Bristol rail campaigner Julie Boston is travelling around the country all this week to talk to passengers about their biggest gripe: fares.

Ms Boston is following in the footsteps of transport secretary Lord Adonis, who took a train around the country in April.

The St Andrew's resident and secretary of Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways is travelling with Cat Hobbs from the Campaign for Better Transport.

The pair will stop at key cities to talk to passengers and hand out campaign postcards and were due to arrive in Bristol Temple Meads today at 3.50pm as part of the tour.

Campaign for Better Transport is a charity that works to secure transport policies and programmes that improve people's quality of life while reducing environmental impact.

The women's journey follows a Government survey released last week which found that reducing fares was the one thing most people said would get them using the railways for both short-distance and long-distance journeys.

Talking to the Evening Post from Cambridge, Ms Boston said that the travellers she had already spoken to agreed that the price of fares was the worst aspect of short distance train travel.

Ms Boston said: "Unfortunately the train operators will not let us give out our cards on the trains and will not allow us to hold our placard within the station areas.

"All in all, however, we have had a good response and the programme that we have is very well thought out."

Ms Hobbs added: "This new survey shows that fares must be reduced to encourage people to take the train instead of driving or flying.

"The green option needs to be easy for people if we're going to cut carbon emissions. We're travelling around the UK asking passengers to join our campaign so we can push the Government to change its policy and cut train fares.

"Gordon Brown and Lord Adonis need to look at what we can do now to encourage people to take the train, not just look at developing a high speed rail line 10 years down the line."

The campaigners were also due to visit Guildford, Brighton, Southampton, Reading, Birmingham, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds on a seven-day, all line, Rail Rover pass.