INTRODUCTION
'To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive'
-- Robert Louis
Stevenson.
When I was planning my trip,
I found there were plenty of inter-rail travelogues on line, but very little
about what to do before you
left. I also found that there were
very few pages about inter-railing just in France.
For both of these reasons,
I've written a short account of my trip - including the planning. A lot of what
I say is obvious - but I hope some of it will be useful (to someone...).
A word of warning: These
pages don't attempt to suggest the best (or worst) way to go inter-railing. They just say how I
did it - and what you make of that is up to you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE: Planning
It took me about 20hrs to
plan my trip, spread out over 5 days on the week before I left. It was
definitely time well spent.
A good guide-book to
France.
Given that I had to plough
through large sections of it, I chose the more readable Rough Guide over the
concise and functional Lonely Planet.
If you're pressed for time, it might be worth buying a guide to
(Western) Europe, and just reading the French section of that (see below).
A railway map of France
There are basic maps at
various locations on the internet (eg at 'Trainspotting Bukkes').
For something more thorough and tangible, I bought 'La France en Train'
published by the French map company, IGN (sheet number 912). France is also
covered by the Thomas Cook rail-map of Europe.
France is a big country, and
I am but one person. Given that I was never going to see all of it in
fortnight, where exactly was I going to go?
The first step in my
planning was to try to compile a list of places that I might want to visit. In
order to get a good selection I did three things:
I - For the areas that I knew I wanted to go to, I read through the whole of the relevant section of my guidebook.
II - I used the France section of a friend's 'Rough Guide to Europe' to get a list of recommended 'highlights'. [This list is available here]
III - I used various internet sights for recommendations of random (and, often, smaller) towns worth visiting. [,A list of some of the web-sites I used is available here]
Having got a now decent sized list of places to visit spread throughout the whole of The Hexagon, I had to try and whittle them down to produce a thorough but manageable and enjoyable itinerary.
The first thing I did was to photocopy my railway map of France. I then marked all the towns on the map that I had on my list. I eliminated those which were too far out of the way to be worth visiting, and highlighted the places that I definitely wanted to visit. Then it was a question of looking at the map and 'joining the dots'.
Two things that became obvious were: (i) East-West travel is only practical in the south of the country if you want to avoid going in and out of Paris; (ii) there are train-lines running effectively parallel to the eastern, southern and western edges of the country.
Baring all this in mind, I came up with a draft route. In order to see if it was a do-able, it was time to consult the timetables.
By the far the easiest way to do this was by using the internet. I found the official SNCF travel web-site (www.voyages-sncf.com) slow and laborious. By contrast, the German Railways' home-page (www.bahn.de) was fast and efficient, and has up-to-date timetable information for travel throughout Europe. It also reliably indicated whether a train was a TGV or not (important since, as everyone will tell you, if you want to travel by TGV, you have to book - see below).
I fleshed-out my draft route by planning to move on from one place to the next each day (broadly alternating days covering long and short distances). I looked up several possible train-times for each journey, to get a feel of how many trains there were each day and how long the journey took.
Based on this, I was able to revise my draft route: I eliminated the least practical option from various either/or's that I had (eg I decided to go Valence-Avignon-Nimes rather than Valence-Aix-Marseille), and made a few changes to the overall itinerary so that I was travelling for about 2hours on most days, and for usually no more than 4hours on days when I was trying to cover a lot of ground.
I then went back to the internet timetable, and looked up times for my revised route. One thing that I wished I had done once I got to France was to note the train-numbers of the various trains that I wanted to travel on - the French prefer to refer to trains by their number, and this number has to be filled in for each journey on the Inter-rail ticket.
[The itinerary that I finally settled on is listed in Part Two. Click here to go straight there]
Once I'd planned the trip, there were only two things I had to do before I was ready to go: Get my ticket and pack my bag.
