Bottom line is, ticket is £1,000, St Pancras to St Pancras including all sleepers and fancy trains like Eurostar etc. I am insisting on a budget of a further £1,000 for food and 4 night’s lodgings, but if you skimp on the caviar and drinkies you could obviously get that right down. Contact Ffestiniog travels if you want to do something like this.
A 15 day InterRail pass costs £362 if you are over 26 and under 60. But that’s only the half of it. I haven’t worked it out yet, it’s going to take some time, but each of the sleepers requires a supplement, so that figure will double, may be more. Some of the trains, especially on the left hand side of the map, and also the top bit. are quite posh. And there’s also the odd bus, taxi and metro ride.
You’ve then got to feed yourself, and there will be beverage consumption for, er, almost all of the trip (well what else is there to do ?). We’ll be bringing supplies into Scandinavia else it could easily double the price of the trip, but all in all it’s probably going to work out at about £1000 for tickets,and bets part of aother grand for the few hostels and some pretty fancy picnicking, and including your beers and schnapps and grappa and samahonka and port and more beer, and probably some wine somewhere.
So about £2,000 right now, all in.
The stuff below is just sketch work. Ffestniog travel can do the entire ticket, st pancras to st pancras for £970 plus the flight from Bodo to Narvik which is about 40 quid.
Eurostar isn’t covered by the pass. If you book well in advance you can go London-Paris-London for £79, or £39 each way. All the sleepers below are 4 berth max (i.e no slumming it in 6 berth couchettes), and add up to about £600ish, ouch, (I’m still working on it) so including the reservations, and the pass, and a few metro fares, your ticket is going to cost about £1,000 including the EuroStar, as long as you book the full 120 days in advance.
The grand total in supplements, not including reservation fees which we’ll need as well for some of the day trains, is as follows. Note “Free” does not include the 5 euro bucks for bagging a seat, so if it’s longer than a few hours we’ll need to sort that out.
Train 1 – London-Brussels Eurostar – £39
Train 2 – Brussels-Amsterdam Thalys – god knows, at least 40 quid again.
Train 3 – Amsterdam-Copenhagen – £30.86 (35 euros) for a 4 berth couchette
Train 4 – Copenhagen-Gothenburg – £3.33
Train 5 – Gothenburg-Oslo – £5.70
Train 6 – Oslo-Trondheim – £48 (in 2 bed sleeper), or about 3 quid if you are prepared to sleep in a chair.
Train 7 – Trondheim-Fauske – £5.60
Bus 1 – Fauske-Narvik 50 euros I believe, may be less from Fauske, but we could end up chartering our own if there are enough of us.
Night in Narvik – there’s a campsite with cabins. £90 for 6 beds. Ideal!
Train 8 – Narvik-Boden £3.30
Train 9 – Boden-Stockholm – £22.31
Train 10 - Stockholm-Copenhagen – £6 (7 euros)
Train 11 – Copenhagen-Hamburg Free
Train 12 – Hamburg-Berlin Free
Train 13 Berlin->Warsaw – £30 I presume
Train 14,15 Warsaw->Prague – small booking fee
Train 16 Prague->Vienna – £30 ?
Train 17 - Vienna – > Bratislava – free
Train 18 – Bratislava-Budapest – free
Train 19 – Budapest-Bucharest – £23.50
Train 20 – Bucharest-Istanbul – £13 (13 euro) 3 bed sleeper
Train 21 – Istanbul-Sofia – £13 same as above
Train 22 – Sofia->Belgrade- not sure, call it £23.50
Train 23 – Belgrade-Ljubljana- Free (small booking fee)
Train 24 – Ljubljana-Sezana – Free
Taxi – Sezana-Trieste – say £5 each, that’s probably overkill
Train 25 – Trieste-Venice – Free
Train 26 – Venice-Rome – Free
Train 27 – Rome-Siracusa – £40 (3 berth couchette)
Train 28 – Siracusa-Pozallo – Free
Bus 2 – Pozzallo-Siracusa – 2 hours on a bus in Sicily, £10 ?
Train 29 – Siracusa-Milan – at least £40 I guess as it’s that much from Rome to Siracusa
Train 30 – Milan-Tirano – Free
Train 31 – Tirano-Chur Bernina Express – £13.50
Train 32 – Chur-Zurich – Free
Train 33 – Zurich-Geneve – Free
Train 34 – Geneva-Barcelona – £20 for a bed in a 4 berth compartment, we need to be in fours though!. Correction, 75 euros each it seems with a pass.
Train 35 – Barcelona-Madrid – £9
Train 36 – Madrid-Lisbon – £21
Lisbon Metro – £4 (two tickets at EUR 2.50 each)
Train 37 – Lisbon-Cascias – Free
Train 38 – Cascias-Lisbon – Free
Train 39 – Lisbon-Henday – £26.50
Train 40 – Henday-Paris £15
Paris metro – About £3 I think, may be less.
Train 41 – Paris-London Eurostar – £39
That lot adds up to about £570. You can knock another £80 off that. Istanbul is about a tenner for the dorm, and the few showers I’ve got is about another tenner.
