America was never somewhere I’d longed to visit. I’d been to New York and loved it – but New York isn’t America. I’m not really a city person; I wanted to get off the beaten track and get a real sense of how enormous the country is. So I went by train.
That first trip covered about 7,500 miles – Chicago to Seattle, down the West Coast and across to New Mexico – and a later trip added another 3,500. Some of the scenery was incredible, some of it was incredibly boring, and because the land around railway tracks is cheaper, you really do see the real America, warts and all. Chicago to Seattle was days and days of wide open plains with the odd town in between.
I worried I’d get bored, but over two trips I spent 11 days on trains and spent almost all of it staring out of the window, knowing I was seeing things I’d probably never see again. There’s no Wi-Fi, and sometimes no signal for hours, and I loved that. A friend followed along on Google Earth – look up those giant circular irrigation fields from space, they’re extraordinary!
If you want time to reflect and switch off, I can’t recommend it enough. Just don’t be in a hurry.