I went on holiday on my own, and loved it!

It wasn't a difficult decision to make, in the end. it was about as difficult as going out in public wearing a silly hat... the only thing that really gave me second thoughts was what other people would think. But it was nonetheless a rather usual decision, and in some ways quite brave; I'm in a relationship, I have a partner and friends who would all go on a holiday with me, but I had a very specific trip in mind, and none of them were be likely to share my specific desire to travel all the way to Stockholm and back by train. So I went on my own.

Now, this was not my first long distance train journey, nor was it the first time I traveled on my own; all the way back when I was 20 years old, I bought an inter-rail pass and headed off on my own across Europe. But this felt very different. I'm a 38 year old man now, and as much as I still feel like I have a spirit of adventure, the idea of backpacking across Europe, relying on finding a cheap bed in a hostel every night most certainly doesn't appeal to me anymore. Not only that, as much as I have very fond memories of that adventure, the lonely and boring times have also stuck with me, and I think part of me always held back from doing another solo journey for that reason. Yet here i was, 18 years later, heading off for another train journey on my own. I don't regret it at all, in fact, it was one of the best holidays of my life!

It was a journey I wanted to do for a while. Hamburg, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Three cities I've never been to, all of which have been highly recommended to me, and sound really interesting great fun. But also an extremely interesting rail journey; a route that involves three sea crossings: one through a tunnel, one by train ferry and one over a bridge. It was that fact that gave me that final push to go ahead and do it.

I've probably been through the channel tunnel more than anyone else I know, and although I hadn't been over the Oresund bridge before, it wasn't going anywhere, and I was sure I would one day. The other exciting and novel leg of this journey, however, the link from Hamburg to Copenhagen, suddenly became time sensitive. This route was, until recently, operated by a train that left Hamburg, traveled to the German port of Puttgarden, where it boarded a ferry to cross the sea to the Danish port of Rodby. Once the ferry docked, the train left the ferry again and completed the journey to Copenhagen on land. That's right. A train... that went on a boat!

However, as I mentioned, the opportunity to make this unique journey suddenly developed a time limit. I'm pretty sure it was a tweet by Mark Smith (the man in seat 61, or @seat61), that first alerted me to the fact that although the train ferry service was about to resume after being plagued by bus replacements all summer, it was only resuming for a limited time. Until the middle of december, to be exact, after which, the service would be re-routed over a longer overland route. Trains will eventually return to the original route, but only after the construction of the Fehrman belt fixed link, a tunnel. So the train ferry would soon be no more! If i didn't do this now I never would!!

And that was that, I made the decision there and then. I was going to Hamburg, Copenhagen and Stockholm. And I was doing it before the middle of December.

I'd also been talking about doing a flight free holiday for quite a while - as someone who has an interest in rail travel, and has been making a lot of steps recently to live a more environmentally conscious lifestyle, it wasn't a surprise to people close to me. But the fact that I was doing it on my own was still a surprise to some. It quite simply was not the type of holiday my girlfriend would enjoy; she regularly talks about how our ideal holidays are essentially polar opposites of each other (and i have to agree, as she tends to like something involving an easy journey, to somewhere she can literally just sit by a pool/ beach and do nothing for two weeks).

I did of course think about the possibility of her, or one of my friends, joining me for one or two legs of the journey, but to be honest, once i made the decision to go on my own, it really was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. All the decisions, where to go, how to go, where to stay, what to do while I'm there... they were now only for me to make. I was free to be as selfish as I wanted and do what I wanted to do. The fact that one of the main things I wanted to see in Hamburg was the world's largest model railway layout wasn't an issue. I could spend a whole day exploring Stockholm's metro stations if I wanted. Slowly but surely all my worries faded away and i started to get really excited.

So I started researching, started planning, started booking. Before I knew it I had a full 8 night itinerary planned, 2 nights in each of the three cities I had planned to visit, along with a host of activities in each. For the return journey I booked two night trains, Stockholm - Malmö and Hamburg - Offenbourg, allowing me to squeeze in an extra half day of sightseeing in Copenhagen and a full day in Strasbourg, before returning to London via Paris on the last Eurostar of the day.

If I was to do the same journey again, I would probably do it reverse, as in use the night trains for the outbound journey instead of the inbound - you can get a perfectly good nights sleep on both night trains, but after a week on the road and when it's time to go home, I was quite tired. The more relaxed pace of sleeping in hotels would probably have been nicer than waking up on a train at 6am two nights on the trot - on the way out it may have actually added more to the excitement to the journey.

In the end the journey I made took me through six countries, over 9 days, using 8 different railway operators:

day 1: Eurostar London-Brussels

Detsche Bahn (DB) ICE Brussels-Cologne

Swiss Railways (SBB CFF FFS) EC Cologne-Hamburg

day 2: in Hamburg

day 3: Danish Railways (DSB) Hamburg-Copenhagen

day 4: in Copenhagen

day 5: Swedish Railways (SJ) Copenhagen-Stockholm

day 6: in Stockholm

day 7: Swedish Railways (SJ) night train Stockholm-Malmo

day 8: Oresundtag (local cross border operator) Malmo-Copenhagen

Danish Railways (DSB) Copenhagen-Hamburg

Austrian Railways (OBB) nightjet Hamburg-Offenburg

day 9: French Railways (SNCF) TER Offenburg-Strasbourg

French Railways (SNCF) TGV Strasbourg-Paris

Eurostar Paris-London