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September 2011 I was lucky enough to be invited on board a train. Not just any train but the train for anyone who loves travelling this way. The British Pullman by Orient-Express has had a lot of work done on it to restore each of its eleven individual carriages. To the way they would have been when they were used on trains taking British holidaymakers to the seaside towns of Bournemouth and Brighton in the 1920s. It was a time when travelling by train was glamourous. People didn’t fly to Ibiza on a whim then and cars were a thing for the future. The train was the way people got around. Or in carriages pulled by horses. My grandparents actually met on a train from London, he was a doctor who had trained in Soho and later an anesthetist in the navy, she was young and had been recently left by her fiance. In those days trains were as they are on the British Pullman, or the Metropolitan and Bakerloo underground trains in London, with seats that faced each other and with individual booths. It made chatting people up on the train a whole lot easier than it is now.

Anyway, I was invited by Orient-Express to enjoy a gourmet five-course dinner on board this very special train. And this is how it went:

A Ride on the British Pullman by Orient-Express from Sophie Collard on Vimeo.

Thank you to everyone that made this journey possible. Look out for my Conversation on the Train with the train manager. Coming soon…