Tour de France – Deuxième Étape
So here I am, then, in my room in Montpellier, about to have breakfast and then to depart for the train to Paris. Hopefully, I’ll get to my hotel there in time for the three consecutive hours of Zoom calls I have scheduled for this evening. I’ll be spending tomorrow at the Institut de Physique Théorique in Saclay, which will require a combination of trains and buses, but for today I just have to get the TGV from Montpellier Saint-Roch to Paris Gare De Lyon and an RER train from there to my hotel. What could possibly go wrong?
Thank you to everyone in Montpellier for their hospitality during this short visit. Au revoir!
Update: On my way on time. Momentary panic as I tried to embark because the OUIGO app refused to display my ticket so I couldn’t find out which seat I was supposed to sit in, but it worked eventually. This train isn’t as fancy as the one I got from Barcelona and is rather full but nevertheless comfortable enough.
Update to the Update: arrived in a very grey and misty Paris on schedule and managed to find my way to the hotel and even managed the whole check-in experience in French! Now I have three hours of telecons to complete before thinking about dinner…
In the Dark 
November 27, 2023 at 9:39 am
That’s an impressive illustration of the speed of TGV. It’s a 465 mile journey, considerably longer than the mere 400 miles from Edinburgh to London. And yet the fastest train I can get is 4h20, more usually 4h40. A TGV would do that distance in 3h flat. That would make a day trip to London by train perfectly feasible (not that this is a good thing…).
November 27, 2023 at 11:00 am
This leg is much faster than Barcelona to Montpellier despite being much further. I think that’s because (a) the track is better and (b) there are only two stops, Nimes and Lyon. The journey is very much smoother than on UK trains too.
November 27, 2023 at 11:10 am
Ps. It’s worth mentioning the fare too: €39 (one way)
November 27, 2023 at 11:28 am
The UK prices are a factor 2.9 more per km (and that’s in cattle class: a factor 5.3 if you go First class – which these days is about as crammed as 2nd class used to be, and which I think is probably no better an experience than TGV standard class). Still, thank goodness we have the efficiencies that the private sector provides…..
November 27, 2023 at 11:30 am
The price I got includes an automatic discount for being over 60!
November 27, 2023 at 4:27 pm
<i>today I just have to get the TGV from Montpellier Saint-Roch to Paris Gare De Lyon and an RER train from there to my hotel. What could possibly go wrong?</i>
In 2010 I got from Beaconsfield to Chamonix in the day on seven consecutive trains. I had booked to go to MaxEnt2010 by surface travel in view of uncertainty over the Icelandic volcano. I took a commuter train into London (from friends with whom I left my car), then one tube train, then Eurostar to Paris, then RER across Paris, then TGV to (I think) Annecy, then a small train into the Alps and an even smaller train onward to Chamonix. All went to schedule.
November 27, 2023 at 9:16 pm
Please convey my best regards to Patrick
(Valageas), Fransis (Bernardeau), Richard (Schaeffer) and others if you meet them.
As for train travel, I have travel from Cambridge to Rome back in 1995.
November 29, 2023 at 9:17 am
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