Backpacking, or "How do I ditch the luggage in advance?"
 

I'm headed to Britain this summer with a group from my university to stay and study at Oxford. We're going to be traveling around a lot and reservations are fairly flexible, so a friend and I have discussed spending the week after the official trip traveling by train down through France to northern Italy via Paris and Vichy. If we time it right, we can make Rome just in time for mass at the Vatican, lol.

My question, however, is how to dispense with the necessary luggage from the stay in Britain. If I'm going to travel pretty much non-stop southwards, I want to do it with no more than a backpack and coat. How, then, could I get my luggage home and meet up with it a week later?

ship it.

oh, and do not fall asleep on the train unless you're in a locked sleeping compartment. Otherwise your bag, or at best stuff inside it, WILL get stolen.

Very true. Well, we would be doing this in short hops, so hopefully no especially-extended overnight train trips.