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TRAIN travel can be very expensive in the UK, especially when you’re travelling halfway across the country.

But one train company that offers affordable tickets has applied to start two additional direct routes between major UK cities.

Lumo, which offers affordable journeys onboard its fleet of electric trains, has plans to add even more routes to its network.

FirstGroup, which owns Lumo, has revealed that it has submitted applications to begin new direct routes between Cardiff and York, and Rochdale and London Euston.

The Cardiff to York route would run via Birmingham, Derby, and Sheffield.

Meanwhile, the Rochdale to Euston route would stop at Manchester Victoria, Eccles, Newton-le-Willows, and Warrington Bank Quay.

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The company hopes these routes will be operational by December 2028.

Lumo hopes to run return services between the cities to six times a day throughout the week from Cardiff to York.

It hopes that this journey would “replicate the success of the Edinburgh to London service” which Lumo started in 2021.

As for the Rochdale to London route, the application proposes three return services on weekdays and Sundays and four services every Saturday.

Lumo said this would provide residents of the north-west a “convenient and competitively priced” direct rail service to London. 

The train company also applied to extend its new route between Scotland’s Stirling and London Euston.

The service between Stirling and London has been approved and will start to run from next year.

The new application has asked for it to be extended past May 2030 when the contract currently ends.

Lumo’s new route will link London Euston directly to Stirling, calling at Milton Keynes, Nuneaton, Crewe, Preston, Carlisle, Lockerbie, Motherwell, Whifflet (serving Coatbridge), Greenfaulds (serving Cumbernauld) and Larbert.

Lumo tries to keep its train fares affordable and aims for 60 per cent of its single fares to be under £30.

Onboard a Lumo train, there are no first class seat options. But wherever you sit, you’ll have USB sockets and tray tables.

Passengers can also personalise their lighting through the button on the back of the seat in front of them.

Additional amenities include free Wi-Fi, a winged headrest for comfort and a coat hanger.

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Lumo will connect two more major cities from December 2025…

Customers travelling between London and Glasgow can do so on a new Lumo service which starts in December 2025.

Lumo announced its new service on social media. It said: “Our new timetable starts on 14th December 2025!

“Our new Glasgow service will start in December and we’re also adding an additional service from Newcastle to London King’s Cross every weekday.”

Lumo plans to run two northbound and one southbound service on weekdays and one service in each direction on Sundays between London King’s Cross and Glasgow.

The new route will go between the two cities but will also stop at Falkirk High and Newcastle.

If booked in advance for journeys in 2026, tickets start from as little as £33.90. Anyone travelling from Newcastle to Glasgow can buy tickets for just £10.90.

For more on trains, here is the way that passengers can travel on UK trains without buying tickets.

Plus, this is where you can find the most beautiful train journey – it takes 10 minutes and costs £3.

ONE of the easiest ways to travel around Europe is by train – and a new vintage train in Spain will take you to some of the most popular cities.

The distance between Madrid to Seville is around 300 miles long, but if you’re onboard a retro luxury train, the travel is isn’t a chore at all.

Al Andalus will begin a seven-day route from southern Spain to the capital from spring 2026.

The train doesn’t just trundle straight through from one destination to the other either, as there are plenty of stops along the way.

Stops include Córdoba, Alcázar de San Juan, Mérida, Jerez and Aranjuez as well as visits to UNESCO sites and beach towns.

Another of the stops along the way is to Cádiz, a pretty port city in Andalusia.

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There’s a huge cathedral and Roman amphitheatre next to the city’s promenade as well as La Caleta – one of the local beaches, and outdoor market, Mercado Central.

Sun Writer Hope Brotherton visited previously visited the city and you can find out more on what she thought about these attractions here.

The luxury and vintage train is the longest on the Spanish tracks and is 450 metres in length.

It’s made up of 14 carriages, which accommodate a total of 64 people – there are two restaurant cars, a kitchen car, a bar car, playroom car, seven bed cars, as well as one for crew, and another for machinery.

Onboard are four lounges based on the 1920s which serve traditional Andalusian dishes and drinks.

Breakfast is served daily in the Alhambra and Gibralfaro restaurants where passengers can enjoy both an a la carte and buffet meal.

The Grand Class Room is the smaller of the room options and is fitted with two single beds.

It has a wardrobe, safe, luggage compartment, minibar, air con and a private bathroom with a shower.

It’s not just for sleeping in either, during the day, the cabin can be transformed into a living room.

The beds fold into armchairs and guests can sit to watch the views from the window.

A Grand Class Room for two people is €13,200 (£11,456), or for one individual is €11,200 (£9,722).

