25 NO-FLY ADVENTURES for 2025

Opt for a glorious, carbon-reducing holiday in the slow lane, whether propelled by train, boat, bike, coach - or your own two feet

- Michelle Hather

1 Interrailing FOR ADULTS

You don't have to be a gap-year student to grab a pass and hit the railroad, says Michelle Hather

For a few years, my children crisscrossed Europe, hopping on to trains as easily as taking a bus and using a 25% young person's Interrail discount to get more bang for their buck.

Adults don't get quite that deal. But a 10% discount for those aged 60 and over, plus the lure of borderless travel and a reduced carbon footprint, is tempting, especially if, like us, you've just retired. So last April, my husband and I each paid around £500 for an Interrail Global Pass, and covered 7,145km across 12 countries on 21 trains.

We hadn't Interrailed in our youth and were slightly nervous, but these days there's a clever app for your phone and guidance online (interrail.eu). Plus there's an unbelievably knowledgeable website, The Man In Seat Sixty-One (seat61.​com), that soon became our bible.

Getting started

We planned to fly to Rhodes, island-hop for a few weeks, then activate the pass on the Greek mainland. However, sitting in a cafe in the Monastiraki district of Athens, I discovered that there were no trains out of the country. It was a lesson in planning, but it also illustrated the beauty of slow travel: flexibility. We hired a car, meandered up to Thessaloniki and flew to Budapest. Finally, the Interrail odyssey could begin.