Category Archives: gare montparnasse vaugirard

Wednesday 24th March 2021 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today.

Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong today and I’m thoroughly fed up. Instead of arriving at my room at round about 16:30 it was 20:45 when I limped miserably through the door.

The day started off OK with me being out of bed just after the first alarm and I even had a shower and fed the ginger and the sourdough. For some reason though I didn’t do any tidying up. I just didn’t feel like it and that was the start of the day going wrong.

But anyway I set off into town and the railway station.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw a lorry at the loading bay in the inner port dropping off a pile of stuff.

This morning there was another one there dropping off another big load of stuff down there, as I noticed as I walked past. It’s almost a certainty that one of the Jersey freighters is on its way in and my money is on it being Normandy Trader.

Having observed it all for a few minutes I headed off down the hill and through the town, going the back way to the railway station again.

My train was already in the station when I arrived so I clambered aboard. Today, it was just 6 carriages, not twelve as usual, and it was pretty empty.

And then all our problems began.

We ground to a halt somewhere along the way and sat there for 50 minutes. It seemed that a car had tried to beat the barrier of a level crossing but failed. We had to wait until they had come along to drag the car away before we could proceed.

As a result, we were an hour late arriving in Paris Montparnasse and I had missed my connectons to Belgium.

And here things became even worse. As I was going down an escalator my legs simply gave way underneath me and I fell heavily to the ground. And I didn’t even have the strength in my legs to pick myself up. A couple of passers-by had to help me very shakily to my feet.

The pain in my right leg right now tells me that my right knee has collapsed.

Having missed the 13:15 to Lille, the next train was at 15:42 and that filled me full of despair. This is what happens when you try to travel in the middle of a pandemic.

It was necessary to wait almost 2 hours, two hours that I couldn’t really spare, before we could board our train.

It’s one of the TGV Reseau double-decker units on which we travel quite regularly to Lille. This train wasn’t particularly busy either and everyone had a seat to themselves. It left Paris a few minutes late but pushed on quite rapidly and we made up the time. We arrived in Lille Flanders railway station bang on time.

Now I had to walk across town to the Lille Europe railway station and in my state I wasn’t looking forward to that. It was something of a disreputable stagger down the street for my part.

This is the front end of the train that I was going to catch to Brussels. It was two units coupled together and I was in the rear one.

And I was really glad to see it because I discovered to my dismay at Lille Europe that my next train out of Lille Europe to Brussels was at 18:11. A wait of about 80 minutes. That wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear but there was nothing whatever that I could do.

When I was in Paris I’d looked to see if there was a “Thalys” direct to Brussels. Indeed there was but that meant waiting around at Paris even longer and an extra cost of €68:00 to save about 20 minutes.

Anyway, my train turned up on time.

Like the front end, the rear end is another one of the PBKA Reseau 38000 units. I suppose that they have been decanted onto this route seeing as much of the TGV network has closed down under the new Covid restrictions.

This train was quite empty too. Despite it being the only train for several hours, it was almost empty too. I had a nice little sleep on board for 20 minutes until we arrived in Brussels and I awoke with rather a start as we pulled into the Gare du Midi.

Being now hopelessly late I had a look in the tow supermarkets in the station for some food as I was in no state to walk all the way down to the ones in Luven later and they would probably be closed by the time that I arrive.

But with nothing at all that I could buy so I went up to catch my train the Leuven.

It’s another one of these disreputable AM 80 automotrice multiple units that must be the next sets to go for the chop, old, dirty and graffiti-ridden as they are.

But it was on time, such as it was, and brought me on time into Leuven where negotiating the steps in the station was not the easiest thing that I have done.

Luckily the chip shop around the corner was open so I grabbed a bag of chips and headed for my room. And here I had to wrestle with the door of the safe in order to extract my key. It was not easy as the combination did not accord with the one that they sent me.

But in the words of Marshall MacMahon, “j’y suis, j’y reste” – “here I am and here I’m staying”. I’m not up to going anywhere right now as I’m in agony and I’ll have to do better than this tomorrow if I’m going to make it to the hospital

There’s shopping to do to and I’ve no idea how I’m going to manage this. All will come clearer tomorrow after I’ve had a good night’s sleep and I’m going for that right now.

In fact I had to wait until the following morning before i could listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I started off with Marianne going to North America. I pulled up on the airport car park like we would do every 4 weeks when we went. The first thing that we noticed was that there were 2 cars, an MGB sports car and another one that were there the last time that we went. Marianne said “ohh look! There they are again”. “Yes, they are probably saying the same thing about us”. We went into the airport, sat down and had to wait. I noticed that there were a couple of other couples whom we knew by sight who had been with us on previous voyages there. Marianne asked for a breakfast so I went to find the cafe kind of place. They made some toast and a couple of other things and some coffee and I had a slice of toast as well. I took them back out and dropped them on the table but she wasn’t there. She was off doing something. I put the stuff on the table and went to the bathroom. In there I met 1 of the guys whom I’d just mentioned who’d been with us before, and we had a little chat. I looked in the mirror. My hair was overgrown, needed cutting and I was dressed so untidily, shirt and tie everywhere. I thought “God I really could have done with tidying myself up before I’d come away but it’s too late to worry about that now. I went back outside and Marianne had this huge fried breakfast, mushrooms, bacon and egg, beans, sausages, everything and I wondered where on earth she’s got that from. But she was there tucking into this breakfast.

Later I was in New York going to pick up THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR. The night before, I’d met a couple of people, I’d been staying in a …. and so on. We all had to bring our baggage around on board ship the next day. The next morning I was up early and I bumped into a young Japanese American boy who had flown in from South Africa. We had had a chat about the flights to South Africa, all kinds of things. There was a third person who was not actually going with us on this trip. The 2 of us, we set out to go somewhere. Off we went and walked around the town a little looking at the sights. We somehow became separated – he wandered off with this other person. I thought that I had better start back to the ship. I couldn’t realise or remember what time I had to be back. I had this feeling that I was going to be horribly late so I started o panic a little. I ended up in Crewe at the top end of Victoria Street thinking to myself that I would have to get to the boat. it was just them that Julie Driscoll started to sing “Wheel’s On Fire”. As I was walking down Victoria Street I could hear that song playing.

Before that there had been something about the Army. A couple of us had been in the Army and we’d been rounded up to go somewhere. We weren’t particularly military and the Sergeant-Major who was with us was a bit of a swine. It was quite obvious that we were rubbing each other up the wrong way with the way that we were behaving because we had no military precision whatsoever and he was extremely annoyed by this. The place was a total tip and we wanted it tidying up but it was one of those places that was so untidy that we didn’t know where to start. When we first got to this place there was a girl there and we helped her with one or two things and then she went. Then it came round to the time ready to go early in the morning so we started to tidy up. There was some kind of hoist or breaker that we had to bring upstairs. We went downstairs to look for it but down there was even worse with tools and machinery everywhere. We couldn’t find what we were looking for. There were a few things that might possibly have been it but he didn’t seem to think that they were. This ended up being rather a hunt for this rather than a tidy-up. This girl came in and asked if anyone could fix a light for her because the plug wouldn’t reach. The Sergeant and I went to do it. We managed to find an extension cable that we had to cut into 2. This place was just not being tidied up and it was now 17:00 and the next group of people would be arriving imminently. We didn’t have this place tidied at all and it was really looking a mess.

Saturday 27th February 2021 – THAT WAS A …

… long, long day!

And to give you some kind of clue about it, if you have a look at this image here you’ll see the time that this train is leaving the railway station at Leuven to make its way out to Halle.

It wasn’t even my train either. It was advertised as “Brussels” but it went along the city-centre avoiding lines past Merode, Schuman and that way. I had to wait another 20 minutes for my train to pull into the station.

Having gone to bed at some kind of relatively early hour (like 23:10) I staggered out of bed a couple of minutes after the alarm went off at 05:00. There were my sandwiches to make for lunch (and I’m glad that I did – read on), the packing, some tidying up, and then I could head off to the railway station.

It was at 06:16 when a train to Brussels Midi came into the station. With it being Saturday morning, a lot of the early commuter trains aren’t running.

It’s one of the AM 96 multiple units, te ones with the doughnut ring around the front that make them airtight when two or more are coupled together. And an added novelty, when they are joined in tandem, the driving cabs at the join pivot out of the way so that passengers can pass from one unit to the next.

They are actually quite comfortable for multiple-units and they are quite often used on long-distance routes where passenger numbers don’t warrant a locomotive with carriages.

We pulled into Brussels bang on time and I noticed that my train, the 07:17 to Strasbourg, was already in the station. It’s one of the TGV Reseau 38000 units that we travel on quite regularly.

Strangely, and rather uneasily, there were several other TGVs there too. The 06:06 to Marseilles hadn’t left yet and the one after that to Bordeaux was still at the platform. That didn’t seem at all normal to me and I suspected that there was something afoot.

As we waited for them to open the doors so that we could climb in, a hostess came by. She told us that someone had trespassed onto the railway at Ruisbroek and been struck by a passing train. Nothing was heading south towards Lille until the mess had been cleared up.

With nothing else to do, we boarded the train – and waited. And waited.

After about an hour or so they announced that the 06:06 TGV would be leaving “imminently” so we all piled out of our train onto that one. I’d probably missed my train from Paris to Granville by now so it really didn’t make much difference but moving anywhere was better than not moving at all.

We’d been on that one for about an hour or so when they announced that this one wasn’t going to go out either. They would be laying on a fleet of buses to take us to Lille.

But no chance of that. We’ll be there for ever. One thing about train apps on mobile phones is that you can check for other alternatives. And in 5 minutes time there would be a train leaving Brussels for De Panne (coincidentally, the same train that I’d come into Brussels on, but 2 hours later) and 5 minutes after that train were to pull into Gent St Pieters, there’s a local stopping train via Kortrijk to Lille-Flandres.

And then 10 minutes later, there’s an express train from Lille-Flandres to Paris Gare du Nord.

That was enough information for me. I grabbed my things and ran.

And here’s my train from Gent to Lille, here in a platform at the Lille-Flanders railway station.

It was one of those mornings when I was fated to travel on a whole fleet of AM96 multiple units. The one that took me to Gent was an AM96 but I wasn’t able to take a photo of that because it was already on the platform when I arrived there and it pulled out almost as soon as I climbed aboard.

And then this one is an AM96 too, but a rather special one, for a few of the fleet are dual-voltage machines designed to run on the French and on the Luxembourg railway networks as well as the Belgian network so that they can operate some cross-border services like this one.

No-one controlled the passengers on either of these two trains – no ticket inspector or anything so I didn’t need to argue or negotiate, which is always good news.

There were ticket inspectors on the turnstiles to the platform where the train to Paris was waiting but they didn’t need much persuading to let me on board.

The train was one of the Reseau Duplex double-decker trains, nice, fast and comfortable. Up on the top deck there’s a kind of small sofa at the top of the steps intended for people to make and receive phone calls instead of doing so in the main seating area disturbing everyone.