Meanwhile, the Deluxe Suite Room is larger at 89 square foot with a large double bed.

It comes with all the amenities that the Grande Class Room has, and the private bathroom has a hydromassage shower.

The day bed turns into a comfortable sofa and each of the suites has 24-hour room service.

For a Deluxe Suite Room, it’s €15,800 (£13,715) for two people, or €13,800 (£11,978) for an individual.

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Here are the list of stops along the new route from Seville to Madrid…

Day One – Seville – Cordoba

Day Two – Córdoba – Cádiz – Jerez

Day Three – Jerez – Zafra

Day Four – Zafra – Cáceres – Mérida

Day Five – Mérida – Alcázar de San Juan

Day Six – Alcázar de San Juan – Toledo – Aranjuez

Day Seven – Aranjuez – Madrid

Here’s more on where to visit in Spain by one writer who goes there every month.

Plus, a new overnight sleeper train to connect 100 European cities with private cabins and panoramic views.

Inside L.A. restaurant Jaragua, on a recent Friday night, Justin Alexio moved with a measured urgency from the backroom to the front of the restaurant without disturbing anyone’s dinner. The comic, producer and creator of the Los Angeles-based comedy show, Pupusas and Punchlines, Alexio escorted guests to their tables, switched on the microphones placed around the room, and pointed a camera to the center stage before the show was to begin.

The dining area inside the Salvadoran restaurant is rather quiet for a Friday night; there’s a soccer game playing on TV as a family of six places an order for dinner. As people in the audience spread their curtido, or pickled cabbage and carrots, on their pupusas, others await for their food with anticipation, while some choose to stick to drinks. The room is filled with distractions, but comedians are not fazed — it is a welcoming atmosphere, and they know that soon the sounds of laughter will fill the air.

“I feel like eating is such a large part of Latin culture and most cultures,” Alexio said. “I wanted a place where you can eat Latin food and listen to Latin jokes.”

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, independent comedy shows had almost become a thing of the past in L.A. Not to mention that finding gigs is a difficult task, especially for Latinx comedians; according to Alexio, most comedy rooms don’t want to book more than one Latinx comedian.

Pupusas and Punchlines offers a place where they can perform in front of a packed room and joke about the immigrant experience in the U.S. — and the absurdities of the American dream in 2025 — while sharing a delicious meal.

Pupusas and Punchlines producer and creator Justin Alexio performs on March 7, 2025.

(Drew Steres)

Alexio said he started the show in 2023, after he took a long break from stand-up comedy, to instead pursue acting full time. His résumé includes appearances on NBC’s comedy series “Superstore” and ABC’s late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

“The future of entertainment has to be more real,” he said of his decision to return to the stage. “Stand-up is live.”

The L.A. stand-up scene is quite competitive — especially for Alexio, who is an Afro-Latino of Puerto Rican, Dominican and Ecuadorian descent. As an answer to the marginalization of Black and brown people in mainstream comedy, Alexio said he decided to produce his own show, with hopes to highlight other Latinx performers as well.

Since then, he has expanded “Pupusas and Punchlines” immensely — from performing only once a month at half-capacity to selling out 115 consecutive weekly shows.

Alexio attributed the show’s success to the high-quality comedians he’s booked, as well as the food and the feeling of community it has created. People have told him they’ve driven more than an hour just for the show, while others have attended on multiple occasions.

“They want to support me and the show, they want to support the restaurant, they want to support the Latin comics … The crowd feels like they want to help these comics rise,” he said.

Patrons laugh at Pupusas and Punchlines on May 16, 2025.

(Drew Steres)

The majority of the comics Alexio books are Latinx, but he also includes performers who belong to other underrepresented groups. He showcases upcoming comics while providing clips to help grow their social media presence. After performing on his show, he said, comics have noted an uptick of new followers on social media.

Onstage at Friday’s show, comics pulled humor from topics related to immigration, religion, salsa, sexuality and other typical first-generation immigrant dilemmas. Performers feel like they can discuss topics they usually can’t perform in front of a more general club audience.

“I think any ethnicity in an ethnic crowd always thrive,” said comic Gregory Santos. “Obviously you can be a white boy and do a really good job here. I feel like it’s just an extra layer of stuff that you can talk about.”

Daisy Roxx performs at Pupusas and Punchlines in March.

(Drew Steres)

Pupusas and Punchlines is one of the few shows that caters toward the Latinx community, said comedian Rell Battle, as he rattled off a list of shows that sadly don’t exist anymore.

