I made it to the UK without absolutely no faffing at all.
Thankfully, the trams were running properly this morning so after some early-morning coffee and a bit of a natter with my Airbnb host, I braved early-morning Strasbourg and took a tram D from Citadelle to the station, getting there in time to admire the station (it has stained glass!), buy a coffee and a croissant, and then board the 8h19 TGV to Paris Est.
The journey was non-stop and once again I was facing in the wrong direction (the SNCF site doesn’t always indicate the direction of travel when you choose your seat), but I watched the world go by and the sun come up – or at least the clouds change colour – from my seat on the north-facing side of hte train and consumed the remains of my Saturday feast so I didn’t get caught trying to import food into the UK.
We arrived in Paris Est a few minutes late and I had a short walk to the Gare du Nord where I stowed my bags in the left-luggage lockers (5,50€ for a roller bag and a rucksack; bargain) so I could go for a little walk and kill the time between trains. I booked my Eurostar tickets before booking my TGVs as I wasn’t entirely sure of the route I’d be taking to get to Paris, so had four hours to spare. Ideally, I’d have had a walk round something touristy but ended up having a leisurely stroll down the Canal Saint Martin to see if I could get a walk-in booster shot at a vaccination centre, but on arrival realised there wasn’t much chance of that happening.
Instead, I ventured back to the station and had a curry on the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. I should’ve gone to what used to be my usual haunt when I lived in Paris but instead ended up being lured into somewere I’d been taken before by a colleague from work. It was nice, but ultimately I think I should’ve gone to Dishny. That was the first moment of regret, as my Eurostar meal was served while we were still in the station, so I spent most of the two hours and fifteen minutes to Saint Pancras riding the crest of a food coma.
Mild panic set in as we emerged from the tunnel as the Eurostar app announced we were running approximately half an hour late, but there hadn’t been any announcements. In fact, the app changed its mind once I’d asked the train manager if we were running on time and I slipped back into my sièste. The reason for my concern was that I’d left only one hour to change from Saint Pancras to Paddington (Euston route not an economical option this time) and I didn’t want to have to pay on-the-day prices at the station.
As it happened, after I’d been mugged on the Underground by a ticket machine, I got to Paddington in plenty of time to collect my ticket from the machine and fill my pockets with peanuts from the GWR first class lounge. I didn’t have as much time as I’d have liked in there, and couldn’t work out from where the loud woman on the phone opposite had procured herself a glass of wine, but the leather sofa was very comfy and it was a nice place to relax.
Initial reactions to first class on the 17:34 GWR service to Hereford were not good and eventually I had to ask the on-board team whether I was in the correct carriage, which it turned out I wasn’t (“I thought it was a bit rubbish”); the train composition had changed between my booking and the train’s appearance on the platform, so coach D (as printed on my ticket) had become second and I was instead in coach L. The words “First class” emblazened in huge letters on the side of the train should’ve been something of a giveaway, but I was still digesting a curry and an on-board meal so quite a lot of blood had been diverted from my brain to deal with the onslaught.
Coach L seat 11’s comfiness was marred only by an inexplicable decision to put a table leg right where a human leg should be rather than attach a table to the back of the seat in front (why?), but aside from this minor niggle the new Hitachi class 800 was wonderfully quiet and lovely, and also – in GWR livery – looks like a friendly hornet (or an evil hornet if you look at it from the back). I had coach L more or less to myself for the second half of the journey once the man for whom Apple had engineered the world’s loudest space-bar alighted, and a nice man with a trolley brought nibbles and not-wine to my seat (and if I’m honest I’m not entirely sure it was coffee, either).
The train deposited me in Hereford on time, pockets now containing fruit cake just in case I got stranded on the platform in a blizzard. I arrived at my destination one one-stop connection later, replete and ready for sleep, at 21:55.
