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I want to plan a trip, one way from Edinburgh to Brest, France to arrive on Monday 29th August and I want to / need to do it by public transport as return will be helping a friend sail their boat back to Scotland.
By doing hodgepodge planning myself I've found I can fly to Nantes, train to Quimper, then train to Brest. Or 4 UK trains (sod all chance of them all running on time to have a connected journey) to Portsmouth, an over night ferry to st Malo then a further 2 trains in France.
All seems a bit of a ball ache and it would be good to find a site like google maps that would piece together my options to work out the most efficient in time, number of interconnected changes and cost.
Does such a thing exist?
Thanks
https://www.rome2rio.com/ is your friend, should give you all possible options.
I used Google maps when planning a rail trip through Italy. I found it very reliable. But seat61.com will give you a good overview.
I just checked Edinburgh to Brest on Google maps. Aug 29, 7:30, Waverley to Kings Cross, 12:31 St Pancras to Gare du Nord 16:54 Paris to Brest, arriving 8:46pm.
Just in time for a nice steak frites and a bottle of Passe tout Grains.
I've never used it, but this is the site a friend of mine uses for these things
He also seems to use the german deutchbahn website for a lot but not all of the bookings
sorry to not be much more help
I'd do Big John's route, maybe with an overnight in London and get an earlier Eurostar which would also reduce any UK trains unreliability issues.
The Belgian railways website and associated app was very good for pan-European booking then ticket management when I made a similar journey a few years ago.
There's a special ticket to London that you can buy, unfortunately only in ticket offices, that allows you to have the ongoing Eurostar as a connected trip. This means that if you have delays on the trains to get there, then Eurostar will just put you on the next (available) train for no charge. I'm pretty sure that in France, if you've got booked tickets from Paris, and you're able to provide evidence of a delay, you can also swap trains with little problem.
I'm at work so can't find the exact name for the London destination at the moment, but will try to remember tonight.
An interrail 4 day pass may work out for you
https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/global-pass
There’s a special ticket to London that you can buy, unfortunately only in ticket offices, that allows you to have the ongoing Eurostar as a connected trip.
It's called a London International CIV ticket, and the station code that the ticket office need to search on is LNE
you could cut out England altogether 🙂 and do Edinburgh to Belfast Sail/Rail, then Enterprise train from Belfast to Dublin, and train onto Cork, ferry from there to Roscoff, then train to Brest!
Check> https://www.rome2rio.com/
You can also book your French railway tickets through thetrainline.com website. We did that to get from Lyon Airport to Bourg St Maurice for skiing and a lot easier than trying to get the FNCF website to work, though I did get as far as finding the trains, which tallied up with the Trainline, which have me confidence
Cheapest option is probably fly to Paris. Direct train from Paris to Brest
I'm in Echternach in Luxembourg at the moment. I just asked Google Maps how to get from where I live to Echternach, and it quite correctly suggested a Pendolino to Euston, Eurostar to Brussels, IC to Luxembourg, Tram T1 to Luxexpo, Bus 201 to Echternach.
Once Google had told me that, man in seat 61 told me that I should get a Eurostar ticket to 'any Belgian station', then a ticket from Arlon to Luxembourg which I bought on Trainline. Once in Luxembourg, all public transport is free.
So I guess my point is that Google will give you a pretty good idea, but you might need to do a bit more research to figure out how to organise whatever it suggests.
all of the above train info is good, have recently done a scotland south of france trip entirely by train, all booked via trainline and eurostar iirc.
Pretty easy
The civ is a good mention if you have connection worries, think the man in seat61 goes into more detail. He also has some excellent videos of transitting french stations, so you recognise where to run like a headless chicken when your train is late - invaluable
i didnt do it this year but the interail option is also excellent and may work for you
Overall it was all very civilised and straightforward. Uk section was a bit of a worry as we clashed with strikes but we worked round it with a cheap coach leg
Might be easier to just go 10 days later when there's a direct flight from Edinburgh to Brest?
1631 eurostar to paris gdn - paris mpn - brest by midnight looks doable
just tack on the ed - kings x train of your choice
I'd bus or train to Paris depending on money/time constraints then train to Brest.
Can you not just find someone who needs crew to sail from Edinburgh to Brest in the next couple of weeks?