The trains in the UK are an outlier here. You're not wrong, it's outrageously expensive — it was cheaper for me to rent a car for 24 hours and drive from London to Bristol and back than it was to take the train. Between London and Newcastle it's sometimes cheaper to fly (and I don't even mean with a budget airline!). This is utterly insane. It doesn't need to be this way though. Trains work great in continental Europe. In fact the trains here in Poland are fantastic.

I'm a total petrolhead and I'm often irritated by the kind of cyclist that hates all cars and anyone who drives one, but I would like to see fewer cars on the road. Trains are an excellent way to achieve that goal (just not the way the UK does it).