I didn’t use my extra hour to try and get a look Lilith as I decided I much preferred using it for sleeping.
The last thing I did before going to bed last night was to book my return tickets to Périgueux, not only so that I didn’t have to get up too early, but also to recover from the shame of missing my bus on Friday morning. Armed with plenty of sleep I was out of the hotel shortly after 9am and was thrilled to find the station brasserie open at Matabiau where happy people were serving coffee and chocolatines (no bread and jam, take note). On approach I’d been concerned to see the terrace closed, but perhaps that was because it was Sunday morning. In any case, there was sufficient time for me to become suitably caffeinated and to procure a fridge magnet from the station shop before boarding the shiny red liO 09:59 train to Agen. There was an old Intercités Corail on the adjacent platform, the type with the red and black-striped armchair seats in first in which in days of yore jovial Frenchmen would’ve read Le Monde or Libé while burning through a packet of Gauloises and devouring the best part of a bottle of red to while away the time before their first morning meeting. It was headed to Paris and I thought that it might have been fun to do the journey as a loop and return via Limoges, because I’ve never done it before and so why not?
Perhaps another time.
The weather was a distinct improvement on yesterday and I enjoyed briefly catching short glimpses of people’s various Sunday-morning activities as we trundled along the Canal de Garonne. Some people were running, others were taking the dogs for a walk, there was a person who appeared to have arrived by boat to fish, and some were rowing. I wondered which of us thought we were having the most exciting Sunday morning; they probably thought my train journey desperately dull, while dog-walking, running, fishing, and rowing are not Sunday-morning activities I think I’d subscribe to, particularly.
The woman on the other side of the aisle spent most of the journey filing her nails with an exceptionally loud emery board while somewhere further down the train a parent had accidentally released an exuberant child which took great pleasure in stomping up and down the train at speed while squeeing. This behaviour was encouraged by the filing lady who gave it looks that were very different to the looks I’d have given the little darling had it made eye contact with me, but as I suspect this is how other people feel when I spend a journey window-licking and taking photographs of beautiful scenery, I forgave it on the basis that one day, it too may strive to own a finger puppet.
I continued to enjoy the scenery until around Valence d’Agen, where the presence of a nuclear power station indicated it was nearly time for lunch. We pulled into Agen at 11:29 and only a few minutes later I was seated in the brasserie ready to order, having successfully crossed the tracks from our platform to the concourse.
I had been told on Friday that it would be wise to reserve for lunch but when I arrived the place was deathly quiet and I wondered whether the woman had been trying to up-sell the station brasserie experience. By the time my first course arrived — Gaspacho du Jour with parmesan and croutons — I was starting to wonder how I’d manage to fill the time until the train at 13:09, but as noon approached the place was suddenly alive with people coming in for lunch — variously with and without reservations — and by the time my possibly overpriced but tasty rocket and tomato salad with toasted pine kernels arrived, the place was positively heaving. I tried really hard to wait until midday before starting on the wine but reasoned that it was a Sunday after a clock-change and therefore actually after twelve, so didn’t hold out long. The old boy who arrived after me took an age to get seated due to his mobility issues, but once he was in had no such reservations and set-to ordering his morning cocktail followed by a steak and wine. As he had lived in Agen for 11 years and declared the brasserie somewhere one always eats well — as he enjoyed his morning pick-me-up — it seemed churlish of me to hold back.
It appears you only live once.
When it came to dessert the service was noticeably slower, and by the time I had ordered and consumed the utterly obscene café plus-que-gourmand (crème brulée, mousse au chocolat, cold pink stuff, marhmallows and crème anglaise) the hour and a half set aside for lunch had mostly gone and any fears I had that I had scheduled too much time for lunch were dispelled. The bill for my three-course delight was 34€, possibly slightly expensive, for which I had three courses with wine and coffee didn’t have to leave the station in search of food, so really at that price the luxury of convenience was a bargain. I undid the savings of Friday’s frugal sandwich, though, but felt better for it. There were few non-meaty options; the Burrata might make an appearance next time.
The 13:09 TER was on platform one, which is where platform two should be, in my opinion. It seems only logical and, ultimately, polite that the first platform one encounters leaving the ticket office and approach the choochoos be platform one, and not platform two, which is simply in the wrong place and also just wrong. It would then make sense that after further walking, one would find platform three next to platform two and not next to platform one, which is where it is now. But that’s of little consequence as the next platform is platform five. I think somebody had been at the prunes when those decisions were made.
Feeling the benefits of the café gourmand I waddled to the top deck and settled into a seat which exhibited only visual qualities of comfort, ready to slip into a snoozy sugar coma for the journey to Bordeaux that not even the SNCF was going to impede. Shortly before departure my post-dessert bliss was shattered by the arrival of some unnecessarily communicative teenagers, but once they had finally decided where they were sitting — after trying more or less every available seating option available to them — they calmed down a little.
We left ten minutes late as we were made to wait for the delayed Intercités from Marseille to overtake us so that it could continue to Bordeaux unhindered rather than get stuck behind us while we stopped in seven stations along the two-track line. The teenagers became the on-board entertainment when the guards arrived from both ends of the carriage and they realised that what should have been a 10€ ticket had they bought it (“I wasn’t able to”) quickly become something more in the region of 130€. Shortly after giving someone else’s details to the guard, one of the the guilty parties received a phone call from an audibly irate parent demanding to know why they’d just received notification of a penalty fare by SMS for a train to Bordeaux they weren’t travelling on.
In Bordeaux there was no lunch this time, but I did manage to squeeze in a quick trip to Victoire and stuff in a naughty canalé and coffee before the 16:26 to Périgueux. The final train of the day was comfy and quiet, and the sun had made sufficient effort that all sorts of lovely autumnal colours slid past the window as I drifted in and out of mini snoozes.
As with last time, the bus from Périgueux left on time, although there was a minor panic as it wasn’t immediately waiting outside when we arrived — I had double checked the times, but this didn’t stop me from checking again. It was dark when we arrived at the terminus, and I regretted Friday’s decision to leave my head-torch at home.
