It can’t have escaped people’s attention that there are currently very few trains in France.
Of the few that were running, I was booked onto one to take me home for Christmas – a nice journey, I thought, which merited a picnic and a blog-post – until two days before I was due to take it, at which point I received a text to tell me it had been cancelled.
I had planned to take a day out to travel to a station near to home – or at least to the nearest station – and had via the SNCF app found myself some cheap last-minute tickets for a train from Saint-Étienne to Limoges, changing in Roanne and Vierzon and not going anywhere near Paris in the run-up to Christmas. First class on the Intercités return was half the price of second on the TGV, and so I’d planned to take a picnic and a book and watch the world go by as part of a mini adventure.
This didn’t happen.
I looked at travelling on the Flixbus but it was overnight and involved getting people to collect me at silly times, even though it was still cheap.
Car rental fees were exhorbitant, so I ended up with the next best thing – a chauffer-driven rental car – thanks to BlaBlaCar. It’s the first time I’ve used it and I was slightly dubious, but it got me to where I wanted to be quicker and cheaper than the train. And I didn’t have to drive.
The south east of France was hit by severe storms on the night of the 19th and most of the morning of the 20th, so I wasn’t exactly sure whether to expect to be leaving or not, but as I was having my pain aux raisins and a coffee in plenty of time in Châteauxcreux, I got a phone call from my driver asking if he could pick me up earlier than planned. A few minutes later, I was relaxing in a big leather seat in my own private train-alternative.
It took us about five hours to get to somewhere nearer to home than Angoulême, I got to have a conversation, get coffee and generally relax. It was going to take closer to six on the train – we drove direcltly across the Massif Central rather than round it – and I was dropped closer to home than the train can get me.
The journey back to Saint-Étienne today was a different route, from Périgueux, with no stops and just a little too much accordion music for my liking. On arrival just over three hours later – no stops – I was dropped almost just outside the flat.
Saint-Étienne Carnot is my nearest station, a five-minute walk away. I liked being driven almost to my door.
From a train it seems there’s plenty to see that’s different. Both cars were big and super-comfy, but the view from the windo wasn’t the same. I was reminded of long tedious car journeys as a child. At least I now know that I don’t have to think I’m missing anything when I drive.
The price for the return journey was 70€, 50€ less than I’d paid to travel by train. It was efficient. Sadly, I didn’t get to any Christmas markets – I’d hoped to get to Strasbourg, at least – because the SNCF ground to a halt at the beginning of December.
Hopefully, things will get back to normal soon as I’ve got my sights set on some long-weekend excursions to various places. Milan and Barcelona are about five hours away from a station that’s a five-minute walk from where I live. Geneva, Marseille, and other interesting places are even closer still.
It now looks as if I’ll never do this return journey on the train. I need to go back in two weeks and, as there are still no guarantees the SNCF can get me there because of the strikes, I’ve discovered it works out to be cheaper, quicker, more convenient and far more reliable for me to rent a car from the station.
I think that’s rather sad.
