I decided not to risk the chaos of last year again, but got to England for a quiet few weeks before it all started.
After some variant of outbreak or other plague-related complications led to the return leg of last year’s Christmas mini adventure being unceremonisouly cancelled at the last minute (I had initially hoped to spend a few days in Lille looking at sparkly tat before the New Year), I found December approaching rapidly, waving a £115 Eurostar voucher that needed to be used before the end of the year.
The resulting trip was a little perfunctory as my goal was to get from A to B with as little stress as possible. There was little time for ooh-ing and aah-ing, but I wrote the best bits down.
Saturday 3rd December
The 11:24 TGV from Angoulême to Paris was quiet, and I’d packed myself a light mini-lunch of a feta and red pepper quiche, some fruit, a bottle of wine, and an Aeropress. The journey was reassuringly uneventful, and between bouts of book-reading and grazing on lunch provisions, the slightly grey and murky world outside whooshed past my window until we arrived, a few minutes later than planned, at the soulless hell that is the Gare de Montparnasse (née Sade).
Montparnasse is not my favourite Parisian station by a long shot, but I couldn’t get Intercités to Austerlitz to work properly with my choices of cheapest Eurostar. I left just as this season’s industrial action was kicking off, so it’s probably just as well I was on a TGV that was still running, as the Intercités from Limoges apparently seem to fall foul of SNCF indifference so would probably have been the first to go.
I’d left just over two hours between stations to accommodate, heaven forbid, a late TGV (it was) or droves of Christmas shoppers, but in the end the change on the métro 4 was suitably stress-free and I arrived at an eerily quiet Gare du Nord. Some hardy creatures were stirring, but only really those travelling internationally. There was really very little to do but go through security and wait for my next train.
The 16:13 Eurostar left on time and a meal was quickly served, consisting of a red onion and goats cheese pie with pearl barley, and a puddingy-thing, all washed down with more wine and some coffee. There was some snoozing. We arrived a few minutes late but in enough time for me to be wallet-raped to the tune of £6.30 by London Underground for a single journey to Paddington, where I had time to retrieve tickets from the GWR machines and then find the 18:18 to Newport. I paid the guard £20 for a Weekend First and settled into my big comfy window seat waiting for the free treats to fall onto my table; the snack pack and a few portions of fruit cake was just what I needed.
A man talked on Facetime for a lot of the journey (telling and showing people he was on a train) and I regretted not having packed headphones or having access to cutlery. As it turned out, this was just a taster for the post-Christmas party free-for-all that was the Transport for Wales 20:27 Muffin-top Express service to Manchester Piccadilly.
We arrived more-or-less on time in Leominster at 21:32.
Wednesday 21st December
I was originally booked on the 11:12 GWR from Worcester Foregate Street to Paddington, but had to change my non-refundable tickets last-minute because I was unable to get to Worcester by car. Some services from Hereford to Worcester had been cancelled as a result of the industrial action in the UK, triggering a rethink.
I ended up taking the 07:54 (ouch) to Hereford, then the 08:37 to Worcester Foregate Street to get me onto the 10:08 to Paddington. I reasoned, perhaps unfairly, that there’d be little to do in Worcester between trains, but did find a nice little coffee shop just a few metres from the station that would have suitably mitigated the time I had.
The Paddington train was delayed due to a “fatality on the line” at Droitwich which was having a knock-on effect on traffic in the area. I found myself a duo seat in the direction of travel and peered through the uncleaned windows.
For a brief part of the journey from somewhere near Evesham, the four-table across the aisle was taken by a group of ladies who were, like, you know, travelling to London to see, like, Abba, okay, and who were hoping to, like, Black-cab it once they got, like, there. My respect for their early-morning on-train sparkle fizz did little to quell my hatred at their proceeding to engage the contributions of the man in the seat behind me who, from deep within his Christmas jumper, recounted in excrutiatingly enthusiastic detail that he too been to see Abba with his mother who also, like, loved it, and oh my god, it sounded, like, amazing.
The woman in the seat behind them and I briefly shared each other’s pain through coordinated brow-furrowing and eye-rolling.
Just as it looked as if hell might last until Paddington, it was cut tragically short at Hanborough, half-way through some vagueries about something so very banal that it had started to extract whatever remnant of a will to live was still clinging to the inside of me; the people who’d reserved the seats from Hanborough dispensed concise and precise instructions on how to read the reservation indicators above each seat and then, you know, leave. The man in the jumper behind remained quiet. I was left to relax with my newspaper and croissant-style apricot pastry-something and complimentary cup of freshly-served tea-or-possibly-coffee, while they left to inflict their high-rising terminals upon the occupants of the adjacent carriage.
The trolley service lady was lovely and gave me two pieces of cake.
The GWR lounge in Paddington has showers. Showers. I learned this as I was taking advantage of my first class ticket to stock up on snacks for the rest of the journey. There weren’t any towels, and I didn’t think to ask if they had any. As the lounge can be used for two hours before and one hour after a journey, I shall make a point next time of scheduling sufficient time for ablutions and snacks.
Getting through Saint Pancras and onto the 15:31 Eurostar to Paris was painless. One child was smashing Mario Kart on its phone wearing neither headphones nor a muzzle, so we all had to endure quite a bit of that until the adult travelling with it deigned to look up from his own phone and use nicer words than I’d been using in my head to get the little shit to shut the fuck up.
The meal was kale couscous, hummus and betroot falafels. And wine. Many noms ensued. The moelleux au chocolat was fabulous.
At Montparnasse I bought a sandwich to go with my snacks. The 20:39 left on time and arrived in Angoulême at 22:26 as expected, fourteen and a half hours after my first train. I dazed and grazed. The new bigger new seats in first somehow seem to have less legroom than the ones they replace.
Oh well.
This was not really a cheap journey as it was booked last-minute and adjustments had to be made to accommodate changes in plan once I’d announced them to the other end.
| Eurostar (return) | £350 |
| Eurostar voucher | £-115 |
| TGV Angoulême-Paris return | £92 |
| Paddington – Leominster | £47 |
| GWR Weekend first upgrade | £20 |
| Leominster-Worcester | £15 |
| Worcester-Paddington | £57 |
| Total | £466 |
