Taking the Train Through Rural France on a Slow Travel Journey That Takes You Back to the Golden Age of Steam

There is something about train travel that sparks the romantic in me. I’ve always thought I was born in the wrong era and should have been around in the early 20th century when train travel was at its peak. Imagine taking Le Train Bleu from Gare de Lyon in Paris to the French Riviera.

One can but dream. But if you really want to see France, you need to move away from vintage carriages and five-star service that once carried royalty and seek out the old country trains that run on single-track lines through gorges and high plateaus. These trains stop at stations where the ticket offices closed a decade ago, and eventually arrive at villages where the platforms are one bench and a hand-painted sign. 

I’ve ridden a fair few of them since moving to Charente in 2016, and what a way to travel. Slow travel through the more rural parts of France is something you don’t want to miss.

Why Slow Train Travel is the Way to Travel

When the TGV network was built out from the 1980s onward, the SNCF concentrated its money on the trunk lines between major cities. The smaller regional services, which the French now call TER (Transport Express Régional), were left to the regions to fund. 

Some flourished, but sadly, many didn’t. Branches closed, and stations were boarded up. The line from Bordeaux to Lyon via the Massif Central, once a major cross-country route, became a patchwork of slow services that almost nobody outside the area uses.

The result is a two-tier rail country. On one tier, you have the TGV, clean, fast, and pretty reliable. On the other hand, you have the lovely old trains from the 1980s with views you simply cannot get from a road. The trains run slowly, and the lines follow rivers and contour around mountains instead of cutting through them.

4 Slow Travel Trains to Enjoy Through France

For anyone who has already done the Paris-to-Provence dash, these lines offer something the high-speed network cannot. The fares are also absurdly cheap. A TER ticket across a whole region rarely costs more than 30 euros, and many areas offer flat-rate weekend tickets that bring it down further.

The Aubrac Line: Béziers to Clermont-Ferrand

If you only do one slow train journey in France, this is the one I would push you toward. The Aubrac, officially the Ligne des Causses, runs from Béziers on the Mediterranean coast up through the Hérault valley, across the Larzac plateau, over the Viaduc de Garabit, and finally into Clermont-Ferrand. 

It takes around 6.5 hours, and although a car would do it in four, you would see almost none of what the train shows you.

The Viaduc de Garabit alone justifies the journey. Gustave Eiffel built it in 1884, four years before the tower in Paris, and it carries the line 400 feet above the Truyère gorge. The train slows almost to a crawl as it crosses, and on a clear day, the river is a thin green ribbon below. 

The Aubrac plateau itself is wide and treeless, dotted with the brown cattle that give their name to the local beef, and the stations the train passes through (Aumont-Aubrac, Saint-Chély-d’Apcher) almost have the feel of the old-fashioned outposts.

A practical note. The line has been threatened with closure more than once, and service can be patchy, with replacement buses on some sections during track works. Check the SNCF Connect site before you commit, and if you can, do it in late spring or early autumn when the plateau is at its best. 

The morning service from Béziers leaves early, but you can also break the journey at Millau or Saint-Flour and stay overnight.

Find out more about the Aubrac Line here >>>

The Cévennes Line: Nîmes to Clermont-Ferrand

Robert Louis Stevenson walked through the Cévennes in 1878 with a donkey called Modestine and wrote a book about it. You can now do roughly the same route by train, sitting down, with a coffee. 

The Ligne des Cévennes runs from Nîmes up through Alès, Génolhac, Villefort, and Langogne, climbing steadily into the granite uplands of Lozère before descending toward Clermont.

The scenery shifts dramatically as you go. You start in the dry, vine-covered hills outside Nîmes, then enter the chestnut forests of the lower Cévennes, then climb into bare rock and high pasture. 

The line crosses the Allier gorge for much of the upper section, and there are stretches where the train is the only way in. The villages along the route (Chamborigaud, La Bastide-Puylaurent) have no other realistic public transport.

