Upon arriving in London, we decided to hop on the train to Bristol instead of renting a car -- and…read morewe're so glad we did! The train stations were a breeze to navigate, tickets were very affordable, and the ride itself was smooth and scenic. Staff and locals couldn't have been kinder, always ready to point us in the right direction with a smile. If you're traveling in the UK, skip the stress of driving and take the train -- it's an absolute win!

Used in the TV show Boy Meads World, for all of those train travelers who treat their bodies like a…read moreTemple. This is a large station that services Bristol (but not literally), and is the hub of the entire Southwest UK when it comes trains. It's a haunting old station and one which we've been to on many occasions. Functionally, it's been modernized a lot in recent years during the resurgence of Bristol, but it's as grand as ever. It's actually the oldest station in the country and also the largest. Literally, in the UK. It started serving trains on the last day of August in 1840 and it connects to London Paddington. It was designed by Brunel. Who then did a lot of other railway things. But this was his first mission and he did it well.

Not to be confused with Montperrier, which is where they drink fizzy expensive water on a mountain…read more Montpelier is a little suburb of Bristol and it has a nice little railway station that fits into the suburbs perfectly. I visited most of the stations in the Bristol area and surrounding countryside when I was doing my extensive traveling here and because I love visiting Rail stations. It's a cute example of a little British station with an amazing urban flair. This tiny little station is especially amazing because of its little Station House on the only platform which is covered in murals and graffiti and that makes it extremely unusual and notable and honestly gives it so much flavour that it's probably one of my favourites in the country.

This is such a fun dinky little train station to use. It's not that easy to find and, once there,…read moreit feels very unlikely that a train will ever arrive! It's usually very quiet, and there's no ticket machine or information booth, or anything to help you at all, bar a small notice advertising potential changes to the timetable - but not the current timetable! It's all very surreal: just one track serving both directions. Make sure you aim for a specific train when using this line; check on the First Great Western website for the Temple Meads-Severn Beach line. With two trains an hour in each direction, it really is a very bad idea to turn up and hope for the best! And be warned: there is no service at all on Sundays! You pay the fare (£2 single for the whole line) once you're on the train. When it's really busy, it's unlikely the conductor will get round everyone with the ancient little ticket machine, so, though I hate to say it so baldly, you can often ride this train for nothing. At rush hour times, morning and evening, quite a few people use this line for commuting around Bristol and I would recommend leaving it to them at those times of day.

I dropped all my colouring pencils. I'm still missing one. Where did the Redland?…read more The town of Redland is an entertaining little station for a tiny little part of Bristol. When I was traveling extensively around England when I came down to the Southwest in the Bristol area this is one of the stations which I visited a few times. Just 3 miles from Bristol Temple Meads is this lovely little station with a lovely little old building in a nice little Suburban neighborhood. It's really cute for sure.

Small and quaint, this serves just one track, with trains coming in from Montpelier and Clifton…read moreDown. With no attendants, it feels like a little village station in the middle of nowhere. The lack of travellers contributes to the feeling too, with school kids seeming to make the up the majority of the footfall. A lot of the time all you've got is the birds for company. It's on the Severn Beach line, and you can get connections to the rest of the network at Temple Meads which is only a ten minutes away if you take the train from here. Unfortunately this line has annoyingly infrequent trains (twice an hour, if that). However, it is very pretty, with views of Avonmouth and various historic parts of the Bristol along the way. As I said, it's unstaffed and amenities are pretty thin on the ground. There is no ticket office, so you'll have to buy on the train (and can do so without the worry of a penalty fare). There isn't anything really, in fact, apart from a timetables board and some cycle racks. It would be a bit much to ask anything more of such a small station anyway.

