Author Tom Chesshyre realises a teenage dream to reach Istanbul by rail at the age of 50
Tom Chesshyre/PA
It all began on a park bench in London’s Soho Square. We had both just turned 50. We had known each other for years (since college). We had family responsibilities, but we wanted to get away for a while – and had the green light to do so from those close to us.
We both enjoyed Europe. We both enjoyed travelling by trains. We were seeking what the writer Jerome K. Jerome so pithily put at the beginning of Three Men In A Boat, his 1880s comic masterpiece about a journey down the River Thames: “Rest and a complete change… the overstrain upon our brains has produced a general depression throughout the system. Change of scene, absence of the necessity for thought, will restore the mental equilibrium.”