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Greece to uk without exceeding 400m above sea level?

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Sallyleo

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How can I find out the height above sea level the train travelling up through Italy to France goes to. There is someone that cannot go above 400 m for health reasons. He needs to get home and we are trying to find the best option.
 
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AlbertBeale

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How can I find out the height above sea level the train travelling up through Italy to France goes to. There is someone that cannot go above 400 m for health reasons. He needs to get home and we are trying to find the best option.

It depends where you are in Greece. But if you can get across to the west, to Patras, you can get a ferry to Italy, then a train up the east coast, and across the Po Valley direction to, say Milan. From there, the lines through valleys to Genoa might be low enough, and then it's a coast line all the way to the south of France. I assume the main line up through Lyon to Paris doesn't go over anything especially high? Then it's Eurostar. Obviously you'd need to check proper maps to make sure (decent old-fashioned maps with contour lines on them, that is), but that seems to me at least potentially feasible. Any overland Balkan route from Greece to Italy is unlikely to work, given the terrain - there are not as far as I can see any continuous river valley routes, and there's no continuous coastal rail route; and of course the coastal route is the only option from Italy to France, given the Alps.

Good luck - let us know what you work out.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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The Rhine-Main-Danube canal has a maximum elevation of 406m near Nuremberg.
So that is probably close to the maximum railway elevation between Belgrade and the Channel ports if you go via Budapest, Vienna, Regensburg, Nuremberg and Frankfurt.
The problem would be between Skopje and Niš and maybe on to Belgrade.
New tunnels in Greece will have avoided a couple of summits.
Trains via the Balkans are not easily navigated though.
 
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Wychwood93

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On the high-speed (LGV) line from the south of France to Paris there is maximum elevation of 465m at Primarette summit north of Valence.
 

jopsuk

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Milan-Marseille via Genoa is fine, tops out at (as far as I can find) about 350m. But Marseille-Paris isn't, that reaches 450m on the old railway and similar on the LGV

Do not despair, however! It won't be cheap, but from Marseilles you can go via Avignon, Montpellier, Carcassonne and Toulouse to Bordeaux and up LGV Atlantique to Paris, and I think you barely break 200m this way.
 

etr221

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To be on the safe side, I would - having taken ferry to Italy - look at the long but low route all around the Italian coast, round the toe to Reggio di Calabria, then up the west coast to France - and then (as just mentioned) across southern France to Bordeaux before heading north. Interrail or such might be useful...
 

AndrewE

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Any chance of a one-way place on a cruise ship? Or even a freight boat?
See https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/ViewAllVoyages/?regiontoshow=5 and other websites...
p.s. https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/ViewAllVoyages/?Show=30-35 shows a ship from Piraeus to Ravenna, but that doesn't avoid the Alps.
I would hope that there is also something going to Southampton or Felixtowe (or even Europoort.) Even a ship to Barcelona would let you get a sea level train into France and then the Rhone valley route to Paris.
https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/VoyageDetails/?SCID=57&VID=335&SGID=1060 has availability la Spezia to London Gateway...
https://www.cargoshipvoyages.com/VoyageDetails/?SCID=57&VID=335&SGID=1060 takes 15 days from Piraeus to Felixtowe... I'm tempted!
 
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SHD

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The maximum elevation of the Lyon-Paris LGV (488 m) is reached at PK218, near the Seine / Rhône / Loire divide.
 

30907

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The maximum elevation of the Lyon-Paris LGV (488 m) is reached at PK218, near the Seine / Rhône / Loire divide.
The old route - via Googlemaps - is about 410m at Blaisy-bas summit tunnel. I think the OP should check with the medical advisor!
 

SHD

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Anyway, the circumrouting to Paris through Marseille, Narbonne, and Bordeaux is certainly possible, but it will be tiring unless suitable rest times are planned. I would tend to think that a person who cannot stand altitudes over 400m is easily tired and will not take the toll of such a long trip lightly.
 

Struner

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Depends on how many days you allow it to take, I suppose.
Post #1 wasn’t very clear on this - or anything else...
 

adamskiodp

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How can I find out the height above sea level the train travelling up through Italy to France goes to. There is someone that cannot go above 400 m for health reasons. He needs to get home and we are trying to find the best option.

Without meaning to sound facetious, which way did he get there?
 

eastwestdivide

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Someone needs to ask what's the reason for the altitude restriction, and is there a way of flexing it somehow, e.g. portable oxygen bottle if it's respiratory-related?
 

citycat

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Someone needs to ask what's the reason for the altitude restriction, and is there a way of flexing it somehow, e.g. portable oxygen bottle if it's respiratory-related?

That was my wife’s immediate response when I told her about the question asked.

“Just give them a portable oxygen bottle”.
 
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pdq

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400m doesn't seem much. Is the air really significantly thinner than at sea level? The M62 gets up to 372m and there will be plenty of A roads that get into the 400s.
 

Iskra

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To be on the safe side, I would - having taken ferry to Italy - look at the long but low route all around the Italian coast, round the toe to Reggio di Calabria, then up the west coast to France - and then (as just mentioned) across southern France to Bordeaux before heading north. Interrail or such might be useful...
I wouldn’t be so sure that the Reggio-Northern Italy main line doesn’t break the 400m barrier. It gets pretty hilly on some of sections where it runs away from the coast.
 

30907

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I wouldn’t be so sure that the Reggio-Northern Italy main line doesn’t break the 400m barrier. It gets pretty hilly on some of sections where it runs away from the coast.
Brindisi to Milan/Alessandria looks well below 400m (Googlemaps again), Alessandria to Genoa cuts through hills but I think the tunnels keep it low enough.
 

citycat

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As the OP does not seem to have been back to the forum since her initial post, you may all be wasting your time discussing the various routes.

Hopefully, she may do an update one day.
 

Iskra

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Brindisi to Milan/Alessandria looks well below 400m (Googlemaps again), Alessandria to Genoa cuts through hills but I think the tunnels keep it low enough.

The poster I replied to was suggesting going up the Italian west coast though, not the east, which definitely climbs high at points inland from the coast and runs through the appenines North of Florence.
 
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