Historian and TikTok star Alice Loxton shares the best rail routes to explore Britain’s past

There are so many incredible historic towns to visit all across the UK, from Bath, to Edinburgh, to Stratford-upon-Avon, to Oxford, to Cambridge, but what's so wonderful about them is that they're really easy to access because we have an amazing railway network. Hello, my name is Alice Loxton and I'm a historian.

You might have seen me on social media making videos about historic places around the UK. So in the UK there are 32,000 kilometres of railway and there are over 2,500 stations, so when you get a sense of that it really sinks in that actually this is the obvious way to travel around the country.

I'm really excited to be working on this campaign with Trainline. What's interesting is one in 10 Brits have never been to a historic site, which I think is quite a lot, but despite that there was 75% of them who said that they had an intention to go to these historic sites, which is exciting. 19% said that they just didn't know how to get there and they didn't know where to go. I've put together a list of 10 places that are some suggestions that people can visit by rail.

One of my favourites and one that I visited recently is Stratford-upon-Avon and there's so many wonderful things you can see there, mostly relating to Shakespeare because this was Shakespeare's birthplace. You can see his school, you can see where he's buried, but one of the amazing kind of hidden gems of Stratford-upon-Avon is the Guild Chapel.

It's got these amazing medieval wall paintings, but they were covered in a wash and it was only in recent years that they removed the whitewash. So one of the most popular places for visitors to the UK is Edinburgh. This is a city that is built around an extinct volcano.

It's got, you know, royal history, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, so aesthetically and visually, it's incredibly impressive. It's only four hours from London and another great place for that is York, which is one of my other favourite places to visit by train. It's two hours, I think, from Edinburgh and it's two hours from London and York's full of so many incredible hidden gems, whether it's the Roman walls, which are still intact and some of these you can, you can walk along.

There's a lot of history in these places and then of course there's Yorkminster, the incredible cathedral. I love taking the train. I love jumping on, relaxing and seeing the countryside go by, so I think it's an experience in itself. It saves you going from Edinburgh to London. You see this amazing cross section of the country, travelling through some great towns, passing sometimes amazing seaside settings and you don't have any type of trying to park, so it does bring you right into the centre of the city and what we're trying to do with Trainline is we're just trying to help people be able to travel as cheaply as possible, get around the country as quickly as possible.