The luxury Transcantabrico train in northern Spain has a budget sister journey, writes Paul Miles.
The most famous luxury train in Spain is El Transcantabrico. It has been chugging through the Cantabrian Mountains and following the Galician coast for more than 20 years. With itineraries of eight days and cabins with double beds, it costs more than $4000 a person.
If you fancy a similar experience but don't have the time or budget, a sister train, the new El Expreso de la Robla, will take you on a shorter journey for a fraction of the price, following a section of the same route, albeit in less comfort.
After unpacking my bag in my small two-berth cabin with tiny en suite bathroom, I proceed to one of the three lounge cars and settle in a leather dining chair bearing the train's art nouveau-style insignia.
Our multilingual tour guide, Vanessa Pacella, introduces four smiling, smartly dressed crew and enthuses about our four-day, 600-kilometre journey.
To the sound of the train's whistle, we leave Bilbao's FEVE station. Most of the other 48 passengers (maximum capacity is 54 in 27 cabins, in three sleeping cars), are Iberian, and seated in the lounge cars, sipping drinks from the bar. Before long, the scenery changes to the lush meadows and terracotta-tiled farmhouses typical of the Basque country.
I join a man sitting alone, poring over a map. Luis, from Madrid, is a train buff in his 50s. ''This is the longest stretch of narrow-gauge railway in Europe,'' he tells me in Spanish, between jumping up to take photos of cargo wagons we pass at small stations. ''FEVE stands for Ferrocarriles de Via Estrecha [narrow gauge railways],'' he says. ''Although we have a joke in Spain that it means Ferrocarriles de Velocidad Extraordinario.''
On the one-metre-wide track, we never reach more than 64km/h and go even slower when we start to twist and climb into the cordillera - the 321-kilometre sinuous railway reaches an altitude of more than 914 metres.
It was built in the 1890s to transport coal from La Robla, north of Leon, and other mines on the route. In the late 1800s, a third of industrial Bilbao's annual requirement of coal - some 181,400 tonnes - arrived by ship from England because it was difficult to get coal from Spain's interior. An entrepreneurial Spanish engineer calculated that a railway from the mines inland of Bilbao would soon pay for itself, especially if it was narrow-gauge. (The track cost 70,000 pesetas a kilometre to build, compared with 250,000 pesetas had it been standard-gauge.)
Now that the coal industry has declined, La Robla is bypassed and the route links the cities of Leon and Bilbao, carrying passenger and cargo trains, day-trip trains, El Transcantabrico and, since March, El Expreso de La Robla. Although the train doesn't go to La Robla, this railway line has always been known as the ''Ferrocarril de La Robla'', explains tour director Joaquin Crespo. ''And in Spain, a train that is 'expreso' is one on which you sleep as it travels overnight,'' he adds. ''It doesn't mean it goes fast.'' It doesn't travel by night, though. Instead, we sleep on board as the train stops at a platform.
A night's rest is followed by a simple buffet breakfast on board while we chug along for an hour or so, followed by coach excursions to nearby attractions. Next comes a late, long lunch at a restaurant with local specialities - perhaps black pudding, chorizo and rioja - before rejoining the train.
In the early evening there might be another sightseeing trip followed by a late restaurant dinner - perhaps cured beef, lamb casserole, more rioja and creamy puddings. It needn't be so artery clogging. In penance, I find time for morning jogs and twice skip lunch.
The scenery from the train - limestone peaks, lakes and flowery meadows on a mountain plateau - is a delight and the excursions are quirky and esoteric. They include a historic beret-making factory, a small town famed for its lettuce, a private collection of 45 Rolls-Royces (including two that belonged to the Queen Mother) and a museum about Spain's early attempts at an industrial revolution in Sabero.
The heavy machinery, imported from England, had to be hauled over the mountains in ox carts. Although used to make railway tracks, there was no railway nearby so the industry failed. The coal mines, however, survived until 1991.
Other attractions have more mainstream appeal. Bilbao has its curvaceous, titanium-clad Guggenheim museum and the cathedral in the small city of Leon has more stained glass than anywhere else in Spain.
The caves of Valporquero, 1219 metres up in the mountains, are by contrast a dimly lit subterranean world of vast, pink-tinged chambers and narrow hallways. Walking through the caves, I feel like a microscopic nano-surgeon from the film Fantastic Voyage, coursing through heavily calcified arteries - perhaps those of a passenger on El Expreso de La Robla?
The El Expreso de La Robla has three itineraries in the European spring and autumn. The three-night La Robla itinerary costs from €650 ($917) a person, from Bilbao to Leon return; the three-night St James itinerary costs from €650 a person, from Gijon through Galicia; and the overnight Porta Norte itinerary from Gijon costs from €295 a person. Fares include all meals, tours and guides. See www.elexpresodelarobla.com.
- Telegraph, London
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