This is a nice morning to look out the window whilst sipping some tea.
The render distance seems to be variable, tending towards low. We are getting mostly foggy views, with the odd bit of clarity and sun near the coast…
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“16 hours? That’s crazy!” Is something I’ve already heard about this trip before even starting. I do somewhat agree with the sentiment.
And, whilst I am (now) known for crazy long railway days, those are mostly for the pleasure of the trip, whereas this one is very much about getting from A to B, and so it does actually rankle somewhat.
It’s actually going to be the longest rail travel day I’ve had, if you don't include sleeper routes.
In fact, unless the Rail Gods look kindly upon me, this trip is actually 3 hours longer than it needs to be. I’ll be explaining why, and the various factors that have contributed to it as the day goes by.
Some of these issues are ones that the newly-forming @erpu - the European Rail Passengers Union - is hoping to effect meaningful change on, and I’ll be talking about some of that throughout the day, too.
La France…. Je suis dans vous !
And as I approach the marshlands on the Perpignan- Narbonne line, I’m trying out a new addition to the photo/video capture setup.
Sadly, it’s only a so-so day, and I’m on the wrong side of the train for all of the pretty views, but it’s still hopefully going to be good
So, why is this travel day so long?
First of all, the route is long. It's pretty optimal as far as the geography is concerned: I'm doing about 1,562km in slightly over 10 hours. This is mostly on high speed railway that's rated to 300km/h, although by this calculation, it's an average speed of 150km/h. Part of this is due to the fact that the Perpignan-Nîmes section of the route is on conventional speed tracks. I'm currently doing about 120.
There is a plan to improve the Montpellier-Perpignan line, but that won't be ready for another decade, and will at most shave an hour off this total time.
The original recommended route gave me a 40 minute changeover time in Lyon Part Dieu, and a 1 hour 15 minute changeover in Lille-Europe. And then there's about an hour extra in faffing around the various line changes in the UK. This gives an optimal time of around 13 hours total. Still far from ideal, but assumable.
The extra 3 hours though?
That's a combination of 3 factors:
⁃ a lack of passenger rights,
⁃ a lack of capacity on the networks; and
⁃ a healthy fear of getting stuck due to foreseen circumstances.
I originally booked this trip on the recommended route. The 40 minute changeover in Lyon is pretty reasonable, as this train is rarely late.
But after I booked it, the tragic accidents happened in Adamúz and Gélida. And that made train travel in Spain much, much less predictable. The news was full of speed restrictions and trains that were being delayed beyond reasonable amounts. And whilst this train spends most of its time in France and has a pretty good on-time record, well, there were still reports of problems on the Barcelona-Figueres line.
And so I looked at my trip, and decided the 40 minute changeover was too risky.
Why was it risky? I had two more long distance trains to catch.
So, the first problem is the third train train of the day, the Eurostar, is notoriously difficult to get an interrail reservation on.
Rants on SNCF group's attitude to #Interrail have been had by many in all sorts of places. I'll summarise them as: There is a limited number of seats on the train network, and the operator artificially limits those even further with a maximum number of interrail seats on each train. This sucks.
When I started looking to change my reservations, the first thing I did was try to work out if I could even change my booking. I had the possibility of two later trains, the next one had space in Basic class, and the later train had space in Eurostar Plus, too. And it would be a free change of seat for either one.
So, knowing that, I decided to look at trains from Lyon that would have a more reasonable chance of being doable.
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