“Ironically, in a majority Latin city, there aren’t [many] consistent Latin shows,” Battle said. He described Pupusas and Punchlines as a road show of sorts — scored by genuine laughter. The audience members feel more appreciative, compared to a run-of-the-mill comedy club in Hollywood that caters more to tourists.

“People that come out to shows in Hollywood will ask me to hold the camera and take a picture of them,” Battle joked.

The crowd at Pupusas and Punchlines is not one to dismiss or antagonize comics that are not Latinx. Yet audience members would gladly correct any comic who’d assume the restaurant was Mexican, or mispronounce the word “pupusas,” as Battle sheepishly recalled during his own set. At the end of the day, they usually bond with comics over what they share in common: the drive to make it in L.A.

“When the neighborhood shows up, those are the best shows,” said Santos, between sets at Jaragua. “It’s normal people, it’s everyday neighborhood L.A. people.”

For more information on upcoming events, visit Pupusas and Punchlines on Instagram.

For centuries, mythology looked to gods to explain a disquieting world. But in the new documentary “Folktales,” from “Jesus Camp” filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, which follows a trio of jumbled Scandinavian teens to a remote Norwegian school that builds character in the snowy wild, the answer to life may just lie in what “god” spells backward.

In other words, yes, let’s go to the dogs: sled dogs, specifically, whose personalities, purpose and compatibility are the secret sauce to a lesson plan that seeks to get kids out of their heads and into a stronger sense of self. The beautiful Alaskan and Siberian huskies that animate the dog-sledding instruction at Norway’s Pasvik Folk High School are what help lift this handsomely photographed film above the usual heart warmer.

Ewing and Grady are no stranger to this scenario, having observed at-risk Baltimore youth striving for stability (“The Boys of Baraka”) and unhappy Hasidic Jews attempting to remove themselves from all they’ve ever known (“One of Us”). The situation is less sociologically dire in “Folktales,” but it isn’t any less compelling as a subject or less worthy of empathetic attention, especially when the stage for potential transformation is as rapturous as the birthplace of Vikings.

Pasvik is 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, which means self-reliance isn’t optional and knitting carries more practical weight than learning a math formula. As gap-year institutions dedicated to nurturing the transition to adulthood, folk schools have roots going back to the 19th century. Pasvik sees survival training as unlocking potential in teens too devoted to their phone screens. As convivial dog-sledding teacher Iselin puts it to the students, she wants to “wake up your Stone Age brains.”

For anxious, bubbly 19-year-old Hege, who lost her father and struggles with image issues, unplugging is tough at first. But she responds to its benefits, especially when entrusted with the care of Odin, a gorgeous, lovable canine with an expressive howl. Socially awkward Bjorn wants to stop harboring sad thoughts and second-guessing his nerdiness. Nothing like a majestic creature who rewards your undivided attention, then, to refocus one’s energies. When the students are tasked with spending two nights in the forest alone with just their assigned huskies and camping acumen, their struggles give way to a turning point, what another kindhearted instructor describes as the special inner peace that comes with just “a fire, a dog and a starry sky.”

You also gather that Ewing and Grady may have been seeking some inspiration themselves. Hence, some arty montages of the icy wilderness (including some woo-woo yarn-and-tree symbolism) and an ambiance closer to warm spotlight than objective inquiry.

That makes “Folktales” decidedly more powdery than densely packed — it’s all ruddy cheeks, slo-mo camaraderie and the healing power of steering a dog sled through breathtaking terrain. It looks exhilarating, and if the filmmakers are ultimately there to play, not probe, that’s fine, even if you may not know these kids at the end any better than you did at the beginning. It’s hard to say whether negative-minded high school dropout Romain will wind up on the other side of what troubles him. But we see how happy he is making friends and catching a glimpse of moose in the wild. It’s a simple message, but “Folktales” sells it: Nurture via nature.

Nareg Dekermenjian had Mother’s Day brunch with the Stanley Cup, which caused more than a little anxiety since no one was sure what hockey’s championship trophy liked to eat.

“I’m thinking all-meat diet for the Stanley Cup,” Dekermenjian said before sliding into a large corner booth at Stanley’s Restaurant (no relation to the Cup) in Sherman Oaks. “Anything less than that, I’m going to be very, very disappointed.”

As it turned out, the Cup was fasting so the plate in front of it remained empty. But then the trophy wasn’t the one being feted Sunday, Dekermenjian was. Last week he was named the winner of the NHL’s Future Goals Most Valuable Teacher Program, chosen from a field of hundreds of candidates from 31 of the league’s 32 cities.

