Taking the train
Canada’s York Factory For Canada’s 150th anniversary, Parks Canada is offering free entry to 148 national parks and historic sites. One of the most “alluring” is York Factory in the “frozen wilds of Hudson Bay”, says Nigel Tisdall in the Financial Times. A busy trading post for more than 250 years, it was once a headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company; today, only the threestorey Depot building remains, and the site is so isolated it only receives about 100 visitors a year. To make getting there a real adventure, start at the “domed splendour” of Winnipeg’s Union Station, from which a twice-weekly overnight train goes to the mining city of Thompson, the nearest stop. On lines laid over “muskeg (swamp) and shifting permafrost”, you travel across “ironing board-flat prairies” to the colourful fields of Saskatchewan, and onto the arboreal wilderness of Manitoba. The journey, in dated yet comfy cabins, takes 35 hours. From Thompson you drive to a dam on the Nelson River for the last leg of the trip: a 120-mile jet-boat ride down the Nelson, across the Bay, and up the Hayes River. Finally, the surprisingly grand York Factory looms into view. Inside the Depot there are no display cases. This is “raw, rotting history opened like a post-mortem”.
Visit Via Rail (www.viarail.ca). Nelson River Adventures (www. nelsonriveradventures.com) runs jet-boat day trips in the summer.
Cosy comforts on the Gerald of Wales This must be one of the most “arcane train services in the UK” – and one of the most political, says Rob Crossan in The Guardian. “Funded, somewhat controversially by the Welsh Government”, the Gerald of Wales runs from Holyhead to Cardiff and back each weekday, ferrying Welsh Assembly members from their northern constituencies to the capital. It is one of just two routes running in the UK that “still has an onboard chef cooking full breakfasts and three-course dinners”, and on a misty morning, “it’s difficult to think of a cosier place to be”, watching seaside towns and slate-roofed villages slip by as you tuck into a “robust” full Welsh with “black pudding, toast and limitless tea”. The route of the Gerald – named after a medieval archbishop who toured Wales recruiting for the Crusades – traces “the spine” of the country, briefly crossing the English border, then skirting the Brecon Beacons before reaching Cardiff’s “concertina’d ribbons of Victorian terraced streets”. It’s not yet 10am, and you’ve already “crossed an entire nation”. Visit www.arrivatrainswales.co.uk. Fares from £10-£80. High-speed modernity in China Over the past decade, China’s high-speed rail network has opened up the country like never before, says Gill Charlton in The Daily Telegraph. At speeds of up to 217mph, the white bullet-nosed trains whizz along straight tracks laid on piers high above valleys and villages, and cut through mountains. Vast distances take no time at all on trains that are clean, comfortable and timed to precision. Over the next few years, the network, which already covers 14,000 miles, is due to double in size again, which will bring economic benefits, but also costs, for remote communities. Those wanting to see the old rural China, then, had better move fast because the trains bring rapid change. For instance, the village of Zhaoxing is home to China’s largest Dong community. The Dong are “famous for their carpentry skills”, weaving and embroidery, but illusions of a “bastion of simple life” are shattered when you see the “Wembley-sized ticket office” at the village gates. In China, the “commercialisation of ethnic enclaves is fast becoming the norm”.
Visit www.travelchinaguide.com. British Airways (www.ba.com) flies to Beijing from £885 rtn.