This is also one of the lines where you can still encounter the Train de l’Aubrac and the historic steam excursions that run on summer Sundays out of Langogne. The local heritage railway, Train du Pays Vivarois Cévenol, offers a shorter scenic loop, and it is worth coordinating your trip if the idea of riding a steam train appeals. 

The mainline TER service itself uses regional diesel units; on early, near-empty outside school hours, so you can usually pick whichever side of the train has the best view. 

Find out more about the Cévennes Line here >>>

The Rhône Gorges: Lyon to Nîmes via the Right Bank

Most travelers take the TGV from Lyon to Nîmes. The slow alternative runs down the right bank of the Rhône, on a line that hugs the river through the gorges between Tournon and Pont-Saint-Esprit. It takes about three and a half hours instead of an hour and forty, and it shows you a side of the Rhône that the highway never does.

The stations along the way read like a wine list. Tournon-sur-Rhône for Hermitage and Saint-Joseph. Tain-l’Hermitage just opposite. Then on through Valence, with its old town worth a stop, and down to Montélimar (yes, the nougat town) and Pierrelatte. 

You pass the nuclear plant at Cruas with murals painted across its cooling towers by the artist Jean-Marie Pierret.

What I like about this line is that it hasn’t become a museum piece. Locals commute on it, schoolchildren use it to get to school, and the vineyard workers use it during harvest. Wine tourism has caught on a little around Tain, but step off at Tournon, instead, and you’re in a working river town with a 14th-century castle and a pedestrian bridge across to Tain for tastings.

Find out more on the Mastrou, or Ardèche Train here >>>

The Petit Train Jaune: Villefranche-de-Conflent to Latour-de-Carol

The Train Jaune, the little yellow train, is the highest railway in France and one of the strangest survivors of the early 20th-century network. It runs from Villefranche-de-Conflent in the Pyrénées-Orientales up to Latour-de-Carol on the Spanish border, climbing nearly a mile in altitude over 39 miles of narrow-gauge track. 

The line opened in 1910 and was electrified from the start, powered by hydroelectric stations built specifically for it.

The carriages are mustard yellow and crimson, and on some services, the rear car is open-topped. The line crosses two remarkable bridges, the Pont Gisclard (a suspension bridge that still carries trains, the only one of its kind in France) and the Pont Séjourné, a stone viaduct that curves across a valley near Fontpédrouse. 

The train climbs through the Cerdagne plateau and stops at villages most people have never heard of: Olette, Thuès-les-Bains, Mont-Louis-La Cabanasse.

Mont-Louis itself is worth getting off for. It’s a Vauban fortress built in 1679, still occupied by the French military, and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Latour-de-Carol at the end of the line is the only station in Europe where three different track gauges meet: the SNCF standard, the Train Jaune narrow gauge, and the Spanish broad gauge that runs down to Barcelona. 

The train runs year-round, but services thin out in winter. Summer mornings are busiest, and the afternoon services from Villefranche are usually quieter.

Find out more about the Petit Train Jaune here >>>

Practical Notes for Riding the Slow Lines

A few things I’ve learned the hard way. 

• Buy tickets through SNCF Connect or at the station, not through third-party sites that charge fees. TER tickets are not reservation-based, so you can usually buy on the day, but check whether the line you want is operating. 
• Engineering works (travaux) can replace whole sections with buses, particularly in school holidays, and the SNCF website will tell you in French and a sort of English.
• Bring food and water. Many of these trains have no buffet, and the stops are too short to nip out.
•  Bring a paper map too, because mobile signal disappears in the gorges and the high plateaus. Half the pleasure is working out where you are by matching the river bends to the map.
• Dress in layers. Even in summer, the high sections (Aubrac, Cerdagne, upper Cévennes) can be cold, and the trains aren’t always heated. 
• In winter, check the forecast for snow on the line. The Aubrac in particular can be cut by drifts, though the SNCF is reasonably good at clearing it.

If you’re over 60, get a Carte Avantage Senior. It costs 49 euros a year and gives you 30 percent off most TER and Intercités fares, plus discounts on TGV when you do want speed. It pays for itself in two or three journeys. The Pass Rail and various regional flat-rate passes are also worth investigating, depending on which region you are based in.