We made it: 15 trains, 358 miles, 4 random destinations in 4 days (Wellingborough, Ingatestone, Aldershot, Southend-on-sea).

It involved a bit more travelling in and out of London than we’d bargained on, but ticked all our holiday boxes, and took us to four places that most of us hadn’t been to before. We met friendly people everywhere, and found great places to stay and things to do in each destination.

Based on some of the feedback we’ve had from friends and family, there’s appetite for traindomising out there, and I think our experience has been that it makes for an interesting, varied and pretty action-packed break. It’s given us some ideas for the kind of options that might make the Traindomiser app a bit more sophisticated, for instance, limiting the direction of destinations (“don’t take us through London”) and being able to set a duration of travel rather than a distance (“take me somewhere less than 3 hours from here”). We also found the Airbnb pickings were pretty thin for a family of four wanting to rock up somewhere on the same day, so mainly ended up in hotels – which was fine, and actually pretty good value.

But now, sleep!