They aren’t booked out to passengers so I made a beeline for the sofa and that was where I stayed for the entire journey in relative comfort. A ticket collector came by so I told her my story and she didn’t seem to be bothered at all.

All in all it was quite a painless journey from that point of view.

From Paris Gare du Nord I took the metro to Paris Montparnasse and then went to the station offices to tell them my tale of woe. They weren’t too bothered either particularly. It goes without saying that I’d missed my train but they gave me a ticket for the next one. It meant a wait of about 1 hour and 50 minutes but there wasn’t really any alternative.

This train was pretty busy. Luckily they had given me a seat so I was fairly comfortable on the way home.

While I’d been waiting I’d eaten my sandwiches so I spent most of the journey home editing my Greenland photos. It’s nice to have a laptop that is powerful enough to do all of that kind of thing. I managed to shift quite a few by the time that we pulled into the railway station at Granville.

It was 17:45 when I returned home – 3.5 hours later than I was intending. And more than 12 hours after I’d set out from my digs in Leuven. No wonder that I was pretty fed up. It meant that I hadn’t had my couple of hours chilling out before I had to start to do things.

Tea was out of a tin and then I listened to a repeat of my “Strife” concert. If you missed it, it’s available AS A PODCAST.

And now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a very long day and I’m exhausted. And no day off tomorrow as I’m having visitors.

Wednesday 24th February 2021 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… seen the Gare du Nord looking as empty as this in the middle of the working day when there has been no rail strike?

It’s absolutely unimaginable, isn’t it? Normally it would be heaving with people and it would be difficult to move about but at least in France, even though they don’t seem to have quite got to grips with this virus, people are coping with all of this “working from home” stuff.

While Paris-Montparnasse wasn’t quite so quiet, mainly because three trains all arrived at once, the Metro was quiet too. Plenty of room on my train across Paris too.

It’s all boding well for the future if people can adapt as quickly as this o the new way of doing things.

It’s my birthday today of course (so happy birthday to me) and the last thing that I wanted to be doing today was to have to travel by train to Leuven.

In fact there’s only one thing that I would rather do less than that, and that is to actually be having my treatment. And had I not changed my day of treatment from Wednesday to Thursday that is exactly what I would have been doing.

Mind you, I was lucky to actually make the station today. I had a wicked attack of cramp in the middle of the night that had me hopping around the bedroom in agony. And as a result I wasn’t in much of a mood to haul myself out of bed this morning. I’ve had days when I’ve been much more lively than this.

First thing to do was to make my flask of coffee and the second thing to do was to make my sandwiches and sort out the stuff that I need to take with me. The rubbish went out as well and I even managed to have a shower.

Finally, there was about 30 minutes spare so I had a whizz around the apartment tidying up the place and it actually looks respectable now.

It’s late February so I went out prepared for the Arctic weather, and so as you can imagine, we were having a heatwave and I was sweltering.

Yesterday when we were out on our afternoon walk we saw Thora, one of the little Channel Island freighters, anchored in the port.

When I went out this morning, she was still in there tied up in the loading bay at the quayside in front of Marité. It’s quite surprising to see her still here. These days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there has been quite a rapid turn-round in the port. They’ve been having the freighters in and out on the same tide at times and that’s good going.

But I can’t stand here musing. I’m running a little later than usual and I have a train to catch.

Further on down the Rue des Juifs, I went past Winnibelle’s, the little bar there.

All of the bars and restaurants are closed right now, something that is hitting the local commerce quite hard but it’s a necessity given the way that things are right now. But there’s some kind of campaign going on and I’m not sure what it is, but many places, bars and restaurants, have some weird stickers in the window, all of which seem to have been doe by the same hand

This has been intriguing me for a while, having seen so many of them over the last few weeks

The town was pretty quiet this morning. There weren’t too many people around at all. I suppose with it being School holidays, everyone was having a lie in.

As I was walking up the hill to the station, I saw my train pull in to the platform. Another one of the GEC Alstom Regiolis units that work the line.

It’s the usual train that I catch, the 09:00 to Paris. They’ve reinstated most of the trains but only to a certain degree. Instead of a double-unit, it’s just a single unit of 6 cars and although it was busy, it wasn’t packed and I didn’t have a neighbour. I spent all of the journey updating the directories on the laptop that I brought with me, the one that I repaired over the weekend.

And to my surprise, I was so busy that I forgot to crash out. That’s a new experience on a train to Paris for me.

A deserted metro and a train pulling up just as I stepped on the platform whizzed me off from Paris Montparnasse to Paris Gare du Nord and I was there in no time.

When the train pulled in we all queued up to go aboard but unfortunately there were “issues”. It seemed that someone had left behind their luggage and that involved a visit from the Security Services. They are quite strict on this kind of thing on the French Railways. Any abandoned lucggage results in the Army being called in.

After about 10 minutes, the barrier was opened and we were allowed on. It seems that whoever it was who had left behind his luggage had gone back to claim it just before the Bomb Squad blew it into smithereens.

This was a double unit and I was going to be in the front half of the train.

Both units were of the nice and comfortable TGV Duplex Reseau types, double-decker trains. I was in the upstairs part. This one wasn’t all that full either adnd once again I had no neighbour.

But I did have a visitor though. Some girl was walking down the corridor when the train lurched about on a set of points. She ended up sitting on my lap. It must have been my lucky day, that’s all I can say.

The train pulled into Lille Flanders on time and then I had a nice little stroll in the sun through the town to Lille Europe to catch the train that comes from the South of France to Brussels.

When I arrived at Lille Europe I had about 15 minutes to wait before my train to Brussels put in an appearance.

And this was a surprise today. The train that pulled in was one that I haven’t seen before. It’s one of the TGV POS units – and the inittials do not stand for what you think they might. They are actually the Paris-Ostfrankreich-Süddeutschland – “Paris-Eastern France-South Germany” units that were built to run through from Paris on the Eastern lines into Central Europe.

One of these units, 4402, set a new maximum speed record of 574.8 km/h on 3rd April 2007.

They are now being withdrawn from that service and they are now popping up all over the place.

Interestingly, it wasn’t coupled up to another unit of the same type. And it’s very rare to see different types of TGV coupled together

The one that was being pulled along behind was one of the tri-volt Reseau 38000 units that we usually seem to have. They are rather old and tired and of course this was my unit. Despite everything, they are quite comfortable and there’s room for me to spread out and do some work on the laptop again, especially as once again I didn’t have a neighbour.

After I’d alighted from the train at Brussels-Midi, I had an errand to perform. Last time I was here, I’d handed in a form to the Belgian Pensions Service just across the road but they sent it back as it wasn’t completed correctly. I’d completed it and now I had to take it back.

Here’s hoping that it’s complete correctly this time.

One thing about the line from Brussels to Leuven is that there are 4 express trains every hour as well as plenty of local stopping trains.

There are expresses to Hasselt or Genk or Welkenraedt but the one that I caught was the 15:52 to Eupen. It was one of the push-me-pull-you units with the driver in a cabin at the front but with the locomotive pushing it from behind. I’m not sure how stable that kind of configuration would be at high speed and I’m surprised that they allow it on Intercity trains.

This train was quite empty too and never mind a seat to myself, I almost had a whole carriage to myself. This “working from home” is definitely having an effect on the number of people travelling on the trains.

When the train pulled into the station at Leuven, we were treated to a little bit of excitement.

On the platform was a porter with a wheelchair ramp and when the train came to a stop the porter used the ramp to allow a woman on a mobility scooter to descend.

But I was more intrigued to see the porter’s little magic wand. He had something like a Darth Vader light stick only it was flashing an orange light. He stuck it on the side of the carriage over his head where the guard at the rear could see it.

It seems to me that it’s some kind of warning signal to indicate that there’s an important operation going on and that the guard shouldn’t give the “right away” signal to the drier until the operation is complete.

Once the porter had finished, the train pulled away from the station.

It was being pushed by one of the Class 18 electric locomotives, the mainstream motive power these days of the Belgian passenger service.

When it had gone I walked from the railway station to my lodgings in the Dekenstraat. I’m in my “old faithful” room C7, one of the big duplex apartments. That’s one thig about being a regular customer here – I book the cheapest room possible and they give me an upgrade if there’s one available.

But then, even one of the very basic rooms is comfortable enough from my point of view.

Having recovered from my journey I set out to go to the shops for supplies.

For the last few months we’ve been looking at the rebuilding of this house on the corner of the Dekenstraat just down the road.

And if they carry on working at this rate, they might actually finish it by the end of the Century. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … it’s pretty dismal, the speed at which people seem to work these days.

Belgium changed its car registration system 10 years ago and began to issue 7-character plates instead of 6-character. They put a “1” in front of the numbers and today, I saw the first “2” Plate. They’d gone through a complete range in 10 years.

At Carrefour I stocked up with food for the next few days, and found later that I’d forgotten my vegan mayonnaise and strawberry jam. That’s not very good. But they had some nice vegan burgers. I had one with my pasta and it was delicious.

So now it’s bedtime, and I’m ready for it too. But I can’t go off without mentioning that I had a “Happy Birthday” message from my Customer Service Agent at the Bank. What’s that all about? Do I owe them some money or something?

Friday 29th January 2021 – HERE I AM …

… back home again after my marathon voyage.

The journey always takes a lot out of me but usually I’m back by 14:30 so I have a few hours to recover before I can deal with whatever needs dealing with. Today though was rather different.

This morning not only did I beat the third alarm, I beat the second one too. I had a quick whizz around the pad and tidied everything up, washed up, made my sandwiches for the journey and then packed my stuff for the road.

The rain wasn’t all that heavy which was very good, and a quick walk brought me to the station in time for my train – the 07:22 which was the first one on my list.

It was another one of the expresses from Welkenraedt to Oostende – a rake of modern double-deck coaches pulled by one of the SNCB class 18 electric locomotives. Nice and comfortable and quite rapid and much better than one of the elderly multiple units that sometimes travel on the line.

It arrived at Brussels-Midi with 90 minutes before my train was due to depart but after an hour or so the platform for the train came up on the display screen so we could go up to the train.

Our train to Paris this morning is one of the PBKA (Paris-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam) units and either it was a short train or else (more likely) a unit is to come in from either Amsterdam or Cologne and couple up behind it.

And wasn’t I disappointed? Having read all the Official Notices for travelling, had a Covid test, filled in piles of paperwork, had all my documents to hand, there wasn’t a single policeman about to check my right to travel.

Our train left on time and, even more surprisingly, arrived in Paris Gare du Nord on time. During the trip I had dozed off for a couple of minutes and they had to wake me up to see my ticket. There wasn’t even a wait at the Metro because I arrived on the platform at the same time as a train.

At Montparnasse there was an hour to wait before we could all pile on board our TGV. This is one of the “TGV Atlantique” Series 24000 units.

