Before the Sparkly-tat Extravaganza began, I booked most of my return journey way in advance to be able to take advantage of some bargain fares and have an overnight adventure.
I thought I’d been very clever and rather than splitting the journey in London like last time or getting up at silly o’clock in the morning to do do it all in one very long day like the times before that, I decided to start my journey later in the day and time my arrival in Paris so that I’d have time to eat something somewhere glamorous before getting on a night train to Toulouse (because) where I would wake up refreshed, have breakfast, take a train to somewhere for lunch, then potter back home via Périgueux, probably repeating the best bits of (what I think is) the successful Toulouse-Périgueux experiment of last October.


It was a plan, and the first journey – the 10:18 Transport for Wales Premium Service (of course) from a very frosty Leominster to Newport – was an incredibly wintry joy-ride which snaked its way south through a landscape of sparkly trees, mountains and occasional pockets of fog.
Anyone would think that following my last Premium experience I’d chosen this train deliberately to be able to have a go on the at-seat catering which, it turns out, is exactly why I booked to go via Newport and not Crewe as there were no suitable services going north. I ordered the cooked breakfast as soon as I was in my seat knowing that I only had an hour to consume it and not wanting to be rushed, and while there was some hesitation from the train manager because of timing, the nice person in the kitchen was happy to make it and some time just south of Hereford a veritable hearty feast was laid before me.
Some people who had somehow chewed through the restraints and made it out of second class looked on with avarice as they walked through first to get to the buffet car, where they were refused the full English breakfast they asked for. It wasn’t clear whether this was because they were of the wrong class (actually it was) or because the train manager was (very) Welsh like the breakfast, but I did feel a little sorry for them until I remembered that when I had booked my tickets, the Transport for Wales website gave the same price for both so they only had themselves to blame.

The Transport for Wales vegetarian breakfast is comprised of three vegan sausages, hash browns, fried mushrooms, grilled tomatoes (Satanfruit), two fried eggs, a dinky little pot of baked beans, a couple of rounds of toast (white in my case), and a swimming pool of coffee which came with a jug of milk, should I feel the need to adulterate it. I was also given a selection of sauces (brown the only acceptable one, of course) and some crisps and shortbread, all for £11.50! Had I thought about it in advance, I’d have asked for Glamorgan sausages from the “full Welsh” menu to be substituted for the vegan ones which made little sense in the presence of two fried eggs.
I think it could be argued that eating a cooked breakfast while the Brecon Beacons slide gently past the window is a much more satisfactory train-eating experience than mushroom goulash and an Alp, although of course both have their strong points.

We were late pulling into Newport and I was a little nervous about this considering I’d just put on a few kilos of lard, but my onward 11:32 GWR service to London Paddington had not arrived so there was no rush to the adjacent platform. I learned during booking – in a reading experience that quickly became more nerdy than it needed to – that allowing onward travel on a later service is an obligation for train companies in the UK, providing the ticket holder has left sufficient time at a station for changing trains. According to the official guidelines, five minutes is the time needed to change train in Newport so even if I had got stuck rolling myself across the platform, I’d have been allowed on the next available service on the same route. It doesn’t even matter that I bought my split tickets from different operators, which is something I didn’t know.
Apart form food, I chose this route and this day to take advantage of Weekend First on the GWR service to Paddington rather than pay full whack, and therefore the first thing I did on boarding was find the train manager and ask if this was possible. It was, and he told me to take a free seat in first which was the last time I heard anything of it. Despite not paying the upgrade fee I remained entitled to free stuff which, following breakfast, was limited to a coffee and some biscuits to show willing.
At Paddington I considered exploring a little as I don’t often have excess time to kill there, but within waddling distance with a rucksack and a bag of goodies I didn’t get much further than looking at statues of Paddington Bear, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and the The Wild Table of Love, a bronze sculpture of lots of different animals sitting down to eat together – and not each other. Viewers can also participate by taking one of two seats left empty at the table by Rabbitwoman and Dogman, the hosts. It is, apparently, art.
In a brief moment of madness I considered walking to Saint Pancras, but then came to my senses and hopped on the Circle Line.
There was time to kill before checking in and I somehow found myself across the road in King’s Cross looking for the Harry Potter platform. I’ve never read the books and have seen only one of the films under duress while babysitting, so I had not expected there to be such a big crowd of short giggly people queuing up patiently waiting for their turn to be photographed pointing a stick at a wall while wearing a borrowed scarf that had been round more necks than can possibly be hygienic. I didn’t have time to wait to have this done so returned to Saint Pancras to check in for my 16:31 Eurostar, whereupon I received an email from the SNCF telling me my Intercités de Nuit to Toulouse had been cancelled because of the weather. Boo hiss. I was so excited to have a go on a new night train in France and had snagged a bargain on a couchette in first which I’d booked as a through journey in case anything went wrong.