For travel round France, I bought a 12day inter-rail pass for Zone E (covering France and the Benelux countries) from the RailEurope store on Piccadilly in London. (Don't forget to take your passport if that's how you're buying it). RailEurope also sell tickets over the phone and on the internet
An inter-rail ticket is valid for all SNCF services, but not trains or buses operated by any other company (eg RATP in Paris). Should you wish to travel on the TGV, you will need to book a seat. I bought mine on line at the SNCF web-site: Selecting 'Abonnement Forfait' ('season ticket rate') under ticket-type allows you just to make a seat-reservation at a cost of 1.5€ per person (over-the-counter reservations are often more expensive). You can have these reservations posted to you or college them over the counter at the 'reservations' office at an SNCF station (if you have a French credit/debit card, you can pick them up from automated ticket machines, too). You can also make TGV Bookings with RailEurope when you buy your ticket.
For travel to France, I bought a Eurostar ticket from London to Paris. This was a slightly costly but (for me) very convenient way to travel. Those with InterRail tickets can travel at the 'Pass-holder' rate, which is the same as the Youth rate.(A word of warning: Turn up very early for your Eurostar: At least half-an hour before it's due to leave. The French in particular have no sympathy for late-comers).
Another possible way of getting to France from Britain is to buy a BIJ combination train-and-ferry ticket, available from RailEurope, or from larger main-line stations (eg London Charing Cross). A return to Calais from London via Dover costs £15 and is valid for 2 months. This is certainly very good value, but is a tedious way to travel.
Having got my tickets, I just needed to pack my bag. I was camping. My three indispensable accessories were: Sleeping-mat, inflatable pillow, pack-towel.
1. Details of my route
The route I finally settled on was, effectively, a circuit round the edge of France south of Paris.
My schedule was as follows:
Thursday 5th 10.23 - Eurostar to Paris Nord. Walk to Paris Est.
15.14 - Paris Est to Epernay arriving circa 16:30
Friday 6th 16.30 - Epernay to Toul, then Toul to Dijon, arr. 20:35
Saturday 7th 16.23 - TGV from Dijon to Valence TGV then a local
train from Valence TGV to Valence Ville arr. 19:07
Sunday 8th 13.40 - SNCF Bus from Valence Ville to Valence
TGV, then the 14.18 TGV to Avignon TGV and a bus
to Avignon Ville arr. 15:00
*Monday 9th 13:22 Train from Avignon Ville to Nimes arr 13:52
*Tuesday 10th 13:59 Train from Nimes to Carcassonne arr 16:02
Wednesday 11th 12.45 Train from Carcassonne to Toulouse
Thursday 12th 10.05 Train from Toulouse to St-Jean-de-Luz,
changing at Bayonne arr 14.21
Friday 13th 11.11 TGV from St-Jean-de-Luz to Bordeaux, then a
train from there to La Rochelle arr 16.14
Saturday 14th 12.37 Train from La Rochelle to Saumur (via Nantes
then up the Loire valley) arr 16.12
Monday 15th 11.21 Train from Saumur to Tours.
From Tours I made a day-trip to Chennonceaux,
catching the 14.05 train out and the 18.24 train back.
Tuesday 16th 12.09 TGV from Tours to Paris Montp. arr 13.20
I then spent 3 day in Paris, before catching the 20.45 Eurostar back from Paris Gare du Nord.
I found 2-3 hours a good amount of time to be travelling each day: Any more presented a risk of serious boredom; any less didn't feel worth the effort.
I stayed at a mixture of camp-sites and cheap hotels. There are plenty of both throughout France. The camp-sites tend to be awkwardly situated - between 20 and 40minutes walk from the railway station. Almost all are served by bus, but the last bus is usually around 18:00 (I usually walked out to the camp-site - often after dinner - and bussed back in the morning).
Towns I would definitely recommend are Epernay, Dijon, Carcassonne, La Rochelle, Saumur and (of course) Paris. Valence is a nice place, but there is very little to do: It occupied a few hours on a Sunday morning very pleasantly, and has a nice camp-site. Toulouse and Tours left me with mixed feelings.
St-Jean-de-Luz is a great place to go if you want just head for the beach (as I did) - I stayed in the suburb of Acotz where there are half-a-dozen campsites near the beach (take the bus there from opposite the train station to the 'Madalienia' stop).
The train journeys from Carcassonne to Toulouse, Toulouse to and Nantes to Saumur are all particularly scenic.
Links
http://www.interrail-italy.co.uk/ - A great guide to planing an InterRail trip in Italy and Greece