Bristol Parkway station is located at the intersection of the lines from London (Paddington) to…read moreSouth Wales and the main line from Bristol to Birmingham, providing a major interchange between the two. It was one of the first 'Parkway' stations to be built, in 1972, to attract car users to trains by providing ample car parking at locations with good road links, close to urban areas. This site was chosen both because of the interchange it offered, and because of its proximity to the M4 and M32, just north of Bristol. When opened, shelter was fairly meagre, with 'bus stop' shelters on the platforms and a small waiting room and ticket office by the entrance to the car park. Because of its exposed and windy position, additional long platform shelters were erected, but it still had a reputation for being a cold place to wait for a train. Over the years, substantial suburbs have developed around Stoke Gifford, and in 2001, a new and much larger station building, with a dramatic curved roofline, was built in recognition of its growing importance. In 2007 an additional platform was constructed on the London-bound (north) side, to provide additional capacity. The station is now used by over 1.75 million passengers a year, with in excess of half a million passengers changing trains here. The station now has heated waiting shelters on the platforms, and the main building has a small shop, cafe and ticket office. Other facilities include a taxi rank, payphones, cash points and bus stops for local bus services (including to Frenchay hospital and Bristol city centre). The station has level access (via lifts to the platforms). The station is served by all long distance trains on the London-South Wales main line and the cross-Country main line from the South-West to Birmingham and the North. It is also served by local services from Gloucester, Westbury and Weston-super-Mare.

This is a great, modern, functional station on the North side of Bristol. It's close to the M4/M5…read moreintersection, so it's a far better place to collect someone from than Bristol Temple Meads (in the centre of the city) if you're located to the north of the city. However, there are a few things to be aware of: 1. Parking is £5 a day. The payment meters are awkward to operate, and if you don't pay you will get clamped & fined. 2. The car park gets full by 9:30am most days, and if you park outside an official space, you will get clamped (even if you've paid for a ticket). 3. Traffic in the area is hellish at peak hours. Journeys from the motorway to the station can take in excess of 45 mins between 7:30 - 9:00 and 16:00 - 18:00 for the 2 mile journey. The station is fairly new with good facilities: clean toilets, a small newsagent, a coffee shop and a sandwich shop. There are also lifts to all platforms for the disabled.

Barbie likes when I ride the tracks down to her southern railway, but this isn't related to that…read more The Southern Railway deals with the South part of UK and they do a good job. They have a lot of trains coming through Bristol and Bath and also all over the Southwest. It's definitely one of the better train services and I generally ride on them whenever I can and come down here a lot, and use them when I do.

All aboard for the BEST way to see the UK! The British railway system is a dream -- quick, comfy,…read moreand surprisingly affordable. Unlike in the U.S., trains connect almost every city and town, making travel effortless. We used it for our whole UK adventure and loved every mile. Whether you're off to work, sightseeing, or chasing castles, this is the way to go!

Lovely architecture, but amenities could use some work. There is a free water refill station and…read morethe toilets are clean, functional, and spacious. That said, there isn't a lot of food shops. A listing: Good&Proper Starbucks The Pasty Shop AMT Coffee Proper Crust Hart's Bakery Pumpkin Cafe Bonaparte (pub?) This sounds like a lot but there are 15 platforms, and there's hardly any seating. Overall, the place is fairly clean and seems to be well-run. Bathrooms: clean, spacious, and functional.

If you like to mince things up while in bed (such as Barbie, with boys, don't ask), then you're a…read moreBedmincer. This is not that. The little suburb of Bedminster is a tiny little station that serves its purpose well. When I was traveling extensively around Southwest England I would visit all the little towns and their Cathedrals and churches and of course their stations because I was kind of obsessed with travel and geography. This is one of my faves from inner city Bristol. It is open and cute and serves the West suburbs of town and is on the line to Weston-super-Mare. It gets extra points for having amazing murals like many Bristol stations do!

