Then trainline.eu is your friend. Start plugging cities into the search fields and see what works for you.
The trouble with this approach is getting the flight timetables to match your two day break, in a way that allows you to use both days. Especially at weekends, and from the likes of Liverpool or Manchester airports. In reality, if you're lucky, you'll get one full day in situ, despite travelling out Friday and back Sunday. This gets a lot easier during the week when flights to european cities are timed to better use the days, aimed at business travellers, but a bit awkward when leave is limited. All of that said, its not insurmountable. Many major european cities have more than one collection nearby, so my advice would be to have a look at the timetables, and take it from there.
Prague, Plzen and Zlin may also all be doable by train in a long weekend? Might be pushing that one a bit, though.
Yes I was thinking about the need to cut short the Sunday due to flight schedules. Of the four European trips mentioned in my original post three, Paris, Belgium and Netherlands are possible with Eurostar train. The other one, Berlin, is possible with flights on the big orange plane, EasyJet has a Sunday evening flight Berlin - Liverpool.
More than two locations would be too much for me, apart from having to rely on assistance from the railway staff to get my wheelchair on and off trains I get very tired easily. (My need for hospital treatment is due to kidney failure which in most people really drains your energy.)
Travelling destroys you at the best of times - there’s nothing worse than being cooped up on planes and trains with awful air conditioning, it is just exhausting. And you can never rest properly, no matter how much you wish you could, due to all of the noise and disruption around you. Some of the many reasons that I hate travelling! Many of the EasyJet and RyanAir flights would work out for you for a good few trips, I think, as they often tend to be early mornings and late nights.
There will be budget airline services from most major cities to Manchester Airport on Sunday evenings, because the market for those services is largely holiday travellers, who need to be back at work on Monday morning. I just had a quick look and EasyJet fly from Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Jet2 from Budapest, Flybe from Dusseldorf and Ryanair from Barcelona, all arriving between 9PM and midnight on Sundays. I don't know if that's too late for you, though.
No, my only need is to be at Wrecsam hospital for 7:30am on the Monday, once my treatment starts I can then go to sleep for three hours until it ends if I wish.
You should have seen the train from Cardiff to Chester/north Wales after the rugby international on Saturday evening. It was nearly at bursting point as far as Henffordd (Hereford). It seems that overcrowded trains is the only thing Health and Safety doesn't apply to... On a train after a previous international the guard actually made an announcement approaching Casnewydd (Newport), "If anyone falls off the train when the doors open we will wait for you to get back on!"
I guess the one thing I'd warn against is the risk of delayed flights. While the UK is part of the EU reciprocal health care arrangements would ensure you could have your dialysis if you were stranded somewhere overnight, but if that is no longer available, what would the impact be if you were, say, delayed by 16 hours?
Without preplanning before leaving the UK it would be difficult to arrange dialysis if stranded. If I was delayed by say 24 hours I would have to 'catch up' by having Tues-Wed-Fri. Last year I was planning a weekend break to north Africa (that never actually happened) and it was agreed in principle that because my blood results have been good since February 2013 I could miss the Monday and do TWF. (If people give up on dialysis, as a couple of friends have, they generally take a week or so to die.)
Well then, please don't give up on your dialysis! Sorry to hear about your friends. Good to know that you have a little bit of flexibility in the event of an emergency. Travelling was challenging enough for me with Type I diabetes but kidney failure would be a completely different beast.
It’s probably worth noting that I’ve spent the last ten years of my life travelling internationally roughly around eight times per year (not quite frequent flyer status, but not too far off either considering some of my flights tended to have multiple comnections) and to date, I have never once been delayed more than an hour or two, so in my experience severe delays should be extremely rare. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t post this with my Czech trip less than four weeks away now, as it will probably begin to crumble around me!
A real mix, to be honest. Some of the delays I have experienced have been budget airlines, and some not. One time was with SleazyJet when I was due to fly to Paris and they had to keep us all sat on the plane because one of the stewardesses hadn't shown up for work and so they’d had to call another in to take over and we were waiting for her to arrive. Another time was with BA when they appeared to lose a passenger and we sat there whilst they repeatedly did headcounts over and over until the numbers finally added up. That was a joy after doing an all nighter in Moscow. Other than that, not much remarkable at all. I had a delayed arrival in Kuala Lumpur with Malaysian Airlines which landed 14 minutes before my connection to Bali was due to take off which could have been a bit messy, but the departing plane miraculously waited for us to show up. And the odd KLM delayed departure from Moscow - no more than an hour - so nothing severe enough to leave me stranded or to miss a connection.
Prague and Plzen - absolutely 1 hour long journey by train, train departs every two hours, I think. Combining these two with Zlin - not really doable since Zlin is very hard to get into by a train. Zlin can be paired with Brno - there is direct coach from Brno to Zlín Zoo. Other easily reachable pairings in Czech republic: Brno-Hodonin, Brno-Ostrava, Brno-Jihlava, Ústí-Děčín,
I’m going to take a train from Prague to Brno when I visit, which is only a 2 hour 25 minute journey, so I guess it would depend very much on how easily this train journey from Prague to Brno would connect on to the coach journey from Brno to Zlin, and how long it would then take on the coach. Perhaps it could be achieved in an evening, perhaps after Prague Zoo closes at 4pm, it would be possible to travel on to Zlin ready to visit Zlin Zoo the following morning?
From Brno to Zlin Zoo it´s circa hour and half. HOWEVER...the coach leaves from only once or twice a day I think (in the morning from Brno and it waites in Zlin until evening and then it takes you back to Brno) and it operates only in main season, which means you probably just miss it by a week or two
