London to Venice via the Gotthard Pass

Oliver Smith, writing for Lonely Planet Traveller, skips the plane and takes the train from London to Venice via the Gotthard Pass.

The Eurostar hauls out of St Pancras into the sunshine and soon the industrial estates lapse into green fields. Flying from Gatwick to Venice takes just two hours, but by travelling to Venice by train you experience small thrills that are not available on a plane. What’s more, you can watch the landscape changing from Kentish weald to French oak forest, from Swiss mountain meadow to Italian olive grove. The train is plunged into darkness as it enters the tunnel, and everyone's ears pop, but it soon emerges into daylight and eventually we roll into Paris, trundling among the wide boulevards of the capital. Leaving Gare du Nord, I catch Metro line 8 southbound, popping out at ground level by the Seine before rattling beneath the iron feet of the Eiffel Tower. The British invented railways, but the French perfected them: they made them faster, more glamorous and with better sandwiches. The case in point is Le Train Bleu in Gare de Lyon, the grandest station café in the world, and the place to stop for breakfast before catching a train to Zürich. Where British trains shamble and scuttle around the network, the French TGVs slice through the landscape like a knife through brie. They can reach 357mph (faster than the take-off speed of a Boeing 747). Onboard a TGV service to Zürich, the shortcomings become apparent as landscapes flash past like a movie in fast-forward. Every so often, there's just time to subliminally take in countryside scenes like a village square, silent but for the gentle clunk of pétanque and the loud whoosh of the regular TGVs. Arriving in Zürich, it's clear this is a town of clocks. There's a clock on the spire of St Peter's church (the largest clock face in Europe), whose bell booms on the hour. There are the tweetings of Swiss cuckoo clocks, and there are watches inlaid with crystals, all ticking in shop windows. Zürich, too, seems like a city that ticks along as assuredly as a well-made timepiece. Blue trams putter the avenues, funiculars climb the surrounding hills and rowing boats cast off into the Zürichsee - the lake around which the city huddles, and across whose waters the Alps can be seen on clear days. By the time the station clock shows six, Zürich is stirring with evening life, as city workers amble riverside promenades and tables fill at cafés. And by the time the clock strikes eight the next morning, it's time for me to set out on the most beautiful railway journey in the world. Look at the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites and there - in amongst Machu Picchu, the Pyramids of Giza and the Taj Mahal - you'll find a small Swiss railway. The Bernina Line is a railway that can convert anyone into a militant trainspotter: travelling through Alpine scenery so exquisite, every camera battery onboard is drained. Soon we're climbing above church spires and treetops, crossing rushing rivers and passing meadows where wildflowers sway and cowbells clang melodically. The Bernina Express is, it seems, a train with a rather confused personality. Sometimes it's a rollercoaster: storming up steep gradients, shimmying along cliff edges and plunging into tunnels. At other times, it pretends to be a car, barging down the middle of main roads and halting traffic. It twists and turns constantly, giving the impression of a train that's making up it route as it goes along.

Midway through the journey, the meadows turn to rocky passes as we reach Lago Bianco, the highest point on the railway, a spot visited only by shivering winds and lost goats. But in traversing these wild passes, the Bernina Railway was regarded as a miracle of engineering when work was completed in 1908 - serving remote mountain communities which at that time were cut off from roads. At lunchtime, we grind to a halt by the stone station at Alp Grüm, a place still only accessible by rail in winter. To the south, Italian mountains are visible, standing proudly beside their taller Swiss comrades. Beneath them is the modest border town of Tirano, where the Bernina Express terminates beside a tricolour flag and a square lined with pizzerias. 'You never get tired of this,' says Sylvie Kissling, a teacher from Zürich. 'Even as a Swiss person, this journey is amazing.' From Tirano, I board a local train to Milan. Outside the window, pine forests make way for shady orchards, and log cabins for mustard yellow villas. For one magic hour, the train skirts the shore of Lake Como in the dwindling afternoon sunshine, and for one fleeting moment outside Varenna, the train sweeps right beside the shore. In the distance, yachts glide through waters ablaze with the reflection of the setting sun. Before long the light fades, the lake tapers to its end, a great orange glow lights the southern horizon, and the thrum of Milanese traffic can be heard through the open window. The last leg of the journey takes me across the plains of northern Italy from Milano Stazione Centrale to Venezia Santa Lucia, two stations that couldn't be more different. Boarding at Milan feels like catching a train from inside a Roman temple. Built in the 1930s, it hogs the skyline and is bigger than the Milan cathedral and grander than the city's palaces. Two hours puttering across the farmland of Lombardy, past the cities of Verona and Padua, and the trains haul into Venezia Santa Lucia. Standing on the forecourt, it's hard not to feel sympathy for Virgilio Vallot, the architect who stood in this spot, blueprints in hand, confronted with the same heartbreakingly beautiful prospect. Tasked with building a gateway to the most beautiful city on Earth, Virgilio Vallot did the honourable thing and gave Venice a station that neither competes with nor distracts from the glories around it. It makes stepping out into the city all the more sublime. I catch a Vaporetto bound for St Mark's Square and, for the first time since London St Pancras, leave terra firma behind.