Cornwall
Three-Night Journey

London Victoria on a Friday afternoon is a fine place to begin an adventure, and the Britannic Explorer is waiting. There is time to explore the train properly before departure: the dining carriages with their botanical interiors, the bar stocked with native gin botanicals, the Wellness Suite, and your own private suite, which becomes home for the next three nights.

Afternoon tea arrives as the city gives way to countryside, and this one has a distinctly Cornish character. Chef Simon Rogan has put together a spread that draws on Cornwall's larder, and the traditional question of jam before cream or cream before jam will no doubt generate the kind of lively debate that improves any train journey.

The train passes through the North Wessex Downs and into the storied market towns of Somerset as the afternoon light softens. A treatment in the Wellness Suite is an option worth taking, as is a cocktail at the bar while the countryside scrolls past. By early evening the West Somerset Railway takes over, one of the longest heritage lines in the country, where the views across the fields and towards the coast are worth staying awake for.

Dinner is the work of Simon Rogan and Head Chef Alexander Wyn Lewis, and it shows. The menu is grounded in seasonal British produce and cooked with real ambition. The Observation Car provides the natural conclusion to the evening, with music and small-batch gin keeping things going until the train settles overnight at Bishops Lydeard.

The morning belongs entirely to you. There is no itinerary until the afternoon, which on a train travelling through some of the finest coastal scenery in England is not a hardship. A lie-in followed by a leisurely brunch in the dining car is one option. The Wellness Suite, if you have not yet made use of it, is another.

The train joins the Riviera Line along the south Devon coast, and this is one of those stretches of railway that justifies train travel as a concept. The line runs so close to the sea at Dawlish that the waves occasionally break across the track, and the resort towns of Teignmouth and Torquay pass by in a pleasingly unhurried way. The train skirts the edge of Dartmoor before reaching Plymouth, then crosses the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall. The Cornish call their county Kernow, and there is something to the idea that crossing that river takes you somewhere genuinely different. The light changes, the vegetation thickens, and by the time the train passes through St Austell and Truro the sea is visible again, glittering in the Cornish way that painters have been trying to capture for centuries.

The afternoon brings a choice at St Erth. Those who want to explore independently can take the branch line to St Ives, where the Tate and the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden are within easy walking distance of each other and the harbour. Those who prefer a guided experience can continue to Penzance for a tour of the Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, where the planting is sub-tropical and the views across to St Michael's Mount make an excellent backdrop for a private wine tasting.

Dinner on board that evening celebrates the best of Britain's seasonal produce, and the entertainment that follows is the kind that makes the miles irrelevant.

After breakfast, the train is moored near Fowey and the morning is spent ashore in one of the most characterful corners of Cornwall. The town itself rewards a wander: narrow streets that descend to the harbour, a working port that has been sending cargo out to sea for centuries, and a coastline that looks its best in the morning light. For those who want to see it from the water, a private boat tour of the estuary and the bay is a genuinely good way to spend a few hours.

The alternative is a visit to the Colwith Farm Distillery, where Cornish grain goes in at one end and award-winning vodka and gin come out at the other. A tour of the distillery explains the process, and there is the option of blending your own flavoured bottle to take home, which tends to be more absorbing than it sounds.

The train then begins the journey east into Somerset, and the afternoon passes comfortably on board as the Cornish coast gives way to the gentler country of the West Country interior. The destination is Bruton, a small market town that has attracted rather more cultural attention than its size might suggest, largely due to what has happened there since Hauser and Wirth opened its Somerset gallery in 2014.

The evening begins with a private after-hours tour of the gallery, followed by drinks and canapés in the Oudolf Field, the meadow garden designed by the celebrated Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf. Dinner at Da Costa follows, where the cooking takes its inspiration from the Veneto region of northern Italy and draws on the finest Somerset produce to do so. It is an unusual and very good combination. The train settles overnight on the East Somerset Railway.

Breakfast is served as the train pulls away from the East Somerset Railway and begins the journey back to London. The West Country passes the window in its quiet morning way, and there is something to be said for a final hour or two on board with nothing required of you except to eat well and enjoy the view. The Chilterns arrive, then the suburbs, then London Victoria itself, earlier than anyone would really wish. Three nights, four days, and a corner of England seen in a way that very few people ever manage.

Itineraries and timings shown may be changed for seasonal or operational reasons.