Seven music festivals you can reach by train from the UK

Across Europe and the UK there are festivals that are both musically adventurous and easy to reach by rail. Fête de la musique, which began in Paris in 1982, now fills streets and squares with dozens of free outdoor performances and is staged across cities such as Lille, which is cheaper and quicker to reach on the Eurostar than Paris.

Expect everything from spirited chanson to Francophone hip‑hop and high‑tempo carnival styles such as shatta and bouyon; Eurostar runs to Paris 12 times a day and to Lille six times (eight at weekends). The Netherlands offers a string of bold line-ups if you don’t mind a short change after arriving by Eurostar.

Roadburn in Tilburg has carved out a black, slippery zone of adventurous heavy music — alt‑metal, noise, desert rock and drone — where bands sometimes play albums in full, and many festivalgoers camp on a noisy municipal site. Other Dutch highlights include Le Guess Who?

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