5 ‘middle of nowhere’ places you can reach car-free
Some of our best holidays have been those magical trips that take you somewhere you can be entirely alone.
A lot of people believe you need to drive to be able to get to the middle of nowhere.
But there are some great options by train! Here are some favourites:
Corrour
There’s a train in this photo
The train ride to Corrour is the most magical trip the British Isles has to offer. You board the Caledonian Sleeper at Euston Station at 8.30 in the evening. The next morning, at 9AM, your train pulls into a station in the middle of Rannoch Moor, one of the greatest unspoilt wildernesses in the British Isles.
Corrour is around 30 miles from the nearest road. The only way to arrive and leave is by train. When the train pulls away, you are truly alone until the next train rolls through.
But you can sleep and eat: the station building is now a restaurant with rooms and there’s a Youth Hostel 1 mile away.
Wowo
Arriving by steam train just adds to the fun
A couple of years, some friends of ours invited us on their annual pilgrimage to Wowo. Knowing our aversion to camping (and our preference for car-free travel), they didn’t seriously expect us to come.
But when we looked into it we found that Wowo was the kind of camping we could live with (OK, I’ll be honest, we stayed in a cottage round the corner…). But more importantly, we found it was possible to arrive by steam train!
Wowo is a series of fields in beautiful, remote countryside. But next door is Sheffield Park station on the Bluebell Railway. You jump on the mainline train from Victoria to East Grinstead, and then connect onto the Bluebell Railway for the rest of the journey. Yes, it costs more than a regular train ride, but the journey is absolutely part of the fun of the holiday.
Treen Cliffs
Another of those great locations where the journey is part of the fun. Treen Cliffs are spectacular; on the very remotest part of the West Cornwall coast, just before Lands End. There’s a campsite and various holiday cottages; and a series of footpaths down to Porthcurno beach or along the coast to Porthgwarra or Lamorna. Treen village has a tiny shop and a cosy pub with open fire.
Porthcurno beach is just 20 mins walk across the fields
But how do you get there? Well, on a direct train from Paddington to Penzance and then the bus to Treen. The bus is the Lands End Coaster route that runs every hour in the summer and, despite being an ordinary bus route, uses open-top buses. I absolutely promise you that there is nothing more fun than an open top bus ride along the Cornish clifftops. The bus lifts you up over the hedges so you can see so much more than from a car, while the combination of sunshine and the wind whistling through your hair is just glorious.
You can buy a week’s pass for the bus, and then visit endless remote coves, tiny beaches, wooded glens and wild clifftops; all accessible on the direct open-top bus from Treen.
Muck
There’s nowhere better for the ‘middle-of-nowhere’ vibe than an island with a population of less than 60.
One of our more unusual day-trips was to the Isle of Muck. We spent two days getting there, travelling via the East Coast mainline (make sure you sit on the right-hand side for the views of the Northumberland coast) and coming back via the Caledonian Sleeper.
The back of Thomas’s head, and the view from the Isle of Muck
To get to Muck, travel from Glasgow on the so-stunning-that-it-hurts West Highland line. The ferry is either a big Caledonian MacBrayne car ferry from Mallaig, or a little motorboat from Arisaig, an earlier stop.
There’s just one hotel on Muck, with eight rooms. I asked the hotelier why the rooms didn't have locks. She pointed out that no-one was going to steal anything on an island with a population of 38, were they…
Porthgain
This could actually be anywhere on the spectacular Pembrokeshire coast. Helen is a particular fan of coastal holidays, and there’s no coast better than the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. The southern coast (around charming Tenby) is more cosy but for rugged and wild, you need the north coast between St David’s and Fishguard.
The cliffs near Porthgain
You can get anywhere along the coast by using Fflecsi, an app-based minibus that picks you up and sets you down anywhere.
I wish I could remember where we stayed but I can’t. It was a lovely little B&B. Our main memory is an incredibly friendly owner. We wanted to leave for a country walk before breakfast time. We were totally happy to just eat cereal which would be left out overnight anyway, but she insisted on getting up to make us breakfast. This was unfortunate, as it turned out her husband was normally the cook but he liked his lies in. We sensed the scrambled eggs were in trouble when we heard the increasingly frenetic pings of the microwave. Both sight and taste confirmed this impression…
Pembrokeshire’s a long trek to get to (whether you drive or go by public transport) but it’s a joy when you arrive.
