As I suspect is common for many people at this time of year, I made the mistake of experiencing Christmas.
When the subject of ‘experiencing’ Christmas in England was first mooted I had glorious plans of travelling to Toulouse for a day, then taking an overnight train to Paris and yada yada yada but I was very naughty in the end and flew because it was hard to justify the last-minute cost of that in the face of a 30€ flight to Manchester. However, to mitigate the horror I had decided to have a festive mini train adventure at the other end by travelling to Manchester Piccadilly on the tram (much fun, slightly weedy), taking in the delights of the Christmas market in Piccadilly Gardens (don’t take the tram from the airport if you want any chance of having time to do anything), then taking a glorious new Transport for Wales Premium Service south.
Sadly, there was no festive mini train adventure to be at the other end due to the weather; while high winds had not prevented the fearless and animated introduction of a metal tube full of buttock-clenchers to tarmac, they had managed to stop Transport for Wales running its Premium Service train from Manchester Piccadilly to Swansea – a nice shiny train with tablecloths in first class – instead replacing it with a bone-shaking two-coach diesel Sprinter (something of a misnomer) which was full, damp, and not at all premium.
More often than not the trains I get on this line are glorified buses with varying degrees of lairy depending on the time of day and direction of travel, so it was a disappointment that I had wittingly opted for a later-than-necessary train to get the premium experience; this experience was most definitely not that. Nonetheless, there was a trolley service that I was allowed to pillage on the basis of my first class ticket, so the shoulder-to-shoulder “seating” arrangement and steamed-up windows were in the end mitigated by the presence of tea-or-coffee and cake. And crisps. The weather was dreary so there was nothing to see through the steamed-up windows and this pleasure continued unbridled until we arrived about an hour late at our destination, for which Transport for Wales offered generous compensation a few pounds short of a total refund.
The return journey was much more enjoyable and seemed remarkably inexpensive considering it was quite last-minutely booked. A return flight would have been much cheaper than the train option had the flight not been at 8am, negating the savings by adding the cost of travelling up to Manchester and staying in a hotel overnight. Even then, that 8am flight would’ve meant getting up at a genuinely ungodly hour (four?) to get to the airport for six, just for the sake of a few pennies and a breakfast pint. I worked it out on the back of an envelope to total about £150 for that option.
Enter GWR and their January sale: Hereford to London Paddington direct in second for £9 or first for £15. This was most welcome (and first had free stuff) and that worked nicely with a Eurostar and TGV journey to Angoulême the following day for the bargain(ish) price of 161€. So while this was slightly more expensive than the overall cost of flying, it was significantly more glamorous and not a difficult decision to make given it avoided an evil wet and dark early-morning start in the cold. To avoid an early-morning start for the train I stayed overnight with friends in London, although I previously have done the whole journey in about thirteen hours (I took a picnic). I did look at hotels and hostels around Saint Pancras and there are some to be had for non-stupid money.
It all started yesterday when I took a train south from Leominster through a very soggy landscape to Hereford, where a Transport for Wales Premium Service was waiting on the platform to taunt me, flaunting its shiny dark colours and offering tantalising views through the windows of what could have been; big seats, place mats (perhaps not table cloths after all) and propery cutlery. I didn’t have the time to get on and have a poke around, but I peered through the windows like a ravenous Dickensian wretch long enough to decide that I fancy a go on that and will have to conjur a reason to do so.
With the hour or so I had to kill I had a potter around the Victorian Gothic (apparently) station (with proper buffet) then wandered into Hereford proper to have a little look around High Town and accidentally consume a spicy beanburger.
The 13:08 Great Western “friendly hornet” left Hereford on time and trudged loyally through a somewhat dreary landscape along the Cotswold Line to Oxford. “Spanning across four counties,” according to Scenic Rail Britain, “the charming (Cotswold) Line passes through beautiful English countryside along its 86 mile route.” Had it not been for the fog, failing light, and miserable weather outside the window I might have seen some of the “pretty towns and quaint villages” as they slid past my backward-facing window, but in resignation contented myself with my newspaper and the selection of free stuffs afforded me from the trolley by my £15 GWR January Sale ticket. I regretted having paid for the burger, ultimately, as I could’ve had as many sandwiches and pieces of cake as I liked but in the end I had only one piece of cake and a salad.