Some of these are over 30 years old but you wouldn’t think so by looking at the interiors because they are quite clean, tidy and comfortable. And even more interestingly, between 1990 and 2007, it was one of these train sets (admittedly a shortened unit) that held the world railway speed record of 515.3 km/h.

This one unfortunately took two hours to travel all the way to Rennes, which is not really surprising as it also stopped at Le Mans and Laval. But two TGVs in a day – I’m really living it up, aren’t I? T

We pulled into the railway station at Rennes at about 14:00 – – only the second time that I’ve been to the railway station there. Plenty of time to go for a wander around and photograph the town from the overbridge.

Despite the time available, I didn’t go far and for a couple of good reasons too. Firstly I had a rather heavy load to carry around with me and secondly, the railway station is such a maze that to find out where I would find my connection took me a good bit longer than it ought to have done.

By the time that I had reached where I needed to be it I was glad to sit down.

There was no train back home this time. There was a coach connection to Granville and I had to wait for 75 minutes for it.

To wait for the bus I had to go to the Gare Routier or “bus station” which is presumably built in what might have been the old goods yard sidings a five-minute walk away from the station.

We had to wait outside in the open air for it to turn up but by now it was sunny and reasonably warm for the time of the year. And although the journey home on the coach was comfortably, it still took about two hours to reach Granville railway station.

There’s no carnival this year in Granville dur to the virus but that hasn’t stopped the town from decorating the place.

A brisk walk from the station and through the back of the town brought me to the viewpoint from the Rue des Juifs where, looking over to the roundabout at the Place Pleville I could see a cow and several penguins loitering around there watching the traffic.

It’s certainly something different to liven up the time a little and bring a smile to the faces of the general public. It’s making me wonder what the theme of this year’s Carnival would have been had it gone ahead.

A little further on along the Rue des Juifs I came to where they had been doing the pointing at the Rampe du Monte Regret.

During the whole week in which I’ve been away, they haven’t made as much progress as I might have expected . No-one engaged in the building work that I have seen over the last week seems to be in an awful hurry to complete their tasks.

My brisk walk brought me back home at just about 18:00, having been on the road for just about 11 hours and I knew all about every minute of it. For a couple of hours I vegetated in the chair and then grabbed a frozen meal out of the freezer.

Later on I had a listen to my dictaphone to see if I’d been on my travels during the night. I was at home and there was a sports match about to come on the TV. Terry and Liz – Liz had asked me if I could buy her some special cheese from LIDL. She had given me the packet and I’d managed to get one or two bits for her which I’d left on the kitchen table in my house but my brother was coming round so I went outside and hid, with the idea that he would go past, find my house with everything all laid out in there and so on and the sports match ready. He’d be wondering where I was and I could creep up and surprise him. He walked past, it was about 19:10 and just then the bus came past, a Crosville bus. So I hopped on board and went to sit upstairs. It started to drop a few people off but instead of going into the village of Shavington it shot off down a back lane somewhere and ended up on the road between Crewe and Nantwich via Willaston. All the roads had been realigned – it wasn’t the same road alignment. Everyone was wondering why he hadn’t gone to Shavington. He said that he was going to Shavington but he was just going to drop someone off in the country lanes first. We thought that this was going to be a hell of a long way round to get home if he’s going to be doing things like this

Bed-time now and I have to be up early in the morning as I need to go shopping. But i’m not going to be fit for much for the ret of the weekend. At least, if I can change my appointment to Thursday, come home on Saturday, I can have a complete lie-in on Sunday and I won’t have so much stuff to carry around with me.

And I’ll look forward to that.

Monday 25th January 2021 – ONE TRAIN …

… per day to Paris in a pandemic, that I can understand. But just WHY does it have to be at 05:55?.

And in news that will come as something of a shock to regular readers of this rubbish (because it cane as quite a shock to me), not only did I beat the third alarm this morning, I was actually out of bed and leaping up and down (but not actually waving St Cecilia’s knickers in the air) even before the FIRST alarm went off.

During what there was of the night, I’d even managed to go off on a voyage too.

I hadn’t seen Caliburn for ages and then I realised that he was in the garage being serviced and I hadn’t been to pick him up since I’d been back from holiday so I was debating whether or not to go round – and suddenly I was there as if fate had already decided for me. I backed him out of the garage where he was being serviced and went to pay the bill but they hadn’t finished putting the wheels on. A brake hub had been stuck inside a wheel and they had to prize it out. That meant doing some grinding down and filing. They showed me what they had done. They went to fit the wheel back on but one of the wheel nuts was cross-threaded so they had to go off and find another one and I had to wait. In the meantime it was lunchtime and I’d gone into the waiting room with them. There was a big bag of chips that they were handing out between themselves. Someone opened a packet of pasta but it was so full that he went outside to tip some away into a bin which I thought was a strange thing to do. They were all organising themselves like this while I was waiting for Caliburn to be ready.

What this goes to prove is that many of my usual difficulties in rising from my bed in the morning are not actually connected with anything physical, and this is quite bewildering.

But there I was, up and about and starting on my household chores as the first alarm went off.

:, didn’t take me long to do what I had to do, and to make a flask of coffee in the Adventure Canada water bottle that I was given on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour.

Having done the necessary, I hit the streets and headed for town, fighting the howling gale all the way.

As it happened, I wasn’t the only one who was up and about that early either.

The harbour gates must have only just opened because there was a whole stream of fishing vessels heading out to sea.

And while I’m on the subject, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I mentioned on Friday that I was surprised to see all of the fishing boats in port and not out at sea.

There was a very good reason for that, as I subsequently found out and forgot to mention. It seems that on Friday all of the fishermen had a meeting in town to discuss the next steps in the escalation of the fishing dispute with the Channel Islands.

If it comes to a showdown with the British Government and the British Government decides to employ its fleet of … errr … four gunboats to protect its territorial waters, then knowing French fishermen as I do (after all I live in a town full of them), my money will be firmly on the fishermen.

It wasn’t easy to make my way to the station because most of the street lights had been switched off and we were in the pitch-black. I just encountered a couple of council workmen on my way out there.

The train wasn’t in – mainly because I was there by 05:30, but it soon pulled in and we could board it. It was a full-length train of two units coupled together, but we didn’t have reserved seats. I chose a place right at the front – less distance to travel at the other end.

The weather had been very mild in Granville and has been for the last while. But once we headed inland towards Paris it changed quite rapidly.

We started to pick up the snow round about Villedieu-les-Poeles and the further along the route, like here for example, at Flers, the snow was quite heavy and had stuck to the ground.

Much to my surprise, despite the ridiculously early start, I didn’t crash out for a minute but managed to stay awake for the whole of the journey to Paris, reading a report of the discovery of a mass grave on the outskirts of Weymouth containing 52 decapitated Norsemen from the late 10th Century.

And as for my coffee – I tried some at about 07:30, just about three hours after I had made it. And it was far, far too hot to drink. That was quite unexpected.

Bang on time – 09:14 – we pulled into the Gare Montparnasse and I could take a photo of the unit on which I travelled – the one on the left. The photo that I had taken earlier was of the unit at the other end of the train.

Even though the rush hour wasn’t quite over, the Paris Metro was comparatively quiet. It was a quite rapid trip to Paris Gare du Nord and I was surprised about how empty the place was. I could even find a seat.

The effects of the virus and the amount of working from home has calmed down the amount of commuters quite considerably.

There wasn’t a great deal of time for my connection to Lille As I walked into the station they were just allowing the passengers to board. I didn’t even have time to photograph it – that had to wait until we arrived at Lille Flandres Railway Station.

The train was another double-decker TGV Reseau Duplex – two units again (ours was the left-hand one) and it wasn’t all that busy either. I could spread out a little and sample my coffee yet again. And after 6 hours in the flask it was still too hot.

Plenty of time for a change in Lille so having had a good clamber about on an overhead walkway to take my photograph, I could have a pleasant if cold walk down the road to Lille Europe Railway Station.

The train was actually in the station when I arrived so I had to wait until I arrived at Brussels-Midi until i could photograph it.

But it was a pretty busy train without many spare seats. Luckily I had no neighbour so I could spread out and I even managed to doze off for 10 minutes or so. And the coffee had cooled down enough for me to be able to sip it. Not gulp it – just sip it.

And now I can call myself one of the statistics on the Belgian Government’s list of Covid-testees.

When we arrived at Bruxelles-Midi we had to pass through a checkpoint and show our papers. It’s a good job that I had prepared my Travel request. And I was directed to the Covid-testing point outside the station.

And having a Q-tip shoved up my nose is not a very pleasant sensation at all.

Another task I had to perform was to post off the Certificat de Vie that I had signed by the French police the other day to prove that I’m still alive. The Tour de Midi – the headquarters of the Belgian pension service is just across the road from the station.

Back in the station again I had to run (as best as I could) for my train as it was just coming into the station.

It’s one of the Oostende-Welkenraedt trains and these are quite comfortable so I didn’t want to miss it if I could help it.

By now the coffee was cool enough so I could actually drink it so I had a nice comfortable ride to Leuven and a pleasant walk down to my hotel room.

Here, I sorted myself out and had a little sit down for a while to recover my strength. And having done that, I headed out for the shops.

Down at the end of the road here I went past the house renovation that we have seen before.

It’s now been about three months since they’ve been doing the facade of the building, to my certain knowledge and I really don’t understand why this sort of thing takes so long.

The bill at the Carrefour was quite expensive, but then again food is much more expensive in Belgium than it is in France. And I was glad to be back in my room with my food. I was ready for something to eat

Writing out my notes took longer than it might have done, due to the fact that I … errr … had a little repose. But now I’m off to bed. Welsh lessons in the morning so I need to be my best.

And after the very long day that I’ve had, I’m ready for bed too.

Monday 28th December 2020 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but pretty near enough. I’m curled up around a radiator in my little home from home in Leuven where I’ll be staying until Sunday.

And much as I like Leuven, it’s a pretty dismal state of affairs because firstly Alison is stranded in the UK by the new Covid rules and my appointment has now been pushed back until Thursday as I discovered today. So I could really have spent an extra two days at home, travelled on Wednesday and come home on Saturday thus saving a third day out.

But you live and learn.

What else you learn the longer that you live is that you can do it when you really try and so not only did I beat the third alarm, I was up and out of bed and running around while the 1st alarm was still ringing. And so plenty of time to tidy up, have a shower, take out the rubbish, back up the computer, send off a pile of radio files, make some sandwiches for lunch and cut a large slice of fruit bread to take with me for breakfast – pretty good and nourishing stuff, this fruit bread.

Tons of stuff on the dictaphone too, And what surprised me was that I was able to leave the bed so early with all of this going on. I’m surprised that I’d even made it back home.

