Trying Out Eurostar
Posted on August 8, 2024
Reading time: 4 minutes.
This year, I got a few opportunities to sample Eurostar’s services between London and Paris. Brussels and Amsterdam are destinations reachable from the UK, but I stuck with France. Former Thalys services, still in red and now branded Eurostar, are part of the network too, so other destinations in Belgium and the Netherlands are a possibility, as are a selection in Germany. There are trains to skiing destinations in the winter as well as ones to sunshine counterparts in the summer. Changing your train somewhere in continental Europe will grant you more options. At a time of greater climate consciousness, it is good to have these.
The prospect of an out and back trip to Paris by train had lain in my mind for a few years, only for it never to happen for one reason or another. The idea predates both Brexit and the height of the pandemic. Last year’s visits added the idea of an outbound ferry crossing followed by a return by train. Passport fumbling on my part was enough to scupper this the first time around.
Fortunately, I got myself onto an outbound Eurostar train at fairly short notice to continue the trip. That added to the cost, which seemingly is never cheap anyway. Booking further in advance does help, though.
Travelling in standard class, I got allocated a seat, and it looks as if choosing one yourself is not a standard option, unless you get that in travelling in business class. At one turn, I saw a family dealing with the non-ideal arrangement they had been given.
For a lone traveller, it is less of an issue, and I was not put out by it. The first time around, I was seated with three others and airline seating was my lot after that. The last trip even gained me two airline seats to myself, a much more relaxing proposition that I did not expect to have.
At St. Pancras International, the waiting area was not so commodious with all who were travelling. Seat availability is not assured, though business class travellers get access to a dedicated lounge. At Gare du Nord, there is much more space for everyone. That may be on an overhead annex seemingly fasten to the front and side of the station, but it does work and there appear to be more outlets providing food and drink as well as duty-free shopping.
Because of passage through the Channel Tunnel, luggage and personal possessions needed x-raying at both locations, but this was not as strenuous as with air travel. If anything the process is much faster. At both termini, you need to pass though both British and French passport control. It is not as if you have one country’s passport control in one place and another’s in another one. However, the double clearance makes for rapid disembarkation on arrival at your destination, which can be a bonus for making onward travel connections.
Boarding is fairly efficient once they open the gates for doing so. The trains are long you need to be use the right ramp to save yourself a lot of hurried walking. Getting luggage sorted is another matter. It makes life easier and matters quicker if you are not carrying so much. My first trip only used a large rucksack because I saw myself walking around different places with it. That was easy enough since an overhead rack was all that I needed. For the second one, I carried a case as well as a daypack. The latter could go on an overhead rack, while the former had to be stored in the correct area. Getting on early made that a quick operation, though there is a step up from the platform that added to the amount of lifting and carrying (it could have been lighter…).
While there is a café bar onboard, I stuck with whatever food and drink I brought with me. With journey times not exceeding two and a half hours, there was not a lot of available time anyway. One omission that I noticed was Wi-Fi; it may have been advertised, but there was no sign of it when I tried to connect. Mobile signal did work to a point given the speeds at which we were going. That was enough for any reading or tracking where we were going. What really struck me was the flatness of any countryside through which we were passing. The Channel Tunnel section only lasted for around twenty minutes, and I dozed for much of that on the first journey.
Aside from grumbles about lack of Wi-Fi and an appreciation for choosing a seat for oneself, I had no complaints about the journeys. Gare du Nord is not the most centrally located of stations though, something for which you need to account in a city as big as Paris where it is easy to walk for an hour between any of its landmarks. The proximity of St. Pancras International to Euston worked far better for me, and even the previous terminus at Waterloo is only a short underground journey away. All in all, the added flexibility of rail travel still works. It may need more time, yet there are further uses that I can concoct for possible escapades that may or may not come to pass.