I bought a four-day Interrail pass for my first UK trip of 2024. I was expecting a 10% off January sale, as in other years, but Interrail seems to have temporarily expended all its largesse with last year’s fiftieth anniversary sale, when it offered a whopping 25% off.
Actually, once I’d planned my arrival in London to allow time to travel up to Derbyshire, the trip involved five days of train travel, so I ended up paying extra for the tickets on the first day.
At least the Eurostar tickets from Paris to London are now covered by the pass. You just have to pay a €32 seat reservation fee each way for trains at civilised travel times, which is much less than the normal Eurostar fare.
Postscript: when I added my journeys to the pass, it looked like the solitary Eurostar trip could have counted as an inbound or outbound travel day after all.
Day 1 – Tavira to Seville
After dropping Lottie off with the wonderful Monica at Happy Tails, I got the bus to Santa Justa station in Seville.
I’m never in any doubt that Lottie is being well looked after when she’s at Happy Tails – Monica sends regular updates.
After hemming a few curtains at Jack’s new flat, we wandered out for tapas in and around his new street – Avenida de Miraflores.
Day 2 – Seville to San Sebastián-Donostia
I was reluctant to uproot myself from the comfort of Jack’s new spare bedroom next morning, but my 10.20 Iryo train to Madrid was calling.
There was a queue to get onto the train due to ticket checking and airline-style luggage x-raying. In the end the train left about 15 minutes late.
We sped to Madrid Atocha station at just under 300 km/h, arriving about 20 minutes early.
Next step was a Cercanía (suburban) train to Chamartín-Clara Campoamor station (all the Cercanías trains from platforms 1 and 2 stop there).
The Cercanías trains are down in the bowels of the station, well away from the mainline trains. Madrid Atocha is such a big station that it can get confusing.
Chamartín station was being refurbished, so I had to trek round the block past all the building work to find bars and toilets.
After more luggage x-ray checks, I was finally aboard the slower inter-city train to San Sebastián-Donostia, arriving about 7.30 pm.
The onward trip from Madrid was more leisurely than the morning’s high speed dash but the scenery is spectacular, and I managed to read a whole book: A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson.
On arrival at the mainline RENFE station in San Sebastián, I left my bag at the hotel and set off in search of pintxos. Quite a few sites recommended Borda Berri, so I thought I’d start there.
After all day on a train, it was great to stretch my legs on the 20 minute walk to this tiny eatery.
I managed to wedge myself into a standing space near the counter and ordered about four or five dishes from the menu on the blackboard. A lot of guesswork was involved as the names were in Basque.
In a lot of places, ready-made pintxos are displayed under a glass counter top, but they are made to order in Borda Berri.
Even when the dishes arrived, I wasn’t much wiser about the contents of some. The exceptions were a delicious portion of duck with figs and apricots and a creamy risotto.
A delicate, transparent raviolo was tasty and intriguing, but I didn’t think much of a glutinous green dish containing some sort of slimy mushroom.
While eating this, and knocking back a couple of glasses of my favourite tapas accompaniment, Ribera, I chatted to an Italian from New York and his Filipino girlfriend, who was studying for her Masters in the Netherlands.
Feeling fairly stuffed by then, I didn’t fancy elbowing through the growing crowds around the more popular pintxo bars and just went back to my hotel.
Day 2 – San Sebastián to Paris Montparnasse
I’d been unsure about how to get from San Sebastián to nearby Hendaya in France to catch my Paris train. The timetables on Trainline and Rail Europe suggest you need to catch a mainline RENFE train to Irún and then it’s a shortish walk or bus/taxi ride to the French SNCF station just over the border in Hendaya.
As usual, seat61 had the answer. You have to go to the cute little Amara station and catch a Euskotren suburban train that goes all the way to Hendaia (Basque spelling).
But first a wander to the sea front to watch the customary hive of activity on San Sebastián’s beautiful beach.
This morning, cold water swimmers and dog walkers were putting the golden sands to good use.
Amara station front is utilitarian, but it’s set in a lovely square with pavement cafes. The platform part of the station is light-filled and the half hour trip to Hendaya costs just €2.75, with trains every 30 minutes.
You emerge from the Euskotren terminal in France, with never a border post in sight.
The quiet French SNCF station is a few metres away.
The handful of trains leaving that day didn’t seem to warrant the disproportionate number of surly, armed police herding us past the ticket-checkers.
That aside, everything was well-organised and the double-decker train to Paris left right on time.
After meandering along the coast to pick up passengers in Biarritz, Saint-Jean-de-Luz and other seaside towns, with tantalising glimpses of azure sea, the train picked up speed for the last monotonously flat part of the journey to Paris Montparnasse.
I’d decided to stay overnight near Gare de Montparnasse rather than near Gare du Nord as there was a better choice of hotels.
So the next step was to locate the metro station and buy a Navigo Easy pass loaded with two journeys in preparation for next morning’s early start to Gare du Nord and the Eurostar.
After all that due diligence, it was time for some self-indulgence in a typical Parisian brasserie.
Day 3 – Paris to Holloway
Seat61 advises you to allow plenty of time to transfer from Montparnasse railway station to metro line 4. Apparently the walk is 700 metres and it felt every bit that long.
Even though the metro trains are every 4 minutes or so, there are still 14 stops. In the end it took me 45 minutes to get from Montparnasse to Gare du Nord.
To that point, my journey was calm and effortless but everything changed when the UK railway system took over.
The Eurostar PA system was working overtime apologising for the long queues at French passport control, a broken departure gate and the “chaos” (their words) of the seat allocation.
I was simply relieved to get onto the train.
Things weren’t much better on arrival in St Pancras. A crucial escalator to the EMR trains was out of order and passengers for my Sheffield train were being corralled into queues and then chivvied onto trains with standing room only and all seat reservations cancelled.
I managed to bag a fold-down corridor seat, but the corridors in all carriages, including first class, were full of standing passengers and their luggage.
Needless to say, tempers were frayed. Especially as more passengers tried to board along the route but no one got off.
The reason seemed to be that north-bound trains from other London stations had been cancelled.
After seeing the smooth organisation of the rail systems in neighbouring counties, this wasn’t a great welcome back to the UK.
In the end, I descended gratefully from the crammed EMR train from hell at the East Midlands stop and managed to get an Uber to the off-airport car hire pick-up point.
Judging by this post by @MartinSLewis on Twitter today, EMR still haven’t got their act together.
