Train or fly—London to Colmar,France

Where in Switzerland? What time of year?

We are spending time in England first, then would like to go to Lucern, Wengen, and maybe Montreaux and/or Bern. We are not quite sure at this point. And also to Colmar. Then return to England possibly.

I'm the sort that would say, "of course, take the train", but I prefer trains and enjoy the journeys. But with the number of locations you'd like to visit maybe a flight from the UK to CH would be ideal.

Fly to the furthest destination in Switzerland then take the train back to London.......or.......the opposite.

Well, you will be taking trains for a non-trivial part of your journey no matter what
if your plans are to visit the places you mention. You also don't say anything about
what your priorities/drivers are; saving time? saving money? enjoying the landscape
going by? Without that, you'll have to vet any suggestions to line up with what you
want.

A train from London to Zurich, for example, will take the better part of a day, and
could involve a change of stations in Paris. A hassle if you have a lot of luggage.

I'd probably fly to Zurich and work my way along from there, and maybe fly back
to London from Basel, Strasbourg, or Bern. But you really haven't specified enough
to give you anything concrete.

Fly into Basel/Mulhouse Airport may be your best bet. From here, you can travel up to Colmar and also in the other direction to Interlaken. If you are wandering around England, you may be able to find a flight from a regional airport that may well be cheaper than going back to London. For example, easyJet have flights from Bristol to Basel/Mulhouse but beware of baggage in hold fees.

https://www.skyscanner.net is a good site for finding who flies where & when with price indication but best to book direct with airline.

Swiss rail fares are high. The default fare shown on the SBB website assumes you have a Half Fare Card, which might or not be the case. I'd try to plot an itinerary within Switzerland that doesn't have unnecessary mileage beyond what yields scenery benefits. The airport that's cheapest to fly to or from might not be the most economical choice if it requires extra train travel.

Thank you everyone for your responses. Our main concern is time and the hassle. We prefer trains and are wondering if it takes about the same amount of time to take the train. But it sounds like we should look at other airports. We hadn’t really thought about other-than London airports to fly in or out of.

The train will take a lot longer than a flight and probably be more expensive. Where is your last destination in England? There is bound to be an airport nearby.

mistimetotravel

We are spending time in England first, then would like to go to Lucern, Wengen, and maybe Montreaux and/or Bern. We are not quite sure at this point. And also to Colmar. Then return to England possibly.

I hate backtracking and the extra time and expense it takes to return back to where you started just to fly home. Are you familiar with multi-city (aka open jaw) ticketing? Where you can have an air itinerary of flying in to one city and out of another? For example, flying into London, and out of Zurich, with a multi-city fare that approaches a roundtrip fare. Many people are unaware that this is possible, so thought I'd ask.

I'm not sure that it really will take much longer than flying and it will certainly be a lot less stressful and more interesting to take the train.

For example you could get from London St Pancras to Strasbourg in 6.5 hours changing at Lille and that includes the 1 hour time difference. From there Colmar is only 30 minutes. By the time you have added on getting to the airport, allowing two hours for processing and getting out of the airport at the other end it won't be a huge amount different.

For all the information you will need about train travel in Europe (or anywhere else for that matter) have a play around on www.seat61.com.

Two months ago, at the end of our France + Black Forest Germany trip, we flew from the “Colmar”airport (actually it’s the Basel/Mulhouse/Freiburg EuroAirport) to London Heathrow, for a few days in London before flying home. We’d flown to Toulouse, France at the start, so were doing “open jaw,” rather than round-trip. We used trains within France, but for flying between London and France, we flew - British Airways, both flights.

That airport has a France (Mulhouse) side and a Switzerland (Basel) side of the terminal, so follow signs to the door you want to exit, depending on your destination.