Can you really travel to Europe car-free – and hassle-free – with a dog?

I know it’s rude to stare, but I cannot keep my eyes off what’s happening on the next table. A waiter in a waistcoat with a medallion around his neck is brutally but meticulously dismantling a barely-cooked duck for a table of four Frenchmen to my left, I find myself unable to look away, except to check on the dog who is – predictably – also enraptured by the lesson in aquatic bird anatomy.

I tighten my grip on Arty’s lead in case he decides to pounce, and try not to worry about the medieval-style torture device cast in silver that’s clamped to a trolley nearby.

I haven’t accidentally set myself down for dinner in a butcher’s shop. I’m in Rouen, capital of northern France’s Normandy region, where duck à la rouennaise – pressed duck cooked in a sauce of its own blood, port and cognac – is the delicacy.

Read more on France travel:

While the dog might be wishing he could get his chops around the bird, I’m less keen. I return to my bottle of beaujolais and examine my itinerary for the next day instead. I need to plan, as we’ve got a train to catch tomorrow, and another one after that, and then a couple more, because thanks to a new initiative by Byway Travel, I’ve ventured onto the continent completely car-free with canine company – something that has been a logistical nightmare until recently.

Travelling to Europe with a dog but without your own car isn’t as simple as hopping on the Eurostar. Despite dogs being allowed on trains all over Britain, Eurostar has a somewhat baffling no-dog policy. Before the pandemic, dog owners wishing to travel to France and beyond either had to go by car on a ferry or via the Channel Tunnel, or book a dog-friendly cabin on the DFDS Newcastle–Amsterdam ferry or P&O’s Hull–Rotterdam route as foot passengers.

Not only are the latter options more expensive, but getting to and from the ports can be a faff when you’re dragging a dog along, too. For dog owners without their own vehicle, the Continent has long felt much further away than the 21 miles it takes to cross the Strait of Dover.

But Byway’s new dog-friendly, car-free, flight-free trips have opened up Europe for passengers on foot and made exploring the continent by rail a real – and enjoyable – possibility. Our journey began in Marylebone,