I was having to make tea for Marianne last night and the guy she was having to sit with who was ill so I made them a kind of roast dinner as best as I could which didn’t look too bad. But I realised that on his plate I’d forgotten the gravy so I mixed up a white sauce and put it on his plate and went to add the gravy powder to mix in, but first I added chocolate powder. I thought “that will never do” so I scraped it off the plate and put another lot on. The next thing that I tried to put on was coffee powder and hat didn’t work either. It took about 3 or 4 goes for me to actually get his sauce right
Before that, I’d been out for a walk and there were a couple of people loitering around so we had a bit of an ad-hoc game of football and it was quite pleasurable. I came back into the house. Later on that evening when I was writing up my notes I couldn’t settle and I couldn’t make myself comfortable, moving from 1 chair to the next and 1 machine to the next, then trying to find some paper to write it out in longhand. In the end I settled on a shorthand notes reporter’s diary but found out that it was full. All the time my brother was asking me questions about this and that and I was trying to answer him as well, and I was trying to write out this report and I wanted to embellish it, to make it look a lot more than it is but I could never do it. I was getting so confused by the fact that I just couldn’t get comfortable and couldn’t make a start and couldn’t get anywhere with this
Art one time a girl dresses as a ballerina appeared on the scene and you could see according to the effort that she was putting into it and the way that she was walking and holding herself that it was a great big effort. I hoped that she would hold out physically and with the virus because it would be very sad if she were to succumb to it with all of this effort.
Later on I had to go and pick up Alvin from Hampton Close. I had my motorbike, my old CX and I decided that i’d go and pick him up. That went OK for a while until I got to Chester and I thought that I’d better programe the route to Hampton Close on my GPS because it’s years since I’ve been there. I spent ages fiddling around trying to make the GPS work. I had to drop off something at someone’s place and coming back I couldn’t make the GPS work. It took ages with all of this messing about to get it to go. The bracket broke off it and when I made it work I couldn’t programme it. It was all a nightmare, this journey was for some reason. Suddenly it worked and it was 18 minutes to there but I only had 15 minutes left but I thought that that’s not too much of a problem. He’s not going to be that concerned. Then I noticed on the back of the butty box the L plates had all faded off and you couldn’t read that it was an L plate. I was worrying about that for a while but suddenly realised that I didn’t need L plates on it because I had a full licence. Yes, I had to post off Ann’s present, that’s why I’d stopped and had to take it to the post office. Then Alvin came. he was there. I told him the story of my adventures which he thought was hilarious. We mounted the bike ready to move off to wherever we were going to next.

I’d gone out for a walk and I was the other side of Sandbach close to the motorway. I’d taken the wrong route which I’d taken before which was a dead end and I had to retrace all my steps. This time though I thought that I’d push on and climb up this embankment at the side of the motorway into a field and walk along the field at the edge There’s bound to be a bridge that goes over at some point I walked on and by now the motorway had transformed into a canal so I was walking along the towpath of an abandoned canal. It gradually came into a little village. I was really enjoying this walk and thought that this is going to end bu around Middlewich way. It’s a long way home but it will be really nice and i’ll stop for an ice cream. I walked through this little village. There was a shop there with its shutters half down. I thought an ice cream would be nice but i’ll push on to the next village. At this point there was some guy messing around in the road. He couldn’t make up his mind whether to go left or right so I swerved round him, making some kind of remark but banged my hip on a parked car. he didn’t say anything aboutt hat but he was going on and on about what he was doing. So I dropped in that I was working on the radio and things that I was doing that I’d inflated. Then he had to go and sort out a puncture in his car so I took him as a passenger in mine which was strange because I’d been walking up to this point. There were 3 of us in the end in this car. He was still going on about his radio and I was still going on about mine. He was saying “that’s a fine hobby to have”. I said “it’s a bit more than a hobby”. We reached Middlewich in the end and he told me where he wanted me to drop him off. he asked how much he owed me for the ride. I replied “nothing. I hope that someone would do the same for me some day if I ever need it”.

But the walk around Sandbach and Middlewich reminded me of a walk that I’d been on during a nocturnal ramble when I’d set out to walk from Chester to Nantwich via, of all places, Wrexham. Or as the skunk said when the wind changed – “it all comes back to me now”.

Having organised myself as much as I could, I headed out for the railway station.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we haven’t as yet seen the town’s Christmas light in all their glory but this morning they were illuminated. My route took me up the Rue Lecampion and we can see here exactly what they have done as far as this street goes.

In fact, it’s all rather underwhelming, isn’t it? I can recall the decorations from last year being so much better than these. It looks as if the town has been on an economy drive this year.

A few days ago in the daylight we had a trip around the back of the kiddies’ roundabout in the Place Generale de Gaulle to see what they had been doing there.

This morning, the Christmas lights were illuminated here too and we can see how they are getting on now. On the left illuminated by a pink light is supposed to be a wooden polar bear, and I suppose that a blind man would be pleased to see it. And strangely enough, a couple of Christmas trees further along weren’t lit up at all. That’s a strange decision.

The newspaper offices at the end of the street are all rather garish and somewhat tasteless but I don’t suppose that there is any particular reason for them to bother themselves too much.

Finally, I walked along the Cours Jonville.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago we saw the electricians stringing up the light in the trees down here with a cherry picker. With the lights being on, we can see their handiwork today. It’s all nice, bright and airy, but it doesn’t exactly inspire the imagination, does it? The could have done much more than this with the facilities that they have.

But I wasn’t going to hang about and argue. By now the rain had started again so I pushed off towards the railway station. And the farther I went, the more and the harder the rain fell.

By the time that I reached the railway station I resembled something like a haggard, drowned rat. But at least my train was already in the platform so once I’d stamped my ticket I was able to clamber aboard and find my seat.

Today I was right by the rest room and right in front of the luggage rack so it was something of a convenient seat. No-one sitting next to me either so I could eat my fruit bread and fruit in comparative quiet and luxury.

To while away the journey I uploaded all of the backup files that I’d done this morning and then started to go through to identify duplicate files and remove the earlier versions

If you think that the rain that we were having was pretty rough, we weren’t having it as rough as some people were.

By the time that our train reached the region in between Vire and Argentan the heavy rain had turned to snow and thrre was a lovely white colour in the fields all around the train as we sped on to Paris. It didn’t hold my attention for very long though because I dozed off to sleep. And when I awoke again near Versailles we had long-since left it behind.

We reached Paris more or less on time and compared to how it has been just recently, it was quite busy. And we had to wait a while for a Metro which was something of a surprise.

And somewhere along the route a couple of cleaners climbed into the train with a cleaning machine the size of a small zamboni. That disrupted everyone on board.

We arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris with plenty of time to spare and I was luck enough to find a seat straight away where I could sit in comparative comfort until our train was called. These big French mainline stations are draughty, windswept affairs with very little public seating.

Today’s train is one of the usual TGV Reseau Duplex double-decker trains, old but comfortable and rattle along at a rapid rate of knots towards Lille. it was crowded too, although once again I was lucky enough to have a double seat all to myself so that I could eat my sandwiches in comfort.

And that bread that I made the other day is delicious. And furthermore, there’s half a loaf awaiting me in the freezer for when I return, along with the leftover frozen leeks, broccoli and endives.

We were a few minutes late arriving in Lille Flandres Railway Station so we had something of a scramble across town to the Lille Europe railway station for the TGV coming from the Midi that was going to take us on to Brussels.

By the time we arrived, the train was already in the station so making sure this time that it was in fact the correct train, I dashed on board to grab my seat. This time I wasn’t quite as lucky. I had a neighbour which meant that unfortunately I wasn’t able to spread myself out very much.

One thing that I forgot to do with this one was to check the times so I couldn’t tell how the journey went. But it passed off without any incident.

Arriving in Brussels I was in time for the 15:37 to Leuven and Liège. That was late pulling into the station and with a technician scrambling around in the drivers cab, it was very much later pulling out.

It’s one of the old, dirty graffiti-ridden AM80 multiple units and it’s high time that these relics of a bygone age were put out to grass somewhere but it brought us into Leuven and now that the rain had stopped I had a nice walk down to my hotel in the Dekenstraat.

For a change they’ve put me in a different room than usual, but it’s still an upgrade so I’m not complaining. And there was a little Christmas present for me too which was a lovely little touch.

Later on I went to the Carrefour and stocked up with shopping, but I forgot a few things like the vegan mayonnaise so I’ll have to go again. And I failed to notice that the tinned apricots didn’t have a ring-pull so I had to hack my way in as best as I could.

Having fallen asleep already while typing out my notes, I’m off to bed. No alarm – I’m having a lie in tomorrow. And then I have several days of Welsh homework to catch up with. There will be the dictaphone notes too, and another trip to the shops for the stuff that I forgot so it isn’t actually going to be very much of a day of rest

Friday 6th November 2020 – AND THAT WAS …

… more difficult than it ought to have been too.

And when the TGV broke down somewhere in the wilderness I really did think that I’d had my chips too.

This morning I totally ignored the alarm yet again and had a lie-in until about 07:30. More stuff on the dictaphone of course that I transcibed after I returned home.

We were in the USA last night. I can’t remember exactly what we were doing but it involved my father and a whole group of other people whom I knew. There had been some big kind of political debate. Some politician had made a disgraceful affair and all the other politicians were standing up for him. Someone went to get into their car but found that the locks had been changed. This evil politician had gone around changing everyone’s locks on everything. At that stage I became quite simply fed up and beat both of them into a pulp. I had to sell someone about something or other and I can’t remember what. It was to do with a car needing work or something. I got into my car which was a very new one. I managed to get in and drove away from the scene. As I came up to a set of traffic lights a police car pulled out of a side road right in front of me, blocked the road and put his stop lights on. When the traffic lights changed he went off presumably to drive round the block to come up behind me. But it was a really inconvenient place to stop. There was an abandoned fuel station just across the traffic lights so I pulled over there, of course bitterly regretting what was going to happen next – I was in no illusions. There were a couple of guys there getting petrol out of this abandoned fuel station. They said something about parking there. I said “that’s all right. I’m waiting here to be arrested”. They looked at me a bit wide-eyed so I said to 1 of them “yes the police are coming to arrest me”. He thought that he had better get a move on and do what he’s doing quickly and get out of the way. Just then I saw a group of my friends coming along. They were carrying an engine lift, tools and everything as if they were going to lift the engine out of a car somewhere after what I’d said to them. I thought “this policeman is taking his time isn’t he? I could nip off if I wanted to leave my car there.” But did I want to leave my car there? Did I want to nip off? Did I want to go? There was a cheap Honda Acty microvan things parked up and I was having a look at that.

A little later I was a kid, a teenager doing something with a house. We’d all been working on bits of it and I’d been painting the bedroom. The 1st coat hadn’t worked properly because some filling needed doing on it. I’d done most of that and painted what I’d already done. It hadn’t appeared too badly and I was reasonably pleased with it. Then the tutor came in and started to give me instructions about what he wanted me to do next but I reckoned that in view of the time factor it would be a good idea just to fill the rest of the wall where it needed filling and paint one coat over it to see where it was low. We could fill it again to make it up in the meantime and the coat of paint would be on it ready for the top coat. We had a lengthy discussion about that and in the end he agreed to let me do it as I wanted. He told me that I would have to put a curtain up somewhere over one part where the walls were uneven but I thought that that was going to be a silly idea – it would just draw people’s attention to it but he was pretty adamant so in the end we agreed that we would talk about this again. I did the calculations that by the time I had finished this room putting these coats and this filler on I would have had my A levels by then in which case no-one would be in a position to contradict me at all and I really could then do it as I liked.