At the end of the 86 miles the world and its dog seemed determined to board, but in first we wafted through the last vestiges of daylight in glorious comfort while the train manager’s announcements described deteriorating scenes of desolation and increasing chaos in second, to arrive in Paddington from whence the tube whisked me to Walthamstow to stay with friends.
This morning I was up at not-stupid o’clock to get to Saint Pancras around nine for the 10:31 Eurostar to Paris Gare du Nord. I had a good nose around the station because the queues were quite short and the holding pen on the other side of passport control doesn’t offer much in the way of anything, really, apart from somewhere to sit while you wait for your train. I was later than recommended checking in but everything was quick and I still had plenty of time for a coffee and a croissant (for the price of a small horse) which I consumed while staring at the paper to pass the time until the train was ready to board. This was at first with trepidation as a notice telling me my seating preference had been changed was thrust at me at check-in, but this turned out to be nothing to worry about. As a surprise bonus, it transpired that our scheduled Eurostar ICE was now a lovely “old” Eurostar TGV with the refurbished interior which puts the SNCF TGV to shame.
The train staff seemed most enamoured of Puppet and after a fun conversation about his various rail-based adventures, I sat in my window seat and marvelled at the information display reminding passengers to be quiet (which most of us appeared to read) as we slid out of Saint Pancras on time, irritated only by a man whose phone call was tragically cut short by a tunnel.
Lunch was served. I had pre-ordered the vegetarian option from a plethora of special options including vegan, gluten-free, and halal, and to my delight received a pooty little tray with proper crockery that contained a sweet potato falafel, spinach hummus, feta with basil and a quinoa, mushroom and tarragon salad. This was served with a dinky bottle of rosé and followed by a dessert of Belgian chocolate, orange and cranberry tiffin, speculoos crumb, and Chantilly cream, with a stern cup of tea-or-coffee to follow. I was also offered the fish by the friendly train manager (salmon with potato salad) but was content with my choice as trains and falafels are my two favourite holiday things.
I dozed between bouts of ostensibly reading the newspaper.
Paris was a very cold place to wait two hours before the 16:08 TGV to Angoulême. I took my time getting to Montparnasse (most of it trying to walk around stationary people on the sodding travelator) and then spent time waiting for my train to finally arrive for boarding, during which I’d been to some shops, bought a sandwich, and listened to someone playing the piano. I don’t remember the exact timings but the first announcement of doom came before we had even left the station; someone in coach eight had pulled the alarm so we now had to wait for that incident to be dealt with, only for another announcement twenty-or-so minutes later to tell us they’d done that but now couldn’t get the doors to close and not to get off the train, please, just in case they could close the doors after all.
Eventually we lurched out of the Gare Maquis de Sade and once well under way I discovered there’s a not-quite-a-dining-car on the top deck of the TGV. I had a formule brioche, 4,40€ for a coffee in a paper cup and “brioche” in a plastic sachet. Still, they’ve added proper sit-down tables to what was once a graceless exercise in clinging on for dear life to a metal tube hurtling through the countryside at 380kph while optimistically clutching a cup of scalding coffee, and I was able to sit at an actual table in little comfort and consume my en-cas – just in time to get back to my seat for the announcement that we were going slowly between Saint-Pierre-de-Corps and Poitiers due to idiots on the line. The train seemed to rock slightly as everyone on board rolled their eyes and tutted simultaneously. The train manager gingerly closed the door on his little compartment.
The rest of the journey was nonetheless comfortable and otherwise uneventful. We arrived in Angoulême with a delay of one hour and fourteen minutes, which qualified for a (meagre) refund of part of the cost of my ticket.
When booking, it was about 5€ cheaper to buy the London-Angoulême through ticket in euros from the SNCF than from Eurostar in sterling. I chose the cheapest Standard Premier fare on the Eurostar for the day which was not far from the cheapest Standard. The TGV was a bog-standard domestic French service (no freebies) discounted by 13€ by my Carte Avantage.
| Leominster – Hereford | 6€ |
| Hereford – London Paddington | 17,50€ |
| London Saint Pancras International – Paris | 131€ |
| Paris – Angoulême | 30€ |
