Arriving into Helsinki on the Tuesday afternoon, I’d spent the evening settling into my accommodation and exploring some of the local area, and you’ll be able to read about that when my Helsinki post is published in a few weeks’ time. However, before I explored Helsinki proper, I’d decided to also see another part of Finland and so headed to Helsinki Central Station to catch a train to Tampere.

Following an enjoyable and relaxing few days in Glasgow and Corrour, it was time to head home and after making our way back to Glasgow and across to Edinburgh with ScotRail, the final leg of our Scottish adventure awaited. LNER were taking us back south along the East Coast Mainline (ECML) to Peterborough and, as with the trip north, we’d managed to get 1st Class upgrades with Seatfrog.

April saw us starting another trip to Scotland at Peterborough station, waiting for an LNER service to the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. I’ve reviewed the trip to and from Scotland with LNER plenty of times, so you can check out those previous posts on the blog, but this time I’d be travelling with Beth and we’d upgraded via Seatfrog rather than buying 1st class tickets upfront.

Back at the start of March, I took a trip to Bristol for the weekend to stay with some friends and explore some of the railways in the southwest of England. Travelling with GWR from London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads and return, I decided to use this opportunity to try out the journey in both 1st and Standard class, upgrading my outbound trip via Seatfrog and seeing whether it was worth upgrading to 1st at a weekend.

When people talk about mainline railways that cross a UK city, probably the first that spring to mind are either Thameslink or the Elizabeth line in London. After that, Glasgow’s Argyle and North Clyde lines might come to mind, or the mess of railways that ‘kind of’ cross Manchester. However, the UK’s second city, Birmingham is also home to a cross city railway, simply named the ’Cross-City Line’.