-16 10:03:44 - Graham Ellis

With an improved train service, land and sea based public transport would become viable from Melksham... not only can you easily reach the 20 most popular stations listed on our local timetable, but you can also reach almost every other station in Great Britain - there are over 2,500, and you can reach overseas. Save yourself the hassle of flying, the fatigue of a long drive, and take the train and perhaps a ferry. There are some very good prices available too - Melksham to Dublin from £34 single by ferry, booked in advance up to a maximum of 63.50 Melksham to Sligo via the "Jonathan Swift" fast ferry.

Options to know about...

* "Sail Rail" via Fishguard, Holyhead to Ireland - Rosslare, Dublin and beyond
* "Sail Rail" via Liverpool or Holyhead to Belfast for Northern Ireland
* "London CIV" tickets for travel via London on Eurostar to Paris, Brussels and beyond
* "London CIV" to the Dutch Flyer - Harwich to the Hook of Holland, Rotterdam and Amsterdam
* "London CIV" to connect to the Harwich / Esbjerg sailings - for Copenhagen
* To Portsmouth Harbour, Southampton Central, Lymington Pier for the Isle of Wight
* To Weymouth and other South Coast ports for the Channel Islands
* To Southampton for your cruise to Rome, Rekjavik, New York ...

Most of these options have been impractical in the past. International services on many of these routes run just once or twice a day (just 4 times a week for the boat to Denmark) and while our trains were also running just twice a day, there was almost inevitably going to be a very long wait somewhere along the way. However, with an increase in trains from December, it will now be feasible to travel to Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow and many other destinations without the hassles of getting to an airport, waiting around there and then having a similar scenario at the other end.

I've named the "big" places above but Europe has a huge public transport network and there are connections to just about anywhere... from Zoetermeer to Nurenberg, from Sulzbach to Tallaght and those are all journeys of which I have personal experience, with the biggest issue being access to the UK rail network from Melksham at an appropriate time.


Illustration - Eurostar at Brussels, where I had just arrived on my way from Melksham