There was also something where I was doing something with a pile of musicians – it might have been Man or something like that. We were just sitting around talking about drugs, all this kind of thing. Deke Leonard saying that he hadn’t shot up for a whole 15 concerts but was quite busy taking the weed – the same with a few of the others. I said that I didn’t even know whereabouts to go to get it. I wouldn’t have a clue. They said “that girl who came to your party in your building. She sold us a bag”. I thought that was a bit if a shame because I liked her. Then we ended up at someone’s house after this – it might even have been this girl’s. It was a much nicer apartment than mine, on the floor below from where I was living. We were all getting ready to go places and were sorting through a pile of things and having to tidy everything up. I was sorting through these stones, I’ve no idea why. Some were precious and some weren’t and I was getting it all wrong. There were 3 gear lever knobs from a vehicle in there. It was a really confused thing that I had to sort through. Someone came over to give me a hand. He clearly knew what he was doing. I had to resort what I’d already done because it wasn’t right. I ended up going for a walk around and having a look at her garden which was really nice. On the way back I saw everyone else coming for a walk around the garden. I thought that I might as well have waited until they decided to come rather than go out on my own.

After that I was taping a Man concert, trying to get that organised but it was again something that I was only doing half-heartedly and missing most of the joins, thinking that I would have to go back and check it over again. The question of London came up, the question of a restaurant in the basement of a hotel that we go to near the railway station but it had moved down to South London. A girl I was with suggested that we should go there and have a meal. I thought ” that’s a long way to go for a meal and come back. It’s not as if it’s at the railway station where it used to be where we could be in and out in an evening. With this we have to hike most of the way across London to get to it and it’s not going to be the same, particularly with only another two weekends to go…

If that’s not enough, then later I was walking along Crewe Road into Sandbach and as I was passing the houses at the end of Park Lane I was thinking that I had to go to the bank. But the bank wasn’t where it is but in the street that runs about half a mile to the south – Hassall Road – so I had to find my way around like a deviation. In the end I got to 3rd Avenue and I remembered that I could walk through there that way. I walked down there – there were some kids playing netball in the school plating area there and a couple of boys playing football. I went on and came to a set of steps that I had to walk down. There were two young girls there who were rolling balls down it. Obviously whose ball rolled furthest down the most stairs won. They had a rake that they were using to pull the balls back up. One of them was pulling a ball back up and the rake swung back over her head and nearly impaled me as I was waling past so I made some kind of light hearted remark about it and they laughed. Then I noticed in one of the swimming pools in the back garden of a house round there was a skeleton so I asked “is that your last victim?”. They laughed again. By this time a woman had come down. She thought that it was funny as well so we had a chat. We got to the bottom and there was a really deep puddle. She was talking about the gypsies who lived in Sandbach and how they had sometimes washed their clothes in it. When we reached the bottom she said which way she was going, and I thought that this was the other direction so I said goodbye to her. I turned left and she went a little further on and she turned left too. We bumped into each other again. I said “I thought that you were going the other way”. She said “no, this way. I have to fetch some money from the bank”, a different bank. She started to ask “where shall we go from here?” so I said “hurry up and get your money” so she dashed inside the bank.

Later on I stepped back into this dream. I was walking back to the bus. I got on the bus by the centre door and for some reason I didn’t want to sit down at the front so I chose a seat right opposite the centre door where I didn’t have to go very far. Then this woman appeared, the one with whom I’d walked just now. I was hoping that she would get on the bus and come to sit next to me but that was when I awoke.

But back in Belgium I had a nice little relax instead (and I felt that I needed it after all of that) and then a really good tidy up before setting out for my journey home.

There was already a train in the station going to Brussels but as I wasn’t able to run for it with the load that I was carrying, I let it go and waited for the next one.

This one was pulled by one of the Siemens Class 18 electric locomotives that work the line from Eupen and Welkenraedt to Oostende. We travel on these quite often.

Unfortunately I wasn’t very lucky with this one because it was pulling a rake of older-generation carriages – the type with the old PVC seats, that sort of thing. It would have been really nice to have had one of the usual sets with the modern cloth upholstery.

But I’m getting greedy. At least it was on time both here and in Brussels.

There was an hour to wait, sitting on a draughty platform on Bruxelles-Midi but luckily this train, one of the PBKA units, came in early so having had our tickets checked, we could scramble aboard.

Even though there are only three trains per day between Brussels and Paris right now, this one was pretty empty. Fewer and fewer people are moving around. In fact, the railway station was like a ghost town.

There was a police patrol on the train too, and we all had our identities and movement forms checked. Luckily all of my papers were in order, and I’m glad that I went through all of that trouble 18 months ago to obtain a French identity card.

Then we had the engine failure. All of the lights and power on the train went out and we ground to a halt, down from 300kph. All hope of catching my connection – the only one to Granville today – seemed to vanish before my eyes.

20 minutes later, they managed to fire it up again and we limped into the Gare du Nord.

Leaping from the train I hared off through the station to the Metro where, luckily, there already was a train at the platform so I leapt aboard and we shot off to Paris Montparnasse, where we arrived with 25 minutes before my train was due to depart.

Just three people in the SNCF offices as well so I went in to see about organising a refund for the tickets for the trains that were cancelled And to my surprise, they cancelled the tickets for the current voyage (which was in fact more expensive) and endorsed the tickets for the cancelled train giving me authority to travel.

We were allowed on this train early too, which was very pleasant. In fact, it took me by surprise as I was in the middle of eating my butties.

Once the train set off, I curled up on my seat and slept for an hour or so. I’d already had a couple of dozes prior to this but this was a good ‘un. I didn’t feel a thing.

For some reason though, the seats didn’t seem to be as comfortable as they have been in the past. It reminds me of that really uncomfortable flight that I had back from Canada two or three years ago where I just couldn’t settle down comfortable.

Our train arrived early too, so I even had time to nip into the Coccinelle Supermarket for some bread seeing as I don’t have any here.

On the wat back I walked past the Place General de Gaulle.

You wouldn’t believe that it’s Saturday night right now. This lockdown is clearly working. I was picturing tumbleweeds and all that kind of thing coming blowing across my path as I walked by.

However I made it home without too many problems and made myself a bowl of soup out of the freezer, which I ate with the bread. And then I released the valves on the kefir and even though I took great care, I still ended up with a face full and a bath full. It wasn’t ‘arf lively after having been left alone for a week or so.

It’s good to be home anyway. I like my little apartment. I’ll have a good sleep and pleasant dreams (I hope) and then I need to go out tomorrow and buy some food. No Caliburn so that’s going to be an interesting trip.

Friday 30th October 2020 – OUCH!

That was an expensive day today!

So while you admire a few more photos of the outside of the Gare du Nord in Paris before they start on any redevelopment, you’ve probably gathered that I’ve been on the move today.

What with France going into lockdown, and the word on the streets (thanks, Alison) suggesting that Belgium might be following suit imminently, I reckoned that if I don’t go to Belgium right I won’t ever go at all

Hence my frantic rush around yesterday to change all of my tickets and organise all of my paperwork ready to travel this morning while I still can.

Much to my surprise this morning, I was very very close to beating the second alarm, never mind the third alarm. That’s progress, and it goes to show that I can do it when I really try.

Pleny of stuff on the dictphone too, as I was to discover when I had a listen to it later. I must have travelled quite far during the night.

I was with Mike and Jerry and all of that lot. We were doing something in he mountains. There was a catalogue that I was thumbing through, trying to get ideas for Christmas presents and I got to this illuminated map of the far north of Canada and the entrance to the North West Passage round by Bellot Strait, that area round there. It was a crystal, cut-glass etching upright on a plinth. I thought that that was wonderful so I said to Jerry “here’s what I’m going to get for you for your Christmas”. They all came over and were all poring over this and having a good look at it, working out where they could go to get one, all this kind of thing; It was powered by an old mobile phone thing that you plugged into it bit it really was something impressive

Later on there was something else going on about a girl and boy. They were staying in my apartment. The girl was asleep in bed and all this time this boy was sitting by her, looking at her, making sure that she didn’t fall out, something like that. When she awoke it developed into a kind-of romantic scene between the 2 of them. I was rather disappointed that she’d decided on him but I thought that they would make a very nice couple anyway so I wasn’t particularly bothered by it. Somawhere along the line we were working out some kind of calculations for something or other. I remember saying that we had to add two on for something, but then thinking that there was a load of other little things, fixtures and fittings, tha kind of thing.They would all need costing into this as well. I didn’t really know how much they were going to be and this was going to confuse the issue a lot

This morning, I finished off the packing, took the rubbish out, washed the bins, did some tidying up vacuuming, and even washed the floor round by where the kitchen is, to make sure that everything is clean and tidy for when I come back.

Having fed the sourdough and put it in the fridge, I bleached all of the drain outlets and then hit the streets.

This morning proved that I had been right about something.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few days ago we saw piles of roadstone gravel being delivered and I predicted that very soon we would be having one of the gravel boats in shortly to take it all away.

And sure enough, as I headed down the Rue des Juifs into town, I glanced over the wall and there moored at the quayside is Neptune, one of the three or four that come in here every now and again.

When I first came here, there was one in the port every month or two, but this is the first since March and before that it was almost exactly 12 months ago. I was beginning to despair of ever seeing one again.

For a change, I followed the road along the Boulevard Louis Dior and through the car park of the regional offices of the département, that way to the railway station.

The coffee machine was once again out of order and he train wasn’t in either which meant that we had to wait around on a windswept platform until it finally arrived. Another one of our usual GEC Alstom Regiolis multiple unit.

Just a one-unit train today instead of the usual 2-unit ones, and even so, there was still plenty of room for us to spread out. I had a seat all to myself and spent most of the journey copying files from a portable drive onto the little Acer laptop.

Bang on time in Paris. probably a little early in fact as we had to wait for 5 minutes for a slot to get into the station. Not many people in the Metro either – in fact there was only one person in the queue for Metro tickets at the Gare du Nord so I went and bought another pack of 10.

Not that I need them yet but usually there’s a queue a mile long and I’m always pushed for time when I need to buy some more, so I may as well get ahead while I can.

There was half an hour before my rain was due to depart so I went outside to take a few more photos of the exterior. As there are plans for the redevelopment of the station, I wanted to make some kind of record of how it looks.

It will be a big shame if they do any damage to the main train shed; It’s a wonderful example of 19th Century railway architecture.

By now it was time for me to go back into the station and see about my own train.

