Plans for the journey

 

Starting the planning

Yesterday, I explained what had led to our interest in the Peninsular War. Based on that we had, over the years, looked at ways of visiting many of the sites of the battles, but nothing really appealed. It was two years ago when Drew saw an advert for The Cultural Experience and their tour called: Wellington in Portugal it seemed to do just what we wanted. So in September 2025, just back from our trip to Norway we booked this tour. 

Planning around the tour

Of course, I always knew a week away wouldn't be enough for our main holiday of the year, even though we already had three other trips booked for the year (Berlin, where we were in March for the Half Marathon, Nerja, where we were for our regular Easter fortnight break and Amsterdam, where we hope to be in October for Drew's first Marathon), so what should we do?

Having travelled around Norway last year and Northern Europe in 2023 we have come to enjoy European public transport as part of the holiday experience, so I began, with the help of the invaluable The Man in Seat 61 blog, to look at a route to get us to Lisbon for the start of the tour and a return journey coming back once the tour was complete. This allowed me to build in a side visit to Santiago de Compostela, a place I have long wished to visit but hadn't had the opportunity. I'm quite excited about going to Galicia, a place where a language with Celtic roots, though heavily overlain by latin influences, survives in use. Of course, the root of the name Galicia is the same as that for Wales in Spanish (Gales) and the Galatians in Asia Minor in biblical times. 

Planning the route back was even more fun, as Portugal and Spain, though both EU countries, don't cooperate on cross-border transportation, but more about that when we come to the day when we travel back.

Armed with an outline plan put together last October. I began to book in stages, largely because booking times vary by location. Naturally I had a spreadsheet with booking dates scheduled, so I was ready for each set of dates. 

Eurostar was eight months ahead, so that was booked in October, which is also when I booked most of the hotels. SNCF and RENFE, France and Spain railways, took bookings six months ahead. Alsa (Spain's coach network) and the UK train companies took bookings 12 weeks ahead (29th March) and finally Comboios de Portugal, 30 days ahead (19th May). 

So the route was sorted and the holiday plan emerged as follows:   

In the Footsteps of Wellington

Day	From	To
Thursday, June 4th	Tongwynlais	London
Friday, June 5th	London	Barcelona
Saturday, June 6th	Barcelona	Santiago de Compestela
Tuesday, June 9th	Santiago de Compestela	Lisbon
Thursday, June 11th	Lisbon	Obidos
Friday, June 12th	Obidos	Anadia
Sunday, June 14th	Anadia	Lousã
Monday, June 15th	Lousã	Torres Vedras
Tuesday, June 16th	Torres Vedras	Lisbon
Thursday, June 18th	Lisbon	Madrid
Friday, June 19th	Madrid	Paris
Sunday, June 21st	Paris	Tongwynlais

Mobile Rules OK

I'd noted in previous years, especially on the Australian and Norwegian holidays that mobile apps seem to have replaced paper as the primary mode of ticketing, this trend continues, this year, the only non-electronic form of ticket is the train tickets from Taffs Well to London and Return. I was able to book them online, but there wasn't an option for etickets (I assume because Transport for Wales don't talk to Great Western Rail!), the only option was paper/card in the post. 

My range of apps this year looks like this:

A lot less than in previous years, but that is largely because it is more economic to book with train aggregators (Trainline and Omio) than direct with the train companies. 

You'll see I am using two different hotel brands IHG for Holiday Inns and Minor for NH hotels. As I've mentioned in past years I've been using IHG for lots of travel in the last four years, but there are locations on my route this time where IHG don't have hotels or, where they do, they are a long way away from the train stations. It turns out that NH (a Dutch hotel chain, now part of the larger Minor Hotels group), provide a lot better locations for this year's route. 

IDF Mobilites is for my station transfers in Paris on two occasions and Tripcast is a community app being used by the tour provider for group sharing - I'm sure the blog will reflect how this works in practice, it only went live today.

Almost ready to go

Mentioning the range of apps, reminds me of one of the pleasures of modern travel, being updated regularly by the apps and emails how soon the trip will begin. 

This week my email inbox looks like this:

From bottom to top that is Eurostar reminding me of the trip details and inviting me to choose my meal preferences for Friday morning. NH Sants Barcelona and NH Collection Santiago confirming my reservation and trying to upsell rooms and meals at the hotels. Apollo Brunswick confirming our dinner reservation for tomorrow night and Holiday Inn Bloomsbury confirming the accommodation for tomorrow.

So, it feels like everything is ready, tomorrow the journey starts. I look forward to sharing it with you.