The island of Rhodes is our starting point for a circuitous boat journey that ends 32 hours later at the port of Piraeus near Athens. This classic ‘slow travel’ adventure loops south via Crete. Hop aboard and relax on the Prevelis car ferry.
The wholesale closure of railway lines in some parts of Europe in the 1960s and 1970s has created an unexpected legacy: a network of green corridors which act as havens for wildlife and plants. Many now serve as foot paths and cycle routes.
As winter slipped slowly into spring in 1917, Lenin passed through Berlin on his journey back to Russia from Switzerland. His onward route from Berlin took him by train to Sassnitz, then on by ferry to Trelleborg in Sweden. These days it's still possible to follow the route taken by Lenin, using the occasional direct trains from Berlin to Sweden.
Corridor trains (Korridorzüge in German) have a privileged status in international law which makes provision for the trains of one country to transit another country's territory without onerous bureaucracy and border checks. With the fading of borders in Europe, the corridor train is no longer as important as once it was. We look at some examples of corridor trains past and present.
Twenty years ago this autumn, the Dayton Peace Accord brought a measure of peace to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Join us as we take the train from Zagreb to Sarajevo, travelling through a region which still bears the scars of war.
Tolstoy, Dickens and Zola all wrote about railways - but in very different ways. Zola's La Bête humaine is one of the great railway novels of European literature. The perfect read, we thought, prior to joining train driver Andy Pratt in the cab of a Eurostar train at the Gare du Nord station in Paris.
The consensus is that flying has become boring. But fly on small planes offering a web of scheduled services up the Norwegian coast to discover a very different take on civil aviation. Travel by plane can still be immensely enjoyable. We review flying with Widerøe, a small airline based north of the Arctic Circle at Bodø in Norway.
There was a time when Deutsche Bahn (DB) only operated trains. Now they are emerging as serious players in the bus business. We just wonder if they have London in their sights? Their IC-Bus network is expanding and they already have a route from Düsseldorf to Antwerp. Extending it to London might be a way of delivering on DB's oft-repeated claim that it would enter the cross-Channel market.
Forget the Maserati centenary celebrations this year. 2014 marks the centenary of the Mendip Motor. Chewton Mendip was never destined to become a Detroit. But one hundred years ago this month this small Somerset village saw the launch of the Mendip Motor. We travel down the A39 to uncover this story of car production in the Mendip Hills of England.
The last remaining integrated rail-sea ticket between England and the Continent is the Dutch Flyer. We recall journeys of yesteryear as we set off from London and use the Harwich-Hook ferry to reach the Netherlands.
Britain's rarest scheduled bus service runs on just three occasions in 2013. The 113 from Tavistock to Dawlish is a timetable rarity. If you miss the bus on 31 August 2013, you'll have to wait seven months for the next one.
There is a prevailing view in Salzburg that Vienna is halfway to Asia. And that is certainly the perspective with which 19th-century travellers from western Europe approached Vienna. We retrace the itinerary followed by Thomas Cook's clients in 1873 as they headed east to Vienna to attend the World Fair hosted that year in the Austrian capital.
The journeys never made are sometimes more deeply inscribed on the imagination than those actually undertaken. hidden europe co-editor Nicky Gardner reflects on the night train from Schwerin, a train that somehow she never quite managed to ride before it disappeared from the timetables.
Schengen is more than just a village on the banks of the River Moselle in Luxembourg. The Schengen programme of free movement across borders helps shape modern Europe geographies. It explains why trains now rumble by night through Hodos and why travellers can no longer enjoy the creatures comforts of night sleepers from England to the continent.
The Glacier Express is one of Switzerland’s most celebrated rail journeys. But it is expensive and dreadfully touristy. Travellers looking to see the best of Switzerland by train could, we think, do better. The rail journey from Zürich to Lake Geneva via Lucerne, Interlaken and Gstaad is one of our favourite Swiss excursions by train.
For those without a hint of romance in their souls, it is possible to speed through the Simplon Tunnel from Switzerland to Italy. The train takes just fifteen minutes. But the old Simplon Pass route is still there for the taking. Brig is the starting point.
detecting the most frequent international car ferry service in Europe
only for the sure footed: a dangerous catwalk in southern Spain
Extreme engineering on Europe's canals with long tunnels in England and France.
a look at some of Europe's more interesting river crossings
Draisines are the stuff of slapstick scenes in old movies. But this eccentric mode of transport is bringing new life to old railway tracks.
The North Sea cycleway demands more than 5000 kilometres of pedal power - and few ferry hops too. It is a route that takes in eight countries and encircles the North Sea.
There is one British motorway that appears on no maps. We unravel the tale of the M96.
The coast of Fife, just over the water from Edinburgh, is scarcely wild country. But it is home to one of Britain's most engaging coastal excursions - the Elie chain walk. More a scramble than a walk, the route allows the sure-footed to skirt the cliffs of Kincraig Point.
Large parts of continental Europe used to drive on the left hand side of the road. Spain, Sweden, Iceland and Czechoslovakia have all swapped sides. Guernsey has even changed sides twice. We investigate the rule of the road.
Finland's Ox Road is one of northern Europe's ancient highways. It skirts lakeshores, crosses gravelly eskers, weaves round moraines and links some of Finland's oldest settlements.
Had you realised that it is not compulsory to take the fast train? Comb the timetables, and you still find the lazy slowcoach of a train that dawdles from one country station to the next. We celebrate the delights of the slow train.
the market at Barcelos: a stopping off point on the pilgrim trail from Portugal to Santiago
The Königsberg problem: start and end at the same place, and walk through the city, crossing all seven bridges once and no more. A mathematical puzzle from the Russian city of Kaliningrad.
The Via Sacra is an inspired initiative that foregrounds the religious heritage of a particularly beautiful part of central Europe - the area where Bohemia (Czech Republic), Polish Silesia and the German State of Saxony converge.
The Curonian Spit is a delicate concave arch, a narrow thread of land that divides the Baltic from the Courland Lagoon. We travel from Lithuania into Russia through one of Europe's most intriguing landscapes.
In western Europe, long distance car rallies of the inter-war years came to symbolise glitz and glamour. Just think of the Monte Carlo rally. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union the car rally became an important tool in the building of socialism. We look at how sport blends imperceptibly into propaganda.