Much to my surprise, they had already started boarding. That’s not like them at all. Usually it’s 15 minutes prior to departure and not a minute before. And so I quickly took a photograph of our train – one of the TGV “Duplex” double-decker train sets.

Then on to the platform through the electronic gates that check your ticket, and how I wish that they would install them at Lille Europe, for reasons that you will soon find out.

This is a double train-set and of course, my seat is in the second unit. Right down the end of the train too in the wagon just behind he driving unit. At least it means that I don’t have to walk far at the other end of the journey.

And despite it being a double train-set, i was pretty empty too. Lockdown is clearly working in France and potentially in Belgium and very few people seem to be travelling about.

The journey was pretty uneventful and we arrive in Lille Flanders on time as well. I’m not used to this at all. And then there was the usual inconvenient walk down the road to Lille Europe to catch the train from Montpelier to Brussels.

There was only a wait of about 10 minutes before the train came in so we were soon on our way.

And herein lies the problem.

When I went to the railway station at Granville to change my ticket from Saturday to today, the booking clerk typed out the details and handed me the ticket. And like a fool, I didn’t check it.

When the ticket collector checked it, he noticed that instead of 14:45 she had typed 15:54, and so of course it wasn’t valid for the train that I was on. After quite an argument and despite using my best persuasive powers I was still stuck with a penalty fare of €70:00.

And serves me right for my awn stupidity.

Once again, there wasn’t long to wait in Brussels for my train to Leuven.

and to my dismay it was one of the ancient, elderly AM80 multiple units. These machines are on their last legs, with old vinyl seats and linoleum floors, and covered in graffiti inside and out. Not a very good advert for the Belgian railway system I imagine that they will be the next batch of machines to be replaced.

Within an hour I’d arrived at Leuven, walked down to the Dekenstraat, picked up my keys and installed myself in my room. Another upgrade this time – business must be quiet.

Later on I went to Delhaize for my shopping where amongst other things I bought a tin of baked beans. That was because the fritkot down the road was open, so tea tonight was chips and beans. Delicious.

Tomorrow I’m having a lie-in. I’ve done enough these last few days so a rest willdo me good. I hope that no-one comes along to spoil it.

Friday 9th October 2010 – I’M GLAD …

… that I took Liz’s advice to vent my kefir in the bath.

That’s because it went up like the traditional four-bob rocket when I released the caps, and actually blew the caps and wires out of their sockets. So this will be a good batch. I hope.

Yes, for all my vicissitudes, I’m now back chez moi at the seaside and apparently I’ve brought the bad weather back with me. It was quite nice this morning, so I was told, but about an hour after I came back, it had clouded over.

This morning though, in Leuven, there was a heavy, damp, humid mist of the kind of which I’m so familiar, as anyone who has ever been in Belgium in the autumn will remember. I was up and about bang on the dot of the first alarm at 05:30 – just to prove that I can do it when I really try – and after finishing the packing and making my sandwiches, I headed out for the station.

At the station I had to wait 10 minutes for my train – the 06:21 to Blankenberge from Genk.

Being a shorter train than the usual Welkenraedt – Oostende train that I catch, it pulled up short of where I was standing. I had to run a hundred yards or two down the platform to the train. It was pulled by a Type 19 electric locomotive – basically the same as a Type 18 that we had on the way out to Leuven, but fitted with an automatic coupling system.

It was pretty busy too, even right down at the front where I usually sit. That’s quite a surprise at that time of the morning.

My train to Paris-Nord was already in at the platform when I arrived – 40 minutes before departure, but we couldn’t board right now because while the passengers were there, the crew wasn’t.

This morning we’re going to Paris on one of the Thalys PBKA units – the ones specially-built for the Paris – Brussels – Cologne – Amsterdam service. They differ from the usual PBA units in that they are equipped to work on the German electric railway network.

They are getting on for 25 years old now and surprisingly, are still in quite good and comfortable condition. I’m quite happy to travel on one of these any time. But not so many other people were. Admittedly the 07:35 is the first service to Paris of the morning, and also the cheapest, but there were very few people on board today and we could spread out.

Our train hurtled off from Brussels bang on time and we made such good time that we had to sit outside Paris Gare du Nord for 10 minutes for our slot for the final half-mile.

It was rush-hour of course in Paris – 09:13 when we arrived – and while the Metro was busy, it wasn’t crowded as you might expect. As I said on the way out, it seems that the business life of Paris has changed somewhat with the Corona Virus and that might explain the lack of custom on the TGV.

At the Gare Montparnasse our train was in the station already even though it wasn’t advertised yet. It’s because it’s the only one that has “NORMANDIE” written all down the side of it. No point in trying to board because it will be all locked up, so I took a seat on a bench and read my book.

After waiting around for 35 minutes, the train to Granville was announced we were all allowed on board.

The train set is one of the GEC Alstom Regiolis units. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we travel on one of these each time we go back and forth to Paris. There are 361 of these and they started to come into service in 2013. They were so successful that they allowed a whole raft of old equipment from the 70s and 80s to be swept away, and they are all that you ever see now on much of the French railway network, including the Paris-Granville service. I’ve never done the route in anything else.

And I was lucky in my neighbour today on the way back. She can sit beside me any time she like.

The voyage was pretty uneventful so I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

I was back running the taxis again and I had a yellow Mk IV but was completely yellow, a tidy little car. There was a driver driving for me who lived next door to a Hackney driver but didn’t get on particularly with him. He was quite good at his job. When he came round to start work one morning I was in the middle of changing windscreen wipers over. I’d got them off an old car that we’d had, the wipers and arms, and I was busy switching them over to then new one, getting it ready to go out, the yellow one. This guy was going through the sheets writing out his list of jobs. There were a couple of jobs, long ones and he wondered why he hadn’t been given them. I didn’t know so I told him that it might be something to do with the fact that they didn’t think that the car would be ready by then. Then someone else from another taxi company turned up from Northampton. While I was busy changing the wipers the other driver started chatting to them asking their advice – should he put these jobs down on his sheet or not. I had all the wires – dunno why there were wires on this – tangled up and I was trying to untangle them, everything like that. The more I tried to untangle them, the more tangled they became.

Having done that, I merged a few more composite files and than quietly ate my butties.

Our arrival in Granville was a couple of minutes early. I’m not used to this. It was a pleasant if not tiring walk back home from the station, and the first thing that I did was to spray the bathroom with orange-flavoured kefir.

Most of the stuff that I bought was then unpacked (I forgot some) and then I swapped the files over from the portable computer onto the big office machine. I didn’t do as much as I wanted to do because, what with the early start, I … errr … had a little relax.

That’s possibly because I had the heating on in here. It seems that the cold has arrived.

Tea was taco rolls – there was some stuffing left over from Monday followed by a slice of Blackberry pie out of the freezer.

Later on in the evening I went out for a walk around the headland in the dark. And first thing that I noticed is that the old Opel estate that had been been abandoned on the car park for the last however many months has now been removed.

There was a strong wind, but nothing like as strong as it has been. Even so, I didn’t want to hang about. Instead I had a wander around and ended up at the Chantier Navale to see what was happening in there.

We’re down to just two boats now. Les Epiettes, the boat from the Département des Ponts et Cnaussées is still in there on the right, and the trawler on the left which is Cap Lihou is still in there. She’s been there for quite a while and probably now a permanent fixture.

My runs tonight were pretty disappointing. I only managed two and the second one of those was a little shorter than it has been of late. I need to work myself back into it again. Instead of going for my third run, I headed slowly for home. I’ve still managed 114% of my daily activity.

Having written my notes, I’m now off to bed. It’s shopping tomorrow and I need a few things to replenish the stocks. And there’s football tomorrow night too so I’ll be busy.

And what is left of my kefir is delicious.

Tuesday 6th October 2020 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that LAST YEAR IN MONTREAL I came across a pizza place that had started to sell vegan pizzas as a mainstream meal.

Here I am in Leuven tonight, and what do I find but that another, different pizza chain is now offering the same. It’s most unlikely that I’ll be able to find them in France, with France about 100 years behind in this respect and Leuven is likely to be in the forefront, having such a huge student population as it does, but it’s certainly progress.

The only downside of this is that I didn’t see the notice until after I’d bought the food for my stay here for the next few days. Had I seen it earlier, I would have changed my meal plans. This kind of thing needs encouragement.

What also needs encouragement is my early starts in the morning. Another day where I was out of bed, up and definitely about this time, long before the third alarm went off. First task was to release the gas in the Kefir, and second was to feed the sourdough. It’s like having household pets in here now and that was something from which I have been trying to escape. The idea of having ties like this of any kind is not part of the plan.

So having loaded the working files onto the portable hard drive, done the washing up, had a shower, taken out the rubbish and bleached the sinks, shower and toilet and finished the packing, I hit the streets.

Last night, the day’s photographs finished with trawlers unloading at the Fish Processing Plant.

So today we start as we mean to go on with a carbon-copy of last night’s photograph, except of course that it’s somewhat lighter right now. And there’s a trawler manoeuvring around in the harbour too. Although the harbour gates are closed, the tide is well on its way in and so I imagine that the gates are about to open and the trawler is ready to leave.

And so I headed off towards the railway station. It was windy, but nothing like as windy as it has been, and the weather was doing its best to rain. It’s a good job that I’d prepared by wearing the correct clothes.

There was still half an hour to go before departure time when I arrived at the Railway Station.

And here we have a disaster. The coffee machine is out of order. I’m not drinking very much coffee these days but I still fancied a cup this morning due to my early and somewhat energetic start. The train, a GEC Alstom Regiolis, was already in at the platform so I was able to board it, find my seat and settle myself down in comfort.

Somewhere along the route I was joined by a miserable, bad-tempered old woman who had clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed and who moaned all the way to Paris. And for the first time ever, I managed to go for most of the way without crashing out. Just 10 minutes or so. I was able to do quite a bit of work.

