Full disclosure, I'm selling Byway through Seat61, but they're a great bunch (founder Cat Jones is a rail traveller like me), get good reports & are trying to promote holidays by rail not air. Code SEAT61OFF will get you £61 off bookings until the end of March. www.byway.travel/seat-61-enqu...

As with any new system I've been trying to break it (sorry, Byway!), you need to be realistic about timeframes and it doesn't yet list Athens, but it's just coped with a trip to Berlin, Krakow & Prague starting in *Aberdeen* (using DFDS Newcastle-Amsterdam ferry, good call).

The scenes in the Oval Office today will shame the US for decades. They’ll never be forgotten. A world leader, fighting for his country against the 21st century’s Nazis, came to the US and was attacked & abused by a gangster regime siding with the fascist invaders. A historic disgrace.

Imagine them coming down the Coast to Tynemouth, then half the peleton splitting and queuing up at the Foot Tunnel*, and half piling on the Shields Ferry, before sprinting to Sunderland. * With Pidcock riding up the escalator, cyclo-cross style.