Review: we try Great Western’s Night Riviera Sleeper, from Paddington to Cornwall

This is our review of Great Western Railway’s Night Riviera Sleeper train service from London Paddington to Devon and Cornwall. In my case, it was to Plymouth.

Regular readers may remember my review of the Caledonian Sleeper train from Euston to Scotland last year. We wanted to follow this up with a review of the UK’s only other sleeper train, from Paddington to Penzance.

GWR kindly provided my sleeper ticket from London’s Paddington Station to Plymouth and a return trip on the Pullman Dining train from Plymouth to London – review to follow.

After my short stay in the GWR lounge on platform 1 at Paddington Station (see my review here), I headed over to Platform 8 for my sleeper train’s departure, a little walk away. I was told that it would normally depart from Platform 1 which is directly opposite the lounge.

The train’s scheduled departure is 11.45pm but it is available for boarding from c10.30pm. Given that my scheduled arrival time in Plymouth was 5.37am, early boarding gave me a chance for a half-decent sleep.

My train had four sleeper coaches and was apparently fully booked. This is no surprise because, as I found, it is a pleasant way to travel if you are into this kind of train adventure. More practically, you can save the cost of a hotel night.

Along a narrow long corridor are the cabins. These all have the same interior with two beds, which can be booked for single or double occupancy. When used as a double, the second person sleeps on a pull down bed above the first.

Although small I settled in nicely to my cabin. My coach attendant gave a brief introduction to the temperature controls (it can get very hot!), the emergency light and how to close the door (hooked in the back near the floor).

The night table doubles as a sink with a towel and soap provided. There is no amenity kit. I also had a shallow wardrobe with hangers and two bottles of water. Your luggage should slide away under the bed.

There were two spacious bathrooms at my end of the coach but no showers.

My cabin had a connecting door to the next cabin (locked obviously) which would allow the sleeper to be used for families – or a couple where no-one wanted the upper bunk!

Here is an example of how a cabin looks with the second bed out:

In case you were wondering how to swing on to the upper bed, a ladder unfolds from the side:

Before I went to bed I had a look into the bar coach. It looked a good space but it was too late for me to hang out.

Below is the bar which is split in half. The end where I am standing is for cabin guests and behind the door it is for guests from the other coaches.

On the menu were snacks and sweet treats with hot and cold drinks. Breakfast is free if you are in a cabin. For everyone else, deals include a croissant/cake & hot drink at £4.30 or any porridge & hot drink at £5.60 – decent value!

I chose the latter as ‘to go’ option which meant that the staff would bring it to my cabin just before I got off the train.

The bar coach has comfortable seating for two or for four people at tables:

…. or more relaxed lounging on a sofa:

I made sure I got all the pictures as quickly as possible and turned in for the night – I would have an early start in Plymouth tomorrow.

As with my Caledonian Sleeper experience, the journey was a bit rough in sections and very calm in others. The train moves relatively slowly and stands at stations for long periods, and I actually slept quite well. The beds are, of course, narrow so you need to adapt your sleeping position to the space.

Below is my very hot breakfast ‘to go’. It helped me to bridge the time at Plymouth station in the very early morning before it was light enough to start on sightseeing (which, by the way, was more interesting and educational than I expected). Plymouth has no arrivals lounge – or any lounge, for that matter – which was a shame, but luckily it was a dry and pleasant morning.

Whilst Plymouth is an early arrival at 5.37am – albeit we arrived 15 minutes late – it is a more sensible arrival time if you continue into Cornwall.

The full list of arrival times are (Sundays vary slightly, and my train seemed to be running to a slightly adapted timetable):

• Taunton 02:37
• Exeter St Davids 03:07
• Newton Abbot 04:32
• Plymouth 05:10
• Liskeard 06:05
• Bodmin Parkway 06:19
• Lostwithiel 06:26
• Par 06:34
• St Austell 06:43
• Truro 07:01
• Redruth 07:17
• Camborne 07:24
• Hayle 07:34
• St Erth 07:39
• Penzance 07:50

Conclusion

My journey from Paddington to Plymouth was a good experience, and one I would recommend. The cabin worked in terms of space and functionality, I got some sleep (although the night was a bit short) and my hot ‘to go’ breakfast was a life saver in Plymouth at 5.50am!

I had the cabin to myself. I can imagine it could be a squeeze with two people and possibly suitcases, but it certainly isn’t impossible.

If you want to compare with my Caledonian Sleeper review, you can read it here. The two services are very different though – the Caledonian Sleeper saw a huge investment of Scottish Government money into new state-of-the-art rolling stock and is a longer journey. It is also more expensive than the Night Riviera Sleeper.

In terms of pricing, the supplement (on top of the cost of flexible Standard ticket or any First Class ticket – the website shows which allow a cabin upgrade) appears to be dynamically priced. The website says that cabin supplements start at £49 but in practice it seems to start at £79 one way for a single cabin, rising to £149 as cabins sell out.

The website says that twin cabins can be as low as £59 all-in but in pratice I found they were an additional £50 to £80 over the single cabin price – again, the supplement is dynamic. It makes sense to book early, especially as trains appear to sell out a few weeks in advance.

You can find out more about the Night Riviera Sleeper on the GWR website here.

In the final part of this series I will look at GWR’s Pullman Dining service.