The train pulls out of London Victoria in the evening, ten carriages of oak and red velvet bound for Cornwall. Belmond has built England and Wales their first luxury sleeper, and it travels at the pace of the view.
The carriages have a past. They ran in Ireland as the Belmond Grand Hibernian from 2016 until the service closed in 2019, then sat idle. Belmond brought them across to Britain, stripped them back, and handed the interiors to the London studio Albion Nord. What travels now is Irish Mark 3 stock, built in Derby in the 1980s and remade for a different country.
The carriages
Ten in all. An observation and bar car sits at one end, its windows set for the landscape. Two dining cars follow, one seating twenty-four and the other twenty. The sleeping cars hold cabins in double and twin layouts, and one has been rebuilt with three Grand Suites, the largest quarters on board.
Albion Nord worked in oak panelling, deep red velvet, marble tabletops and patterned wool underfoot. Art was commissioned to sit alongside the fittings. The look reads as a country house that happens to move, rather than a hotel squeezed onto rails.
The schedule is slow on purpose. The train tends to pause overnight in quiet spots so nights are still, then spends the days on excursions off the rails. Three-night journeys leave from London Victoria for Cornwall, Wales, or the Lake District. Cornwall and the Lake District run Friday to Monday; Wales runs Monday to Thursday. Two routes join into six nights, and a fourth arrives in 2026.
Nothing about the timetable is in a hurry, which is the whole point of buying a ticket.
The Splendid EditThe table
The food is Simon Rogan's. Rogan cooks at l'Enclume in Cartmel, a three-Michelin-star kitchen in Cumbria that grows much of its own produce. On board he sets the table d'hôte lunches and dinners and the afternoon tea in the dining car, built around British ingredients and the season. The Lake District route runs close to his home ground.
The wellness suite
One carriage holds a spa, the first on a train in England and Wales. It is run with Wildsmith, a British brand that calls its method Radical Botany and grows much of what it uses on a biodynamic farm. Treatments lean on calendula, chamomile, rose and lavender, and are pitched toward sleep and rest.
Britannic Explorer, A Belmond Train — Courtesy of Belmond
The room is sage green, with a marble vanity and a wide window that frames whatever woodland the train has stopped beside. Wildsmith supplies the products and the therapists. On a service that sells stillness, a treatment carriage is less an add-on than the argument made physical.
The engine
For now a GB Railfreight diesel does the hauling, a Class 66 repainted in the train's deep blue livery and named St Michael's Mount. From 2027 Belmond and GB Railfreight will move to dual-mode Class 99 locomotives, which draw electric power where the overhead wires allow and cut the emissions of the journey.
The switch matters on a train that sells slowness as the luxury. A week aboard starts from about eleven thousand pounds per cabin for three nights, taken all-inclusive, with excursions, meals and wine folded in. Book through belmond.com.
Britannic Explorer, A Belmond Train runs three-night journeys from London Victoria to Cornwall, Wales and the Lake District, with a fourth route arriving in 2026. Fares from approximately £11,000 per cabin, all-inclusive. Details at belmond.com.
Photography courtesy of Belmond — © Belmond, Britannic Explorer, A Belmond Train