I didn’t have too much to eat last night as there wasn’t all that much in the vicinity of my hotel. I had to walk for almost ever until I found a “Quick” that sold me some chips. Consequently I paid €5:95 and had the breakfast here.
A wise decision, that, because I would have paid much more than that for a couple of coffees along the route, so when you add the orange juice, the toast and the half-baguette with strawberry jam into the equation (and when did you ever see strawberry jam in little squeezy tubes?) I more-than-had my money’s worth and that will keep me going for quite a while.
I had a good night’s sleep too. Not a single mosquito bit me and not a single fly entered into the room to buzz around my head at 04:00 in the morning. In fact I went out like a light and that was that.
Traffic was incredibly heavy on the road back to the airport and the RER train was packed too. And what with struggling up inclines and steps and dragging my suitcase along all of these corridors, I can see why I abandoned this route in favour of the TGV. However a direct train to Montlucon for just €46:00 makes up for most things, even if I do have to wait for over 2 hours for Liz to finish work. Still, there’s plenty of coffee in Montlucon and I have a book or two to finish. I hope that the coffee at Montlucon is better than that at Paris Austerlitz which was quite frankly disgusting and if I hadn’t had to pay all of €1:10 for it, would have found its way into the plant pot. It as however just as well that I drank it, because, would you believe – shock! Horror! That I have a Three-and-a-half-hour journey on my train and there is not even a hint of a buffet car. How is this possible?
Anyway, my luck was destined to change. There I was, in the station at Bourges in the middle of “Apache Blood” when I happened to remark to myself that we weretaking an inordinate amount of time to restart. It turne out that there was a bottleneck down the line and, true to form on this voyage, my travel was to be retarded by at least 20 minutes. Still, that gave me the chance to dive over the station buildings and buy a coffee. Every cloud has a silver lining of course, and it’s really an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good.
We end up only 5 minutes late at Montlucon and so I have plenty of time to photograph the locomotive, a diesel number 567348, that pulled us all this way. Plenty of time indeed, because Liz isn’t due here for another two and a half hours.
So why this train then? The answer is as I said earlier. It’s a direct train. All the other trains involve a considerable amount of changes, and one or two of them even involve coach journeys. I didn’t fancy any of that for a moment.
But Liz picks me up, and she has made a beautiful curry for tea and there is even a bed for the night. I’m grateful for that – with the torrential downpour I really wasn’t looking forward to going back home in all of this.
