By Jenny Needham

Very inconveniently, my sister Sally lives in deepest Devon. She works in London during the week and sometimes hops on the train to come and visit us up North, a two-and-a-half hour journey on the East Coast line. But she lives in a beautiful part of the country – and I rather like her – so every now and then we try to make the long journey from North-East to South-West to visit her on home turf.

We have done the journey a couple of times by car – seven (if you’re lucky) interminable hours when even Radio Four and your favourite CDs begin to pall.

We have also done the journey by plane, from Newcastle to Exeter, but it cost more than £150 return and even though the flight was only an hour and a quarter, we were still an hour from my sister’s house when we landed. Factor in the cost of parking at the airport and the fact that you have to check in an hour before the flight (with no room for walking boots, wellies and waterproofs in your cabin bag) and it really isn’t an enormously convenient way of getting there.

To be honest, the journey was really putting me off going… until I dropped my daughter off at Darlington station one day and saw a train standing at Platform 1 which grabbed my attention. The destination plate on the front said Plymouth, which is a short hop by a cute little train to Bere Ferrers, my sister’s home. Bingo!

Some people might think that six-and-a-half hours on a train is just another interminable journey. I prefer to think of it as time apart from the day-to-day grind where a hundred different things are vying for your attention. Six-and-a-half hours to stare out of the window as towns, cities and the English countryside race past. Six-and-a-half hours to do crosswords and sink into the other-world of a chunky novel. Bliss.

Not everyone wants to take advantage of time out on the train, of course. Because it’s such a long way, we decided to take a long weekend, but rather than stress about a couple of “lost” days at work, my husband worked on the train, another advantage of this mode of travel.

The Cross Country Route links the East of Scotland and North-East of England with the West Midlands and the South-West. I am familiar with the East Coast route, having worked in London and travelled up and down fairly frequently, but on this diagonal trip across England, once we were past Leeds, I was in unfamiliar territory.

The four-carriage train arrived at Darlington at 9.13am on the dot. As we gathered speed the guard reeled off the names of all the 20-odd stations we would be stopping at on the way, a litany that left me feeling quite exhausted, but then I settled back into my seat and the rare pleasure of simply watching the world go by.

The joy of “slow travel” is that you see how the landscape changes, and you also get an interesting, if somewhat shabby, take on the cities you pass through, the tracksides populated by small industries, the graveyards of cars, ramshackle garages, environmental services, rusting factories and litter, lots of litter. Beyond you can see regenerated city centres, glass-fronted high-rises sparkling in the sunshine; high-spec offices for rent; enormous shopping malls like Meadowhall in Sheffield (which was built on the site of a former steelworks), temples to our spend, spend, spend culture.

From York, we travelled to Leeds, Wakefield, Doncaster and Sheffield. In 1937, George Orwell wrote: “Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World.” Now it’s changing rapidly as new projects regenerate some of the more run-down parts of the city. It’s green too, another thing you can see from the train. There are more than 250 parks, woodlands and gardens in the city, and an estimated two million trees, giving Sheffield the highest ratio of trees to people of any city in Europe.

Then it was on to Chesterfield, Derby, Tamworth and Birmingham New Street, the busiest railway station in the UK outside London. It is the national hub for CrossCountry, the most extensive long-distance train network in Britain, and is the country’s second most populous city. On the south side of the city, you pass through the model village of Bournville, best known for its connections with the Cadbury family and chocolate, and recently named one of the best places to live in the country by The Sunday Times.

At Birmingham, the half-full train was suddenly full to bursting with garrulous groups of lads and lasses, some dressed to the nines. It was only when they started talking “odds” and “tips” that I clicked. It was Cheltenham Gold Cup day and 50 minutes later they all spilled off and went to try their luck as we headed off to Gloucester, Newport, Bristol Temple Meads, Taunton and Tiverton.

Here the countryside is bisected by small rivers and dykes, and the fields were completely waterlogged. It was this area which suffered such awful flooding in 2014, when 16,000 acres of the Somerset Levels were under water.

After Tiverton, the train continues its journey south to Exeter St Davids and Newton Abbot, before turning westwards toward Totnes, skirting the fashionable seaside towns of Torquay and Torbay, the “English Riviera”. Totnes itself is better known for being a bohemian outpost, home to a sizeable New Age community.

From Totnes, the train turns inland again and heads for our final destination, Plymouth. Six-and-a-half hours after leaving Darlington, we arrive – fewer than ten minutes behind schedule - relaxed and ready to enjoy our weekend at the other end of the country.

It’s a corny phrase, but I really buy into the romance of rail travel: trains force you to slow down, and that’s their beauty. When you’re on a long train journey, your time is absolutely 100 per cent yours to do as you wish, allowing you truly to relax.

It made me think of the 1970s and the British Rail train advert which advised us all to “let the train take the strain”. After a relaxing long weekend travelling down to the South-West and back, I’d say the idea has an awful lot going for it.