For the fifth-grade teacher, who left a well-paying job as a financial advisor for a classroom four years ago, being honored by a visit from the Stanley Cup was a full-circle moment in several ways. For starters, it was an acknowledgment of the role hockey played in helping him adapt to his new country after his father, Edward, a jeweler in Lebanon who spoke only broken English, wagered everything when he left Beirut for the West Valley so his three children could have a chance at a better life.

Nareg Dekermenjian and his family eat lunch while the Stanley Cup sits in the middle of the table. Left to right are Edward, Ian, Zovig, Oliver and Nareg.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Dekermenjian, the youngest, was just 5 and he immediately had trouble fitting in.

“Making friends or having some kind of link with the kids my age, coming from a different country, that was really different,” he said. So one day his mother, Zovig, pushed him out the door to join some neighborhood kids in a street-hockey game.

“I’m glad I did,” Zovig said Sunday. The game, it turned out, would change everything.

“They gave me a roller-hockey stick and I just kind of fell in love with the sport immediately,” Dekermenjian said. “I’d never been really good at anything before, especially athletics. But I took to roller hockey.

“What it helped me do is create a lot of self-confidence and self-esteem, which is turn helped me in social situations.”

Dekermenjian went on to play at several levels, became a Kings season-ticket holder and now coaches his two sons on the concrete rink he built in their backyard. He’s also using hockey to break down social and cultural barriers at the Dixie Canyon Community Charter School in Sherman Oaks, where many of the nearly 700 students come from immigrant families new to the U.S.

Nareg Dekermenjian, a teacher in Sherman Oaks who won an NHL award, watches as Stanley Cup keeper Howie Borrow sets up the trophy.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

“We have a big melting pot here,” assistant principal Maria Silva said.

But if all those children speak different languages, wear different clothes and pack different foods for lunch, they all understand sports. Even hockey.

“One hundred percent,” said Dekermenjian, 41. “That’s kind of why I do it.”

There are parallels between the challenges athletes face and the ones students face. The grit and perseverance needed to make it through an NHL season is just as necessary to make it through an academic year. There are goals and victories and defeats and teamwork, both on the ice and in the classroom.

“That connects a lot of the dots for these kids that aren’t used to hearing it that way,” Dekermenjian said. “I actually show clips and videos of hockey games when teams are down by multiple goals and they don’t give up and then they come back, they pull the goalie, and they take it.

“That’s, I think, a better way of starting a session. Having these kids look at something so incredible and then looking at themselves and thinking, ‘You know what? I can do this.’”

Nareg Dekermenjian takes a selfie with his son, Oliver, and the Stanley Cup during lunch at Stanley’s Restaurant.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Silva said few teachers at Dixie Canyon are requested by parents more frequently than Dekermenjian, whom she calls Mr. Deker. She often stop by his class herself just to listen.

“I’m just captivated by the stories that he’s sharing. And I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I want to be a kid and listen to him too. When they announced that he won [the NHL award,] I definitely felt they got it right.”

The stories don’t always work, however. And when they don’t Dekermenjian, like a good coach, changes his game plan — as he did in his first year as a teacher after welcoming a shy Ukrainian girl named Maria, who understood little English.

“We’re going over U.S. history and I’m like, ‘What does this child need to know about the Constitution?’ There’s way more important lessons we need to teach,” he said.

Maria loved art so Dekermenjian asked her to draw each day and then, after class, he and a translator would discuss the meaning behind what she had drawn. She was soon thriving in her new environment.

When kids struggle, Dekermenjian said, the problem often isn’t the student, but rather an engagement issue with the teacher.

“Educators, we need to kind of step it up and engage them in nontraditional ways,” he said.

“I’ve seen it work in the classroom. So I do it more and more and the feedback has been overwhelming. I’m creating a bunch of hockey fans and Kings fans in the process, so everyone wins, I guess.”

Speaking of the Kings, that’s the second reason Sunday’s meal was a reunion with the Stanley Cup. The first time he met the trophy was in 2014, when he posed in front of it with his wife, Lori, and then-infant son Ian, who actually owes his existence to the Cup.

During the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, Lori came up to Dekermenjian and suggested that if the Kings won the Cup, they should have a baby. Dekermenjian, uncertain whether he was ready to be a dad but certain the Kings had no chance to win the NHL title, agreed — and a little more than a year later, Ian was born. They have since added a second son, Oliver.

“It’s a full-circle thing,” he said.

“I definitely feel like I found where I need to be in life. And I’m 100% certain that I was meant to teach.”

On Sunday the NHL agreed, giving him an afternoon with the Stanley Cup to prove it.