All aboard
You don't expect a friend who hails from Bolton to end up getting married in a small village near Toulouse (or, in fact, having left the matrimonial plans till his forties, necessarily to do it at all) but this is what has happened. The wedding isn't till May, but I decided I'd left it late enough, and booked my passage. If you accept such a wedding invitation, you can't go in for it half-heartedly, so I am foregoing the dubious pleasure of modern air travel, no matter how cheap it is to fly cattle class these days, in expectation that going by train will make getting there very much part of the enjoyment.
Without being an evangelical eco-warrior, I put cheap flights to foreign parts in the same class as supermarket chickens that cost £3 - I don't wish to deny the right of the consumer to have access to such things, but they just feel wrong to me. Clearly the cheapness at the point of sale comes on the back of something I don't feel comfortable with, whether it's less than top class standards of animal welfare, or pollution paid for by tax breaks on aviation fuel, and without criticising those who go down that route, I reserve my own right not to touch them with a bargepole.
However, in case I should thus seem like some sort of Modern Puritan, I also think that if I have to go 800 miles south, and don't need to do it in a hurry, I'm quite happy to choose the mode of travel which involves travelling slowly enough to have a three-course dinner, a nice bottle of wine, and maybe even a nightcap in the bar, before a proper night's sleep, so I have booked the train. I even managed to find another wedding guest who fancies the slower and more civilised way, so I shall have English-speaking company all the way.
Our schedule is to leave the all new St Pancras International at 6pm on the Thursday, and change in Paris for the 10:30pm sleeper to Toulouse. This means a day of leisure before Saturday's ceremony, and the ensuing reception; and, I am guessing, a late start on the Sunday. Apparently these things go on extremely late in the French metier, and it's positively rude to retire before 4 am: which is another good reason to have not an early morning return flight, but the return overnight sleeper service on Sunday night, meaning I can be back across the Channel and home for lunch. What's more, I have booked early enough that the differential between First and Standard class made it an easy choice to upgrade, meaning there will be free food and drink, and enough legroom to make Easyjet seem an even less attractive option.
Setting aside the environmental aspect, while it may be good that budget airlines have opened up foreign travel and allowed people to broaden their horizons travel-wise, I can't help feel it has removed any glamour that remained in jumping on a plane. There's not much of that left in trains, of course, on this side of the Channel but examination of the invaluable The Man in Seat Sixty-One suggests that the Eurostar gives access to European networks which still have a slight connection with the Golden Age of the Railways. Besides the fact that the trains are faster and cheaper and better-maintained, there's just so much more distance to travel. This means the timetables are full of overnight sleepers, and that, of course, is what makes a simple trip to a wedding feel just a little like Murder on the Orient Express. Or possibly Minder on the Orient Express. Either way, I like the idea of boarding a train at Oxford station with my suitcase in hand and knowing that when I reach my final destination I will be deep in the heart of Foreign without leaving the ground.
Without being an evangelical eco-warrior, I put cheap flights to foreign parts in the same class as supermarket chickens that cost £3 - I don't wish to deny the right of the consumer to have access to such things, but they just feel wrong to me. Clearly the cheapness at the point of sale comes on the back of something I don't feel comfortable with, whether it's less than top class standards of animal welfare, or pollution paid for by tax breaks on aviation fuel, and without criticising those who go down that route, I reserve my own right not to touch them with a bargepole.
However, in case I should thus seem like some sort of Modern Puritan, I also think that if I have to go 800 miles south, and don't need to do it in a hurry, I'm quite happy to choose the mode of travel which involves travelling slowly enough to have a three-course dinner, a nice bottle of wine, and maybe even a nightcap in the bar, before a proper night's sleep, so I have booked the train. I even managed to find another wedding guest who fancies the slower and more civilised way, so I shall have English-speaking company all the way.
Our schedule is to leave the all new St Pancras International at 6pm on the Thursday, and change in Paris for the 10:30pm sleeper to Toulouse. This means a day of leisure before Saturday's ceremony, and the ensuing reception; and, I am guessing, a late start on the Sunday. Apparently these things go on extremely late in the French metier, and it's positively rude to retire before 4 am: which is another good reason to have not an early morning return flight, but the return overnight sleeper service on Sunday night, meaning I can be back across the Channel and home for lunch. What's more, I have booked early enough that the differential between First and Standard class made it an easy choice to upgrade, meaning there will be free food and drink, and enough legroom to make Easyjet seem an even less attractive option.
Setting aside the environmental aspect, while it may be good that budget airlines have opened up foreign travel and allowed people to broaden their horizons travel-wise, I can't help feel it has removed any glamour that remained in jumping on a plane. There's not much of that left in trains, of course, on this side of the Channel but examination of the invaluable The Man in Seat Sixty-One suggests that the Eurostar gives access to European networks which still have a slight connection with the Golden Age of the Railways. Besides the fact that the trains are faster and cheaper and better-maintained, there's just so much more distance to travel. This means the timetables are full of overnight sleepers, and that, of course, is what makes a simple trip to a wedding feel just a little like Murder on the Orient Express. Or possibly Minder on the Orient Express. Either way, I like the idea of boarding a train at Oxford station with my suitcase in hand and knowing that when I reach my final destination I will be deep in the heart of Foreign without leaving the ground.