One of the jobs that I did was to listen to the dictaphone. I was with someone last night – it might even have been Castor I dunno. It started off with meeting somewhere – we had to meet and I had to go on back to my digs. I’d looked at a couple of digs and wasn’t really keen on them but the 3rd one was OK so I’d booked in there. Then I had to go out to meet whoever it was. It turned out that 1st of all it was yet another boy from my school days and we met in Claughton Avenue. I said that we had better go to check to make sure that my car was still there because I’d left it there a day or so ago. It was the old Ford Escort that I’d had. We walked down the whole length of the street looking for this Escort but it wasn’t there any more. I thought that either we were in the wrong street or someone has pinched it. If it’d been pinched, it’s been pinched and it’s far too late to do anything about it now. It was all about worrying about a car or worrying about a bike When we got to the end there was a bike rack with a pile of bikes and someone in charge The guy whom I was with picked up a bike and sat on it as if to cycle off Some old guy who was in charge said “put that back! It’s not yours!” My companion replied “ohh yes it is!” so we had this “no it isn’t – yes it is” bit and in the end he said “no it isn’t” and handed the bike back. The old guy said “thank you very much”. By now the situation had advanced and I was with Castor – it could have been Castor, it could have been anyone. We’d come out of a huge building complex type of thing and we had to go home to where my digs were. I said “come this way” and she replied “no, it’s this way”. She wanted us to go in exactly the opposite direction but I was insisting that it was my way and she was insisting that it was her way She’s had a bit to drink and was a bit unsteady on her feet so in the end I guided her back In the end we ended up somewhere walking home and I suddenly realised that you needed a special code to get into the building where I was staying and I didn’t have that code I thought “how am I going to manage that?” To make it worse, whoever I was with decided that she wanted to stay the night with me I thought that ordinarily this would really be my lucky night but how am I going to manage this if I can’t get into my building? I supposed that I could conceivably go and find a room for us in a hotel but it was now something like 02:00 and what hotels with rooms would be open at this time of night? We were on foot so we couldn’t go far. It all became really confusing as well as being a really feverish night again

It’s a common, recurring theme, isn’t it? Here I am, with the bird on my plate and just as I’m about to get my fork stuck in it, something always comes up to spike my guns. Story of my life, I suppose. And Castor too!

A little later I was back in a similar kind of situation and a similar kind of situation running a chocolate factory and mixing chocolate. There was some kind of dispute about the recipe and in the end she chose one. We were busy making it and we got a couple of blocks to take back to the hotel where we were staying to try them out.

Our train arrived in the Gare Montparnasse about 2 minutes late but the Metro trip was rapid and straightforward. Some people didn’t find it that easy though. There was a barrage of ticket inspectors checking everyone’s tickets and a few people fell foul of them.

When I arrived at the Gare du Nord I had half an hour before my train was due to leave so I went for a walk around outside. One thing that I do like about the Paris Metro is the beautiful art-deco work of the entrances. This one, across the road from the railway station, is a typical example.

There were not very many people at all in this photo, which is not what you expect outside the Gare du Nord. In fact, one thing that I did notice was that the Metro was much quieter than usual and the station was quite empty. This virus is certainly affecting the business habits of the inhabitants of the city.

Another thing that I noticed was that outside the Gare du Nord thee was a placard saying that planning permission had been obtained for various alterations.

The work that is planned to be carried out is quite extensive and substantial. It’s going to change the aspect of the railway station quite considerably and that’s a shame because the station is a beautiful building and a rare survival of decent 19th Century railway architecture.

Somewhere here and there I have a few photos of the exterior of the railway station but I don’t have one of this angle here. I reckon that I had better take one to add to the collection just in case they are really going to alter it in any major way and we might not ever see it again.

Back inside the station there was still 20 minutes to go before the train was to depart. I wasn’t going to loiter around outside too long because it was raining and it’s dryer inside.

There was already a train parked in our platform. It was one of the TGV duplex trains, built by Alstom and are getting on for 25 years old now. But nevertheless, they are still very comfortable and very rapid too.

We weren’t allowed on board yet so we had to wait around for another 10 minutes before we were allowed on board. During that time they were loading up the train with the foodstuffs and drink for the journey. I’m not quite sure why because it’s not as if it’s actually a long way to Lille on a TGV.

They eventually allowed us through towards the train. This train set consists of two units joined together and my seat was is in the farthest unit.

We actually left on time and hurtled off into the wild blue yonder at 300Km/H. The train was actually half-empty, which was something of a surprise. Like I said earlier, people’s habits are changing.

Our train arrived in Lille-Flandres 5 minutes late, and then there was the hike down the road to the Lille-Europe railway station. The rain had stopped by now so it was a really pleasant walk down there, although I had to get a wiggle on because they don’t allow you very much time to make the journey and there isn’t a shuttle-bus or anything to connect up the stations.

Negotiating the layabouts with their savage dogs at the entrance, I made my way into the station. Still 5 minutes to go before my train was due to arrive which was just as well because the singing was wrong in the station and I had to walk almost the full length of the platform to where I had to board.

Bang on time, our train came in. It’s the TGV that comes from Montpelier and when I lived in the Auvergne I used to catch it quite regularly from Lyon when I was flying out to North America from Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Arriving on time, leaving on time, and reaching its destination, Bruxelles-Midi, bang on time too. This isn’t the SNCF as we know it. There’s a story that goes around France about how kids spend all of their maths lessons working out train arrivals and departures, and then when they start their working life they encounter the SNCF …

Having arrived in Brussels, I didn’t have to go too far or wait too long for my train to Leuven. It was due to come in at the next platform.

This is the express from the Belgian coast to Welkenraedt on the German border. It’ one of the Siemens Type 18 Electrics, about 12 or 15 years old and designed by Chris “Failing” Grayling. Consequently they came with a great many problems and Siemens had to pay a hefty fine. Once they were eventually put right they’ve proved to be the backbone of the SNCB’s express passenger service.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall by the way that there’s a story to Welkenraedt and WE’VE BEEN THERE to find out about it.

We arrived in Leuven on time (I’m not used to this) and I was soon installed in my room here. One of the benefits of being a regular here is that when there’s room, I am given a free upgrade and as it’s quiet, I have a duplex apartment.

Down at Carrefour to do my shopping, past the pizza place, and then back to here for tea (falafel burger and pasta followed by fruit salad and vegan sorbet) and to watch the football. Connah’s Quay Nomads in a torrential rainstorm against Caernarfon Town.

In the first half, it was all one-way traffic towards the Caernarfon goal. Caernarfon only made it into the Nomads’ penalty area once so you will not be at all surprised to learn that the half-time score was Nomads 0, Cofis 1. Such is the nature of Welsh Football.

The second half was a much more even contest but the Nomads were playing with the rainstorm pushing them forward and they ran out 3-1 winners in the end , 2 goals of which were scored by the centre-half Priestly Farquarson who was pushing up behind the attackers on several occasions and relying on his pace (because he is quick) to get him back.

It was however quite quaint to see, every time the game stopped, a hand come round the front of the camera with a cloth and clean the lens of the rain that was soaking it. That brings back many memories from a less-sophisticated past.

Thursday 9th July 2020 – ANYONE CARE TO …

… guess who this is heading our way this evening?

While I was out on my evening walk I noticed it way out to sea and so I took a photo of it with the aim of enlarging it when I returned home to make sure that I was correct.

And just in case you haven’t already gathered, I’m now back home in my cosy little apartment in Granville after my journey back home on the train from Leuven

However, as it happens, I didn’t need to wait until I returned home to find out, because as I was running back home after my trip to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord, into the harbour she came.

Sure enough, it’s our old friend Normandy Trader coming in from Jersey.

And while her loading bay isn’t particularly full this evening, there are quite a few passengers – maybe as many as a dozen – standing on the deck just in front of the wheelhouse.

It seems that she’s as busy doing these repatriations as her friend Thora

As for me, I was doing my own repatriation this morning, heading for home after my stay in Belgium.

The alarm went off this morning at 05:30 and within minutes I was up and about. I made my sandwiches, packed my bags and so on and was well on my way having dropped the key off at the office.

By 06:00 I was halfway down the road towards the railway station and that’s always a good sign.

When I was here last they were digging up the surface of the Martelarenplein to make some kind of underground parking and I was intrigued to see how they were doing with it

But as it happens, it’s all well fenced off and it looks in any case as if they are now at the stage where they are starting to resurface it. It seems that I have missed all of the excitement.

It was about 06:05 when I walked onto the station platform.

There’s a stopping train that goes out at 06:17 but an Intercity non-stop goes at 06:24 so I decided to wait for that. So while I was waiting I admired the freight trains that were passing through the station – dozens of them.

This locomotive is quite interesting. It’s one of the Bombardier Traxx F140 locomotives, although I can’t tell from here which model.

They are owned by a company called Railpool and that’s an interesting company. It was created by two German banks and owns all kinds of rail equipment including 42 modern electric locomotives that it leases to rail operators all over Europe whenever they have a shortfall of equipment.

This locomotive is much more regular though.

It’s one of the SNCB’s Class 13 electric locomotives of the late 1990s with a maximum speed of 200kph. But they weren’t without their teething troubles due in the main to electrical interference from their equipment that disrupted the signals.

The class 18s, of which we have seen an awful lot, have come in and taken their place on the headline routes, pushing them back onto secondary duties. But they are proving to be remarkably resilient.

5 minutes earlier than planned, my train came in.

It was one of the AM96 multiple unit sets that do the express working to Blankenberge and are quite interesting because when two are coupled together and the bellows seal them in, the cabs pivot out of the way so that you can walk through from one unit to the other.

We arrived in Brussels without any issue and much to my dismay the seats in the waiting area were all taped off. And I had about 45 minutes or so to wait for my train and I didn’t fancy standing for all that time.

Luckily this train came in early too and I had to run almost the whole length of the train to find my seat.

But as I mentioned on the way out to Leuven on Monday, I’m appalled by the casual manner of some people in the way that they are wearing their face masks.

Seeing someone with their nose uncovered is quite par for the course, but this guy here on the train from Brussels to Paris went the whole way, 300-odd kms, with his face mask around his chin and nowhere near his nose and mouth.

His friend sitting next to him didn’t have his face mask on either when i went for a ride on the porcelain horse. I really don’t know what these people don’t understand about a pandemic.

We arrive in Paris Gare du Nord bang on time which is always good news, and I found a different way to the Metro.

Down in the bowels of the station at the line 4 platform I didn’t have long to wait before the train came in. And then I was whisked off through the catacombs down to Gare Montparnasse.

They’ve been working on that for a couple of years and it’s nearing completion. As a result I had to think for a minute about how to find my way to the train shed.

One good thing though is that we no longer have to go all the way down to the platforms at Vaugirard. Our train can fit into the main hall.

An hour to wait before my train but luckily I found a vacant seat so at least I was in some comfort

We were called to our train about 20 minutes before it was due to leave, and that must be something of a record

Having stamped my ticket in the machine I scrambled aboard and found that, once again, I had a travelling companion. As I have said before, I don’t understand this social distancing thing in the station if we are all having to sit cheek by jowl in the train.

At L’Aigle there was an “incident” with a passenger and the police were called. I’m not sure what that was about but it didn’t take long and we were soon on our way. So much so that we actually arrived in Granville 5 minutes early which was quite impressive.

My route home was interrupted by a visit to the Post Office. A recorded delivery letter had come for me while I was away on my boat and I hadn’t had to pick it up.

So while I was passing through I called in for it. And outside the old tourist information office there was a cherry picker with a couple of guys on it working on the clock that’s there.

It’s been stuck at about 01:50 for as long as I can remember so it looks as if they are finally going to to do something about it.

And not before … errr … time either.

As Barry Hay once famously said, “one thing I gotta tell you, man – it’s good to be back home!” and he’s perfectly right too. I’ve lived in a great many places in my life and here in Granville is the only place for which I’ve ever felt any kind of emotion that might be described as “homesickness”.

