Aberdeen to Penzance: the spectacular sights of Britain’s longest train journey

The 13-hour train adventure offers epic snapshots of both cities and countryside

Once a week, a train pulls out of Aberdeen station at 08.20 and heads south. There’s no great fanfare, no particular sense of occasion, and the train itself is only five coaches long. However, everything else about this service is Brobdingnagian.

Over the next 13 hours and 19 minutes it travels 774 miles, the greatest distance covered by any train in Britain. Stopping at 35 stations along the way, it spends around two hours of the journey stationary as it picks up and drops off passengers. After proceeding down the east coast as far as Newcastle, it heads south to York, then trundles south-west across the Midlands and on to Bristol, finally making its way to Penzance on the western tip of Cornwall via the south coast of Devon. The full journey is always made in that direction – for maintenance reasons, no service goes all the way north. And having been suspended for nearly two years because of the pandemic, the service is up and running again – albeit only on Saturdays for the time being.