Don't know where to start your UK trip? Follow historian Alice Loxton’s rail recommendations.
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00:00There are so many incredible historic towns to visit all across the UK, from Bath to Edinburgh
00:07to Stratford-upon-Avon to Oxford to Cambridge, but what's so wonderful about them is that
00:12they're really easy to access because we have an amazing railway network.
00:16Hello, my name is Alice Loxton and I'm a historian.
00:20You might have seen me on social media making videos about historic places around the UK.
00:25So in the UK, there are 32,000 kilometres of railway and there are over 2,500 stations.
00:33So when you get a sense of that, it really sinks in that actually this is the obvious
00:36way to travel around the country.
00:37I'm really excited to be working on this campaign with Trainline.
00:41What's interesting is one in ten Brits have never been to a historic site, which I think
00:45is quite a lot, but despite that, there were 75% of them who said that they had an intention
00:51to go to these historic sites, which is exciting.
00:5419% said that they just didn't know how to get there and they didn't know where to go.
00:59I've put together a list of ten places that are suggestions that people can visit by rail.
01:06One of my favourites and one that I visited recently is Stratford-upon-Avon and there's
01:10so many wonderful things you can see there, mostly relating to Shakespeare, because this
01:15was Shakespeare's birthplace.
01:16You can see his school, you can see where he's buried.
01:20One of the amazing hidden gems of Stratford-upon-Avon is the Guild Chapel.
01:25It's got these amazing medieval wall paintings, but they were covered in a wash and it was
01:30only in recent years that they removed the white wash.
01:33So one of the most popular places for visitors to the UK is Edinburgh.
01:38This is a city that is built around an extinct volcano.
01:41It's got royal history, the Palace of Holyrood House, so aesthetically and visually it's
01:47incredibly impressive.
01:49It's only four hours from London.
01:50Another great place for that is York, which is one of my other favourite places to visit
01:55by train.
01:56It's two hours, I think, from Edinburgh and it's two hours from London and York's full
02:01of so many incredible hidden gems, whether it's the Roman walls, which are still intact
02:09and some of these you can walk along.
02:11There's a lot of history in these places and then of course there's York Minster, the incredible
02:15cathedral.
02:17I love taking the train and I love jumping on, relaxing and seeing the countryside go
02:22by.
02:23So I think it's an experience in itself.
02:24Say if you're going from Edinburgh to London, you see this amazing cross-section of the
02:27country, travelling through some great towns, passing sometimes amazing seaside settings
02:35and you don't have any thought of trying to park, so it does bring you right into the
02:39centre of the city.
02:40And what we're trying to do with Trainline is we're just trying to help people be able
02:45to travel as cheaply as possible, get around the country as quickly as possible.