Bedminster is just about as forlorn as a station could be. Located in the south west suburbs of…read moreBristol and surrounded by Victorian terraces, and close to the hilly but attractive Victoria Park, this once substantial suburban station is now but a halt, with two basic waiting shelters on each island platform. Opened in 1884, it was rebuilt with four tracks and the two current island platforms in 1932. In 1938 it boasted some 15 staff, but became an unstaffed halt in 1968, with the buildings rationalised shortly afterwards. I remember travelling through this station (and the adjacent Parson Street) regularly on my way to Bristol since the late 1960s, and feeling sorry for its users, even then: however, one big improvement is the increase in train frequency: in the 1970s the station had only a handful of rush-hour trains a day, whereas now it benefits from a half-hourly service on weekdays. Passenger numbers have nearly doubled in the last 4 years as a result, to over 40,000 a year. The facilities are still basic: it is unstaffed, although it has a payphone, CCTV coverage and platform indicators: these are essential, as trains can operate in both directions on the tracks, so occasionally late trains will be replatformed at short notice! There is level access to each island platform, although the ramps are steeper then the recommended 1:12 slope. A nice addition is a series of murals, painted on the walls of the subways (to replace the inevitable graffiti), showing scenes of local interest and history. That said, it is still a rather uninviting prospect late at night in the dark.

I've never learnt how to drive a car. Partly laziness, partly because as a teenager I was a bit of…read morean eco-warrior. Years later, less of an eco-warrior but low on funds, I am still at the mercy of public transport . When you live in the UK that's a pretty depressing thought, made even more depressing when you're waiting at trains stations like Filton Abbey Wood. FAW is possibly one of the worst train stations in the country. And I should know. I had to wait there every week days for six months. The station was built in 1996 by the Ministry of Defence to take its workers from their shiny offices to their homes in Wales or central Bristol. In 2006 it was voted Britain's 647th most used station, making it one of the busiest un-staffed stations in the country. You'd think that this would mean that it'd be one of the best. It isn't. With no seats, no toilets, no cover and no working ticket machines it ranks as one of the worst. The icing on the cake is that the one screen that shows the train times works intermittently so sometimes it can be a guessing game as to when your train will arrive. Avoid at all costs!

The most depressing and dire station to have to wait about on in the entire country, in my humble…read moreopinion. Massively horrid and empty, it's as if aliens have removed all the rest of humanity from the planet and you're there, stuck forever alone, on Filton Abbey Wood Station.. To be strictly fair, it was purpose-built for one reason only, and that was for commuter transport to the vast MOD office complxes there. Maybe the fact that it was built by the MOD in 1996 accounts for the bleak, utilitarian design. It's a three-track station, and has covered shelters on each platform, but apart from that - No refreshments, no waiting room, no toilets, no station staff (There is a portacabin that is allegedly manned for a couple of hours in an afternoon), no ticket office, no lost luggage office, etc etc. There is one public payphone but it's sometimes out of order, has no phone book and smells of wee. There's no taxi rank handy either, or bus terminus. If you end up there for any reason be sure to have someone waiting with a car. If you have to change trains there and will be waiting for any length of time be sure to have snacks, fully-charged cellphone, and hope you don't need a bathroom in a hurry! I'd give it no stars at all, except it is a functional station and serves the purpose of decanting employees of the MOD every morning and evening.

Those who use a patch to give up smoking may ask, how much does the Patchweigh? This is unrelated…read moreto that. Patchway railway station is a super cute little station in the southwest of England close to Bristol. There are lots of little stations around here serving all the little Villages and towns and suburbs of Bristol and this is a great example of a typical Southwestern English rail station.

Patchway Station is a small station, well situated by rail. It's hidden away where not a lot of…read morepeople seem to know about it. There's free car parking. There are fairly regular trains to the centre of Bristol, towards the South-West, and to Cardiff, and at certain times of day there are even direct services that will take you to Birmingham, Manchester or beyond. If you're travelling to Cardiff regularly, tickets from Patchway are quite a bit cheaper than from Bristol Parkway. What a pity that it is such a desolate hole. The brick shelters smell of wee and are too small to keep more than 3 people dry. There are no ticket-buying facilities and the announcement system often doesn't work. As soon as it rains both platforms become giant puddles. At the risk of sounding old, Patchway station is also a hanging-out ground for an ugly teenage gang with nothing better to do. They document their sexual conquests across the station and I think they may be the reason that the shelters smell of wee. I wouldn't want to be waiting for, or getting off, a train here too late at night.