Rob McFarland leaps at the chance to experience the long-gone days of luxury train travel.
A week before my trip on the British Pullman, the sister train to the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, I receive an elaborate pre-departure pack. It contains an invitation to board and a detailed itinerary. What it should have included is the following warning: You will never want to travel on an ordinary train again.
Orient-Express is reviving the golden age of train travel with a series of day trips around the English countryside. The aim is to recreate the heady days of the 1920s and 1930s when immaculate guests would board immaculate trains to be spirited from London to the seaside in a blur of fine food and wine. Anyone who's travelled on a train in London recently will know those days are long gone.
I've signed up for the company's signature day-trip, a 275-kilometre jaunt from London's Victoria Station through the Kent countryside. And I'm taking the one person who will truly appreciate this saunter down memory lane: my mum.
After mingling with other well-dressed guests in Orient-Express's plush private waiting room, we board and take our seats in Zena, one of 25 Pullman carriages rescued from the scrapheap in the 1960s. Painstakingly restored to her former glory, Zena is now an opulent haven of art deco marquetry, brass and gloriously comfortable velvet armchairs. Minutes later we're enjoying glasses of champagne courtesy of Freddy, our charming French steward, who wafts up and down the aisle dishing out hors d'oeuvres and bonhomie in his gold-buttoned white waistcoat.
The first hour of the trip is an uninspiring slog through East London's council estates and industrial areas but this is soon forgotten once we're gliding past Kent's gently swaying wheatfields and sheep-dotted pastures. We spot traditional cone-roofed oast houses used to dry hops for brewing and return the waves of people at tiny village stations.
Along the way, Freddy and his team serve a magnificent five-course lunch that's all the more impressive given it's conjured up from the inside of a train. Delicately seared yellowfin tuna is followed by a hearty leek and asparagus soup before the main event of succulent organic pork wrapped in Parma ham. Next up is a selection of British cheeses before a delicious elderflower and strawberry trifle.
House wines are included or you can upgrade to something fancier.
The only stop during the trip is at the seaside town of Whitstable, where we're greeted with lavish platters of the local oysters and champagne when we disembark to the sounds of a lively four-piece jazz band.
On the return journey we skirt along the north coast of Kent, through the cathedral town of Rochester and back into London's urban sprawl.
At £310 ($560) a person, this trip is special occasion territory but the consensus onboard is that it's worth it. Sitting opposite is a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary. "Twenty-three years today," the man announces, clinking glasses with his wife, "and we're still smiling."
The writer was a guest of Virgin Atlantic Airways and Orient-Express.
TRIP NOTES
GETTING THERE
Virgin Atlantic flies daily from Sydney to London via Hong Kong, phone 1300 727 340, see virgin-atlantic.com.au.
TOURING THERE
The Golden Age of Travel trip departs from London's Victoria Station at 11.45am, returns at 4.40pm and includes a five-course lunch. Cost £310 ($560) per person. For departure dates, see orient-express.com.
MORE INFORMATION
visitlondon.com; visitbritain.com.
