Travelling to start travelling, and Biarritz

Intro

Towards the end of 2014 my friend Raj and I began talking about going on holiday to Spain, the outline of the plan changed widely during the following weeks and months. An initial thought was to take the ferry in to Santander and explore Spain from there, this was ruled out when we saw the duration of the ferry trip and the price. The schedule we eventually settled on was somewhat extensive and would see us taking in four countries over the course of two weeks. We arranged a hire car and would be driving around 2000 miles on a circular route around Spain, calling in at Gibraltar, and returning to Biarritz via Andorra, getting to and from Biarritz by train. We would be staying in a series of hotels and apartments along the way, the apartments stays cunningly placed to give us chance to wash clothes so we could keep our luggage relatively light.

Monday 13th April 2015

Waking astonishingly early I lugged my suitcase to the taxi and was on my way to the train station to catch the first train for London. Only it wasn’t direct, I had to change in Retford which involved a scant 4 minute wait between trains. Did I say 4 minutes? Despite it being the first train of the day, my connection was already running late. There was only 43 minutes between my train getting in to Kings Cross and the Eurostar leaving St Pancras so it was going to be tight if all went to plan.

All did not go to plan. The train got more and more delayed, though eventually I was on the train and heading to London. Far from making up the time, the train managed to get further behind as the journey went on. As I approached London there was 10 minutes remaining before the Eurostar was to depart, I had resigned myself to missing it and was looking at alternative arrangements. The next Eurostar in to Paris would arrive too late to make my connection to the TGV to get down to Biarritz so I would not be joining Raj until the following day. Raj had informed the ticket desk of my predicament and left my ticket at a certain desk, then boarded the train. I meanwhile, worked my way down the train to the front carriage, waiting at the door for the train to stop and the locks release. Charging down the concourse, through the barrier, over the road, in to St Pancras, to the Eurostar desk, I make it to the desk and explain my situation. The chap grabs my ticket, shuts the desk and rushes me past the queue, to a closed security desk that quickly scans my belongings and we run down the terminal. Arriving at the closed travelator they radio to the control desk and release the doors and turn the travelator back on. I am at this point dripping with sweat and wheezing mightily but I make it up to the platform where Raj is waiting in the doorway of the train, we drag my suitcase on, I board and the door closes and locks behind me. Made it.

We were travelling Premium Economy to Paris, and then First Class on the TGV down through France. The complimentary drinks and food were most welcome once I had my breath back, I’d highly recommend Premium Economy on the Eurostar, these trains are showing their age and the extra leg room and refreshments are well worth the extra. We arrived in Paris at Gare du Nord station, and decided to take the Metro trains to Montparnasse station, this turned out not be a good idea. We had to change Metro trains, and once arriving at the station it was a seriously long walk to the TGV station. On getting in to the main station we needed to collect our tickets, this was made needlessly complicated, and further complicated by the “help” desk. We tried a few ticket machines, they did not recognise our booking. The help desk claimed they had never heard of Biarritz, and seemed surprised that people would be using trains. We eventually found another set of ticket machines which did take our booking and procured our tickets, then it was just a simple matter of finding our train. Walking for over 15 minutes through the station and down the right platform we eventually found a train, this was not our train, our train was even further down the platform. A team of sherpas could do good business in this station, we did nothing other than catch trains and ended up walking over three miles that day.

The trip down to Biarritz was pleasant but uneventful, not really worth the upgrade this time, no food or drinks provided, just a nicer seat and a plug socket. We pulled in to Biarritz on time just before 7pm and called a taxi to our hotel, and I do mean called, this must be the only train station in Europe where taxi drivers don’t wait outside. Our hotel, the Hotel Alcyon,  was a nice place in the middle of the town, an old building with very spacious rooms, we would be staying here on the last night of the trip as well so it was most welcome to find such a comfortable room, with a nice bath.

We got cleaned up and headed out to find somewhere for our evening meal, after roaming around the town we found a nice restaurant and then went for a stroll along the beach. We finished the night with a few drinks at a local bar and retired back to the hotel. The following morning we would collect our hire car and head over the border to Spain to begin the holiday proper, it seemed strange to travel so much just to do more travelling but hey, it’s what we signed up for so on we went.