There was little I could do at that point as I’d already gone through security, so I made a decision not to worry about anything until I got to Paris and instead enjoy my free stuff and wine. I acquired a Eurostar cup with permission. The journey was free of lairy types and before long I was in Paris trying to figure out how to use the new RATP app now that the paper ticket is gone. There was no instruction in the app, but after I’d bought a 2,50€ ticket I tried holding my phone close to a gate which magically opened, so I’m guessing that was it.
The line five was quite busy but in contrast there was not much going on at Austerlitz when I got there. If I’m honest I don’t know what I was expecting to see, perhaps scenes of chaos as shown on the television whenever Parisians are inconvenienced by entirely predictable seasonal weather — people sleeping on the floor, children screaming, distraught people wailing that it’s a disgrace — but the station was eerily quiet save for some people huddled around information signs trying to will a train into existence. I eventually found someone who could take me to where the SNCF Assistance team were hiding and after banging on the correct door a couple of times, a nice man came to my rescue.
A friend once told me that she often books a late combination of TGV and Eurostar in case a delay leads to a free hotel in Paris, but this time I really wanted to be enjoying a post-prandial sleep in a four-bed snoozy compartment on a train and not in an SNCF staff hotel in the 13th arrondissement. After an hour or so in a waiting room a dozen-or-so of us were sent to an SNCF Résidence Orféa where a woman with no fucks to give was unmoved by the fact people hadn’t eaten in hours and seemed more interested in her own vindication by reminding her sidekick that she always tells them they need to give out boxes but do they ever listen? That was not even a rhetorical question, as she confirmed they didn’t just before the final coup de grace of announcing that nobody was having breakfast either and so here’s your key, goodnight.
In my room I dined on Transport for Wales crisps and an emergency mini travel-Prosecco, served in a Eurostar cup. Glamorous to the end.

This morning went a little more smoothly than I’d feared it might have.
I was up bright and early and left my quarters with plenty of time to have a gentle walk back to Austerlitz and a mooch about for some breakfast before the 08:24 Intercités service to Toulouse, the first of the day. Austerlitz is undergoing ‘improvement’ work and is now a sterile travel environment where the sole purveyor of breakfast materials open at 8am on a Sunday for a major station in a large capital was a busy Brioche Dorée near the entrance. I popped round the back of the station to find a boulangerie – I failed – so came back to a longer queue and eventually bought a pain au chocolat and an espresso before setting to finding the train manager on platform three to explain the shenanigans of the night before.
During the confusion of last night, the SNCF Assistance person somehow managed to downgrade me from first to second and then dealt with the problem by figuratively washing his hands and suggesting I explain this to the train manager this morning while showing him my old ticket and my new ticket. In a pre-connected world with paper tickets this would not have been a cause for concern, but the hell that is SNCF Connect immediately updated my ticket when the agent made the change so I was no longer in possession of an old ticket to show (QR-code my arse), but at the time the poor man was dealing with lots of other inconvenienced people and it seemed rude to insist, even if I did visibly die a little inside.
I was pleasantly surprised as I’d expected a bit of resistance, but the train manager took me at my word and I soon found myself allocated a nice window seat in an old-school coach of big red comfy armchairs where a man with a trolley brought coffee in paper cups.

