FANCY an epic train journey next year that starts with a pie barm?

A UK tour operator specialising in trips to unusual destinations has had people wondering if it's April 1 after offering a train ride from Wigan to North Korea next year.

The £3,195 journey will take a whole month starting in April 2020 and includes stops in London, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Irkutsk, Ulaanbaatar, Beijing before finishing in Pyongyang.

Travel company Lupine Travel cheekily adds: "Sections can be booked independently, for example, if you wish to avoid Wigan for security reasons you can instead start in London."

The itinerary starts at Wigan North Western train station where travellers will get a packed lunch with the 'local delicacy of a pie barm and a can of Vimto'.

During the stop in London the group will 'pay their respects to Karl Marx' as the first of a number of communist figures mentioned on the tour before heading to St. Pancras station to board the Eurostar service to Brussels.

From Brussels there's another train to Berlin before the group head to Warsaw to see the Stalinist architecture of the Palace of Culture and Science.

After an overnight sleeper train to Moscow, stops are planned to visit Lenin lying in state in Red Square before hoping on board what the itinerary claims to be the 'world’s greatest train journey' to Beijing.

Trips to the Great Wall and Forbidden City and a visit to the Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum follow before another sleeper train arriving in Dandong and then a four night tour in North Korea seeing the sites in Pyongyang, visiting the DMZ and travelling over to Mt Myohyang.

Many people have questioned whether the trip is genuine on social media but the company said in a tweet it was '100 per cent real' and even clarified the pies would be coming from Galloways.