Great Continental Railway Journeys
Great Continental Railway Journeys is a TV show on BBC2. Michael Portillo ventures onto the European rail network. The program has been available since 2025. A total of 56 episodes have been broadcast, most recently in October 2025.
Last episode
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1:00:00Great Continental Railway Journeys
Michael Portillo takes in Georgia and Azerbaijan as he journeys through the former Russian empire. He visits a tea plantation and a museum dedicated to Joseph Stalin.
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1:00:00Michael Portillo embarks on a scenic thousand-mile rail journey from the Swedish capital, Stockholm, to Abisko in the Arctic Circle.
50:00Michael Portillo travels by train through Austria and the Czech Republic, beginning in the northern Austrian city of Linz, where Adolf Hitler lived as a boy.
1:00:00On a railway journey from the capital Palermo to Europe's largest volcano, Mount Etna, Michael Portillo explores Sicilian life under Mussolini.
50:00Michael Portillo goes on a rail journey through Germany, beginning in the vibrant city of Berlin, where he visits the Museum of Modern Art in Kreuzberg.
1:00:00Michael Portillo travels from the chateaux of the Loire Valley to the heart of the Champagne region at Reims.
50:00Armed with a 1936 edition of Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide, Michael Portillo ventures onto the European rail network in Spain.
Series 8
In the apple orchards of the Calvados region, Michael Portillo discovers how the classic digestif has been distilled since 1865 at the Pierre Huet estate.
Michael Portillo admires the Bayeux Tapestry, the 70-metre-long work of art commissioned to record William the Conqueror's conquest of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Michael Portillo’s railway adventure reaches Rennes, capital of Brittany. At the Lycee Emile Zola, he hears how the school was used as a military court for the second trial of Alfred Dreyfus.
Michael Portillo’s railway journey reaches the naval port of Brest, home to France’s oceanographic fleet. He also learns how to make a sweet, buttery Breton cake called kouign-amann.
Michael Portillo’s rail travels take him to the north west corner of France, where he explores the beautiful regions of Brittany and Normandy and learns of their connections with Great Britain.
Aboard the Golden Pass Express, Michael Portillo wends his way in style down steep mountainsides from Interlaken to the Swiss Riviera. In Lausanne, he contends with a knife-wielding robotic arm.
Michael Portillo scales the Swiss Alps on one of the the steepest cog railways in the world and visits the 19th-century fairy-tale Grand Hotel Giessbach.
In Zurich, Michael has a brush with the absurd in the anarchic paintings of the Dadaists and visits the Grossmunster Church to learn about the rebellious pastor at the centre of the Swiss Reformation.
Michael Portillo ventures into the bowels of an immense hydroelectric dam to learn how the Swiss use their mountainous environment to power the country.
Michael Portillo is transported back in time to the tiny Alpine village home of Switzerland’s most famous child, Heidi. He then heads to the Rhine Gorge, also known as the Swiss Grand Canyon.
Michael Portillo concludes his epic rail journey across Norway and Denmark, crossing an 18-kilometre box girder bridge between the islands of Funen and Zealand, known as the Great Belt Bridge.
Michael Portillo’s Scandinavian rail adventure reaches Denmark’s second city, Aarhus, an architectural playground with dazzling contemporary buildings set alongside historic half-timbered houses.
Michael’s saga resumes in Larvik on Norway’s southern coast, where he investigates the city’s prized natural resource, a distinctive blue rock named larvikite.