I had deliberately made no plans for onward travel from Toulouse as my intention was to arrive at seven o’clock in the morning and find myself somewhere for a glamorous breakfast before making a decision proper about how proceed. My choices were to get home, probably following the same route as last time, or go east or south or both. In the run up to yesterday I’d even contemplated staying on the night train until Latour-de-Carol and then getting a Rodalies de Catalunya commuter train to Barcelona. Then I thought I’d quite like to visit Marseille again, or perhaps Montpellier or Nîmes — the options were endless. Presented with the prospect of arriving in Toulouse in the afternoon and with work booked for the following day, my desire to get home at a sensible time ultimately won over the possibility of a seven-hour train journey and so passing through La Souterraine I decided like so many others before me to abandon my dreams and aspirations in Limoges, where it was lunch time.
This pragmatic decision saved me a few hundred euros, I reckoned, and combined with the savings of not having to pay for a Weekend First upgrade yesterday meant I could justify lunch in the restaurant that has opened in the station in place of what was previously a perfectly serviceable buffet and bar. The Limousin — which officially no longer exists as we’re all Nouvelle Aquitaine now — gives its name to the hooded cape resembling the canopy that covered the external driver’s seat of a car driven by a chauffeur as well as its red cows, so it was no surprise that L’Assiette au Boeuf is not the best non-meaty place to eat. The owners would probably shrug and suggest the clue is in the name, but it does seem a little short-sighted not to cater to the travellers going through the station who aren’t rampant carnivores.
Undeterred, I decided I would have lunch in the station to make up for my not having been able to stop to graze at the Bouillon Chartier at the Gare de l’Est between trains last night – not that I actually had any room for more food yesterday but that’s beside the point. The restaurant is shiny and new and therefore a little lacking of character, but the ambience is reassuringly bustling and clattery as befits a station buffet.


The service for the Express menu was rapid, a little too so for my liking as I had four hours to kill and had said I wasn’t in a rush. I ordered a Caesar salad with eggs instead of chicken with what was described eagerly by the young lad seating me as “unlimited fries.” These remained elusive after the first helping unless one was able to flag down a passing chip-wallah, something more difficult than I’d imagined as they seemed to make an effort to keep away from the people wanting more. It was fresh, well-presented and tasty but I couldn’t help thinking it was probably a very overpriced salad indeed at 19,99€, unlimited invisible chippy-chips or no. With it I had a glass of a very tasty red followed by a joyfully obscene café gourmand (chocolate mousse, crème brulée, tiramisuesque, fromage frais with red berry coulis) which made up for any other deficiencies.
The whole came to 32€, quite expensive for what was served but cheap for the convenience of having it. That’s on a par with the station buffet in Agen, which I would venture to suggest was a slightly better value for money.
After I’d spun out my coffee for as long as it was realistically possible to do so, I had to determine what to do with my remaining three-hour wait time. Limoges Bénédictins, beautiful though it may be, is not blessed with many things to do and does not appear to have any left luggage facilities, and as a result I was not inspired to venture far from the station because walking around Limoges with bag plus bonus bag of Marmite-and-things was not an experience I felt I needed. Instead, I settled in the little (unheated) glass waiting room under the dome and listened to a succession of people play on the piano the only bit of that thing they could remember over and over again before playing the only bit of that other thing they could remember over and over until they got up and left to get a train. Their departures would have been welcome, were it not for the other people queuing up to play the only bit of that thing they could remember over, and over, and over again, while drunk people took a break from asking people for money and foolishly gave encouragement, dervishing occasionally.
It was a long three hours but eventually it was 16:17 and time to find a window seat on what very quickly became a rammed TER to Périgueux. The journey was blissfully uneventful, and in Thiviers 46 minutes later a friend was ready to whisk me home.
The sums
Leominster – Newport (1st) | (£17.40) 21€ |
Newport – London Paddington (2nd, no upgrade fee) | (£51.50) 61€ |
Saint Pancras International – Toulouse (1st) | 129€ |
Limoges – Thiviers (unique) | 2,30€ |
I think it’s worth investigating whether a four-day Interrail pass would make sense for this journey. I’m starting to think they’re the best way of travelling internationally if you need more than one or two trains.
See the map of this journey on trainlog.me
