For further details call European Rail Travel on 0990 848848

For further details call European Rail Travel on 0990 848848.GETTING AROUNDBarcelona’s airport is linked to the city by regular trains and buses. The train (5.30am-11pm; 310Ptas; 30 mins) runs every half hour between the airport and Placa de Catalunya (for the Barri Gtic and La Rambla). Iberia (0171 830 0011), Spain’s national airline, offers the widest range of direct scheduled flights from Manchester and London, starting at pounds 274 and pounds 138 return respectively. The Aerobus (5.30am-12pm; 475Ptas; 30 mins) runs every 15 minutes between the airport and Placa de Catalunya.Once in the city, you can take advantage of the excellent train and bus network – pick up a free public transport map at any of the tourist offices (see Information). The cheapest charter flight carriers are EasyJet (01582 702 9000) which flies from Luton to Barcelona for around pounds 128 return. WHY go there?

With Barcelona just an hour and a half away by air, in no time at all you could be sitting enjoying a coffee on Spain’s most famous street, gawping at a Gaud masterpiece, or chanting “BARCELONA! BARCELONA!” from the famous Camp Nou terraces.

The best times to visit are either now or the autumn, when the weather and the city are at their finest.
HOW TO GET THEREThe quickest, easiest and cheapest way to get to Barcelona is to fly. If none of those sounds very tempting, what about enjoying a plate of fish stew in a restaurant recommended by Hitler, coming face-to-face with a hungry shark, or even slurping narcotic drinks in a bohemian bar? With your pounds 1 now getting you around 250 Ptas, Barcelona has become an inexpensive destination once again. Because yes, the vast majority of Indians do still travel in second class. But actually I’ve realised something else: that people in air-conditioned carriages are far too comfortable to ask deep questions about the meaning of lone palm trees glimpsed by the Ganges Coffee or tea? That’s about my limit now.. There is nobody hanging on the luggage rack, nobody staring out blankly from between my shoes, nobody balanced along the top edge of the seat. There is only a carriage-attendant who proposes coffee or tea, and biryani with eggs or meat.

I can even open my lap-top without risk of collapsing under a scrum of mind-boggled onlookers.You might say that the only difference between now and then is that I have graduated to a higher class of carriage. There is no queue of people squeezing up on the edge of my bench. What’s more, there are only four berths in my compartment, one of which is empty. I am not being pummelled by a desiccating heat for hour after hour Incredibly my shirt is clean and dry.

A vacant seat in an unreserved carriage was far more valuable than the life of an unborn foetus. My punishment was that I would then spend the next 24 hours melting into my seat while trying to avoid the reproachful gaze of the pregnant women, who – along with a couple of dozen friends – would silently occupy the space between my knees and the seat opposite.Anyway, those journeys led to a lot of soul-searching regarding the Indian scenery.What, for example, was the purpose of a lone palm tree by the Ganges, which I glimpsed for no more than a single second as the train passed it by? Come to think of it, man, what was the sense of anything?Which brings me back to the subject of what has changed in the last 15 years Let’s look at the carriage I’m currently in It is air-conditioned. The worst journeys were the ones without reservation – when my best hope was that obliging Indian army thugs would plough into the carriage on my behalf and vacate a seat or two by kicking out the original occupants, who invariably turned out to be pregnant women Not that I could refuse. It didn’t happen.
As for the trains, they were exercises in self-torture. Although I did my best to make reservations (in second class) it was remarkable how often I ended up double-booked with some wide-eyed local who could not possibly have been the type to forge a reservation stub.

Even on the occasions when I found myself with the luxury of a whole sleeper to myself, the benches were made of hard wooden slats designed to break ribs, and sleep was periodically interrupted by scaley insects clattering through the window bars, not to mention mosquitoes the size of buffaloes. During the long monsoon of 1983 I managed a series of train journeys across the Sub-continent and I confess that I did not then think to pack my portable type-writer. The only concession to civilisation I had made with regards to packing was a bow-tie that I could wear on the off-chance of being picked up by a Maharashtra movie princess. COP A load of this: I am writing from a moving Indian train. Even as I type this sentence,the baking, dusty plains of central India are shuddering past my window The tea-wallah has scarcely raised an eyebrow How the world has changed in the last 15 years. Because 15 years ago was when I last travelled on India’s railways. Tel: 013657 22122/21892; Fax: 013657 21893.Stackpole Centre, Home Farm, Stackpole, Pembroke, Pembrokeshire, SA71 5DQ Tel: 01646 661425; Fax: 01646 661456..