Log: Sur le train to Avignon

Frank Barrett5 April 2012

We set off from Waterloo Station on Tuesday confident that we were heading towards a Brave New World of travel.

We returned the next day sadder and wiser: the New World can be a bit too much like the nasty old one.

The bright part of this future is Eurostar's plan for a new service from Waterloo and Ashford to Avignon in the South of France. The service will run every Saturday from July 20 to September 7.

The 715-mile journey, mostly along high-speed, TGV, purpose-built track, is scheduled to take an impressively brisk six hours 15 minutes (which works out at an average speed of around 115mph).

It was tough luck on Eurostar that when we tried out the service, this lightning test run was brought to a sudden halt just 30 miles from Avignon by our old friend 'engineering works on the line'.

Eurostar had further troubles the following day when, on our homeward run, its schedules were devastated by a strike of French customs officers.

So is this the future? Faster trains but services still dogged by wonky track and bolshie staff?

It isn't only the trains that are suffering. Things were equally bad last Wednesday at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport, where we were forced to go in order to get home. A temporary failure of the new British air traffic control system meant long delays to morning flights to London. But I hope that Eurostar isn't discouraged by a few modest setbacks: this new limited Avignon service deserves to succeed. The company has successfully run special direct ski services from Waterloo to Bourg St Maurice since 1997 - however, the Avignon plan is the first step in a bold new direction.

Major developments over the next few years will set Eurostar on a course to an exciting new era.

In the eight years since the Channel Tunnel opened, Eurostar has carried more than 100 million passengers (it now takes 65 per cent of all people travelling between London and Paris).

On September 28 next year the first leg of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is being opened, reducing the London-Paris journey time to just two hours 35 minutes (when the Link is fully open to the new Eurostar terminal in St Pancras in 2007 the Paris run will be just two hours 15 minutes).

With a Dutch high-speed rail link opening in 2006, Rotterdam will be just a three-hour train ride from London.

Further extensions to the French TGV network to Brittany and Strasbourg - and a German high-speed rail link, which will cut the journey between Brussels and Frankfurt to 90 minutes - should mean that, on short-haul routes, the highspeed train will continue to eclipse the plane.

Avignon has been selected for this summer's direct service because it is the most popular destination with Eurostar customers (next most popular are Lyon, Nice, Marseille and Angouleme). Eurostar is keen to promote the fact that dozens of Continental destinations can be reached via an easy change of platform at Lille.

As well as expanding its list of destinations - plans are in hand for an additional direct service to Bordeaux next summer - Eurostar is spending £35 million on a Philippe Starck-designed refurbishment programme to give a new look to everything from carriage interiors to staff uniforms. With return fares from London to Avignon costing from £115 (first-class returns look an especially good buy from £195), the new service is certain to do well.

Avignon offers good rail and road links to the rest of the South of France, Italy and Spain.

So, were they dancing on the bridge at Avignon in excited anticipation?

Almost.

? Further information from Eurostar (08705 186 186) and Rail Europe Direct (08705 848 848). Bridge France (0870 191 7289) is offering inclusive packages to Avignon using the new rail services.

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