UKC

I love cycle touring and a medium term goal is to cycle from home to Turkey or maybe Morocco, the thought of cycling from home to another continent really intrigues me. I also like train travel, and on Seat61 he mentions travelling across Turkey to Armenia/Georgia and that looks great, and could be an alternative to my hoped for Trans Siberian trip, which is on hold for the foreseeable.
I have also seen this thread https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/destinations/euro_train_tickets-781539?v=... that mentions inter rail.
What confuses me is getting from Lancashire to mainland Europe, I would prefer not to fly, train to Hull and a ferry is expensive, therefore I am thinking Via London and to Calais and it seems more Phileas Fogg. But Euro Star seems to be a problem.
So to stop rambling, and get to the point, would a good plan be. Buy a 15 day in 2 months pass, train to London, Bus to Calais???? then do my Paul Theroux Railway Bazar thing from then on, and not use Euro star, or would you use Euro star.
Thanks for listening and TIA.

You can take a bike on the Dover ferry can't you? Does that unlock any more options or not really?

Interail passes allow you one return rail trip in and out of your home country, and Eurostar for a supplement. I'm not certain whether Eurostar is currently taking packaged bikes. Also I'm not certain how far east the interail region stretches. If you post up on the cycling UK forum there are some very knowledgeable train buffs.

you can use your interrail ticket to get Dover and then hop on a ferry for £25 return for you and your bike (if you have it). Some mates of mine went to Bruges by bike using this ticket in March.

You probably know this but you need a special interrail pass holder ticket  for Eurostar which costs about £30 for each leg. 

I go regularly to southern Germany by train these days and love travelling that way. I have just come back Berlin by plane and it was ok but give me the train any day!

a possible option if you have a bike.. https://www.saillink.co.uk/

If you go via Le Shuttle they run a minibus service for bikes. You don't need to box your bike like you do on eurostar. 

Ferries generally take bikes even if they don't take foot passengers (the reason they don't take foot passengers a lot of the time is the cost of providing a bus and driver to shuttle them over, if you're on a bike you can just ride it alongside the cars so that cost isn't there).  So cycle to your port of choice (or train, if you weren't wanting to cycle within the UK) and take the ferry to France.  It is usually left on the car deck, locked/tied to one of the railings.

You can take a bike on more or less all ferries.  Not all take foot passengers due to the cost of providing terminal facilities and shuttle buses (though a lot do) but bikes just cycle over with the cars so they generally take them, usually at a very low cost.  Just select "bicycle" as your vehicle when booking.

That's what I would do.  Eurostar is irritatingly expensive and faffy with bikes.

Or am I reading that wrong and you don't want to go with a bike this time?  If so and you don't want to use Eurostar then check out which ferries take foot passengers (some do) or use the Eurostar InterRail discount mentioned upthread.  If using a ferry as a foot passenger build in lots of spare time as you will generally be first on and last off, it can be nearly an hour after arrival in some cases.

Or if you don't mind coaches, Flixbus international journeys (even from near home e.g. Manchester) can be dirt cheap at times.

There's something really cool about cycling to the edge of the island and onto a ferry, that you don't get turning up the night before in a city and packing your bike onto the train 🙂

Apologies all, I would not* be taking a bike on this trip, sorry for my rambling confusion. However there is some really good information here, so all good.

*having said that, just got back from a trip, and met a couple of people with folding bikes, which seemed a great tool to add to the mix.

Oh. Well if there's no bike involved what's the problem with Eurostar?

Excellent question, and what I should have asked, rather the drivel in my OP.

Is there a problem using Eurostar or would a bus from London to France be better.

People have been known to use it, so you'd have to presume not 😉

I think it'll depend on your definition of 'better' and how much you value comfort.

if you already have an interrail ticket which covers you for a journey out of the UK  to London for the eurostar or Dover for the ferry (the interrail app will produce this journey as one ticket) then why the need to get on a bus?

Someone has now explained it to me. The Euro star part will cost me €30 each way, i knew there was something. 
I will have to have a think about this, I believe the further east I go, outside France, Germany, Netherlands really, the less value inter rail has, and sadly air travel is so cheap, it could seduce me into flying back, much as I would hate my self, eg I had a flight to Marrakech for £18 this year and a flight from Faro for £30.
I was hoping the interail thing would allow me to swan around on the train network with zero hassle so long as there was space on the train, but its not quite like that.
 

yeah there is the £30 each way on the eurostar there's no getting round that. on the ferry could be reduced to about £25 return as a foot passenger.

Tbh you can still swan about europe on an interrail ticket but avoid the high speed trains where there is some kind of supplement for the high speed trains. This is definitely the case for France and likely to be so for Italy and Spain. However the further east you go this seems to happen less. For Germany you might need a seat reservation on a busy train but that's it. seat61.com has great info on all of this.

I'm a big fan of travel by train after doing short haul flights for many years and treat it as part of travelling in a way that flying just never is. It's way more relaxing and you see so much more. 

 

I've just returned from a family interrailing holiday. Basically trains in Benelux countries are a bit like ours, you can just get on and off them at will and interrail is fine. Might be worth just buying a standard one way ticket though, as they are also not very expensive.

On longer journeys e.g. Germany to Hungary, you really need to book a seat in case it is full, but this is where the travel is good value with interrail as the journeys are long and the trains are more comfortable.

Personally if you are heading east and want to make your mind up as you go, I would go for an interrail pass. 

That's great feedback, thank you. Time to get the maps out, and Seat61.

Train is far preferable in my expertience. Flixbus is fine if everything goers to plan. It is completely hideous if it does not with non-existent custom,er service. Take the train!

I am a bit confused by what you are actually asking but,

No. Eurostar from London is straightforward and imho vastly preferable to the bus. You can use your internal ticket as well, we've done it several times from Edinburgh over the past few years. 

If you take a bike, let us know how you get on. We used to take touring bikes on the train to France as hand luggage, (a dismantled bike in a soft bag or 'housse' would just fit on the luggage racks). but that's all stopped and last I heard was that you can take bike to Brussels but not Paris. Don't know about Lille.

Lol, your confused, so am I.

Bikes and trains, just had a trip to Shetland and Orkney which got off to a shakey start at Preston when the guard said there was no room for my bike, despite my reservation. After I pointed out possibly checking other bike reservations could be a plan, we departed leaving a chap on the platform with his LEJOG plans in tatters, who I felt sorry for until I realized he must have seen me freaking out on the platform, and not being concerned for me.

One dislike to my last comment, I hope it was the LEJOGer who was trying blag my bike spot