Usually the kind of “homesickness” that I’ve felt is the kind of sickness that you have when you are sick of a place, but not here.

The travelling takes quite a lot out of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, so I didn’t do much. I sat and vegetated for a while.

At one point I was tempted to go and lie down on the sofa and watch a film. In fact I actually got as far as switching on the DVD player before I overcame the impulse.

Tea was actually the same as last night, which is hardly surprising because I used the stuff that I brought back from Leuven – pasta, veg and the second falafel burger – but this time with spicy tomato sauce.

The last slice of apple pie that was in the fridge too with some of the soya coconut dessert.

None of the foregoing prevented me from going out for my evening walk and runs.

What actually did put a stop to it was the gale-force wind that had sprung up in the latter part of the afternoon. You can tell what was going on out there by looking at this speedboat that was moored offshore with guys in there fishing.

The swell of the waves was such that it was hiding the boat at times. That can’t be comfortable for anyone out there casting his hook and line into the sea, and I wouldn’t like to be the neighbour of any fisherman there right now.

Out of the wind I managed to run along the top of the cliffs on the south side of the headland.

This takes me along the path overlooking the chantier navale where I can have a good look down to see what’s happening there. And once more we have a full house of 6 boats in there receiving attention.

As I have said before … “on many occasions” – ed … it’s good news for the town that they can keep so busy down there. It encourages people to bring their boats here

Even though I was out of the wind on this side of the headland, others were not quite so lucky.

This little fishing boat out in the Baie de Mont St Michel is having quite a battle with the elements as it struggles to make it back into harbour.

It’s not really the weather to be out there in a small boat like that I reckon. I’m glad that people have so much faith in their equipment.

My run down the Boulevard Vaufleury was OK but as I rounded the corner I was hit by the full force of the gale and that brought me to a dead stop.

It was so powerful that I had to walk on round the next corner before I could continue my run to the viewpoint in the Rue du Nord. Unfortunately the sunset tonight wasn’t all that much to write home about although we did have a nice TORA TORA TORA moment.

No picnickers down on the beach tonight, which was no surprise in this wind. I for one wouldn’t be down there.

From the viewpoint I set out to run back to the apartment but as I passed by the end of the Boulevard des 2E et 202E de Ligne I could see our visitor had arrived.

The little fishing boat was coming into port, but she was following in the wake of Normandy Trader who had now made it into port.

You can see the crowds of people huddled on the deck just there. That must have been a really uncomfortable crossing standing on the deck all the way across the English Channel from St Helier in a wind like this.

Normandy Trader fought her way into the harbour and went off to moor at the quayside underneath the large crane that would unload her.

As for me, I ran off back to my apartment to write up my notes.

First of all though, there was the dictaphone to see if I had been anywhere during the night.

We had been at school last night and we ended up in little groups of about 10 of us doing something on Geography, talking about Iceland, places like that. One girl I particularly wanted to be with she ended up being in another group of 10 which quite disappointed me. I was with someone else in a pair in our group of 10. On going through the names I saw that one particular was in our group and I thought “why didn’t I get myself into a pair with her? Good Lord! I must be really slipping these days! I thought that there would be plenty of time to do that but then I realised that it was right at the end of the school year. For some reason the school year had gone really quickly and there wasn’t much time left. I was leaving anyway at the end of the year and all these opportunities I’d missed yet again.
Later on I was going back home from my holidays and we were having a look at my photos. Someone was saying somethign about the state and condition of places that I had been to. I said that I’d been to a lot worse than this and I had to search through my computer to see if I had any older photos. I came across the photos of 2002 when i was in the USA so we started to look through those. there were some really nice ones there but there were some really dreadful places that I’d seen. “Someone else said “yeh. I used to go on the Fred Trueman Estate or something in Crewe back in the 70s and God! That was a bit dire as well” and we ended up having a chat about all of that

Unfortunately I didn’t finish all of my notes. I ended up falling asleep, which is no surprise. So I’ll have to finish them off in the morning.

And it will be late too because I’m not setting an alarm. I’m always exhausted when I come back so I’ll be having a lie-in.

Monday 6th July 2020 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not actually sitting in a rainbow but sitting in my little room in this hotel complex in Leuven.

It’s that time again and I’ve been on my travels. I’ve finally made it back here for my appointment at Castle Anthrax tomorrow.

Just for a change I actually made it out of bed immediately after the first alarm, despite not going to bed until 00:45, which just goes to show that I can do it if I really try.

After the medication I had a listen to the dictaphonr but there was nothing there. I’d not been anywhere on my travels during the night which is a shame. I went and had a shower instead.

There was a little tidying up to do and then I headed off out with my bag, calling at Caliburn to pick up a shopping bag and my foldable rain jacket

As I walked off from the apartment I noticed that it seemed that the harbour gates had just opened.

All of the trawlers were jostling for position and streaming out of port. This one here is Tiberiade, the sister ship to Coelacanthe pulling away from the quayside and lining up ready to rush out to sea

Having watched them for a few minutes, I pushed on into town, avoiding the cherry-picker on the corner with a crew of men in the nacelle cleaning the windows of the estate agents.

At the station, face masks are compulsory, although the casual way in which they are being worn is something of a surprise.

The train didn’t take long to arrive so we all piled in. There were quite a few people with suitcases either going off on holiday or going home from holiday.

And as the train pushed on towards Paris it became more and more crowded. I ended up with someone sitting next to me, which makes a total mockery of any kind of social distancing. At the station each alternate seat in the waiting room was blocked off, but it seemed to be a rather pointless exercise if we were all going to be crammed together on a train

We pulled into the Gare Montparnasse bang on time and despite all of the precautions at the station we were once again crammed like sardines into the trains.

At Paris Gare du Nord our train came in but was delayed in the station because someone had left a bag on board.

The bomb squad had to be called in and I was expecting a very lengthy wait. But it didn’t take too long to deal with the matter, which was a surprise.

Another surprise was that there were only 8 carriages on this train and I had a ticket for carriage 15. However the train was’t very busy and I found an empty seat at the top od the steps where there would be no-one alongside me.

We left 5 minutes late but caught up with the time by the time that we arrived at Lille Flandres.

A brisk walk across the city to Lille Europe and our train to Brussels was already in. I scrambled aboard and walked down the train to find my seat, to find that I ha a neighbour alongside me. I have a feeling that this “social distancing” rule in the railway stations is just a lip-service procedure and nothing more than window-dressing.

At Brussels I only had a 10-minute wait before my train arrived – the 15:28 to Welkenraedt.

The front of the train is always the lest crowded so I found a seat down there and managed to go the whole way to Leuven without a neighbour.

Here at my accommodation all of the entry procedures had been changed, including the password on the electric gate. Luckily another resident was coming in at the same time so she opened the door for me.

The office was locked too and after making a phone call to the manager I was given the password to the safe where the keys were kept.

The place isn’t all that busy so I’ve had another upgrade to a duplex apartment.

Later on, I walked into town to meet Alison. It’s been quite a while since we have met.

It was a beautiful evening so we went for a very long walk around the town looking at the scenery in the old Beguinage and round by the River Dyle while we exchanged our news.

Alison was very interested in my voyage around the coast of northern Brittany and I was keen to hear about the renovations that were going on at her home.

We ended up walking back into town and went for a meal at the Greenway.

The food there is pretty good and I had a Vegan Mexican burger with sweet potato chips and a can of ginger and lemom Kambucha. And that reminds be – I bought some seeder to make my own kambucha and when I return home I’ll organise myself to make some of my own.

We carried on with our walk afterwards round to Kloosters, the bar where we usually go for coffee, but it was closed so we had to go elsewhere.

Later on in the evening we went for yet another walk.

There’s a beautiful footpath alongside the River Dyle alongside the old early Medieval City walls. And they seem to be in quite a depressing state too.

There’s not much left of them these days and it looks as if there will be even less of them in due course if drastic action isn’t taken to maintain them. All that section there looks as if it’s about to all fall down and that will be a disaster.

A little further on ze came across the Sint Pieter hospital. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I stayed there when I first came to Leuven.

The story goes that it was built for the Francophone community of Leuven but instead they all decamped to a new site in Wallonie – Louvain-la Neuve – and despite the millions and millions spent on the building it was never occupied.

They are now on the way to demolishing it and all of the site is going to be redeveloped. Apartments, commercial premises, a park and finally at long last, the culvert over the river there is going to be uncovered.

It’s going to be something well worth waiting for.

While you admire the photo of the old water mill down at the Beguinage, Alison drove me out to look at the improvements that are being made at her home.

And they are impressive too. The house is looking beautiful and I was well-impressed.

She drove me back here afterwards and I sat down to write up my journal. But it’s been a long day and I’ve done a total of 175% of my daily activity.

That’s the cue foe me to call it a day and have an early night. You can admire the rest of this evening’s photos

Groot Begijnhof leuven belgium eric hall

“river dyle Groot Begijnhof leuven belgium eric hall

Groot Begijnhof leuven belgium eric hall

river dyle Groot Begijnhof leuven belgium eric hall

Monday 27th January 2020 – IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed at 05:30 but I managed it – only just.

And by the time the third alarm went off at 05:45 I was already on my way down the road having rinsed my empty bottles, packed my rucksack and put the key to my room in the key disposal box.

When the first of the normal series of alarms went off at 06:00 I was sitting in a train at the station in Leuven.

It’s an elderly AM80 electric multiple-unit. Covered in graffiti and not very clean at all. But the fact is that it’s here, it’s leaving at 06:04 and it’s travelling non-stop into Brussels.

That’s good enough for me.

At the Gare du Midi I went into the Carrefour, bought myself some raisin bread for breakfast and then went to sit down to wait until my train is called.

With half an hour to go before departure, I took the initiative and went myself to look for the train on the off-chance that it might be ready.

And sure enough, here it is sitting on the platform ready to go. It’s one of the “Reseau 38000” PBA (Paris Bruxelles Amsterdam) trainsets built for the start of thatservice in 1996.

To my surprise the door was open and I was able to go in and find my seat – a good 25 minutes to go before departure.

A ticket inspector came by and I thought that he was going to heave me out but he simply checked my ticket and that was that.

As for the journey itself, I have no idea at all about it because I slept for most of the route. This early start caught me up good and proper.

We arrived about 10 minutes late but that didn’t inconvenience me at all. The Metro was quite rapid even though it was crowded and I had to stand all the way, and I arrived at Montparnasse a good hour before my train was due to leave.

With the new timetable, it now arrives and departs from a platform in the main station complex rather than the Vaugirard annexe. In some ways that’s a good thing because it saves me a 10-minute walk, but in other ways it’s not so good.

That’s because Montparnasse is a huge, windswept desolate, cold station whereas the Vaugirard annexe had a nice draught-free glass waiting room where it’s reasonably comfortable to sit.

But hunting around, like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … I found an ideal hidey-hole where I could even see an electronic departure board.

With 15 minutes to go, my train still hadn’t been posted so i went to look for it. And I found it sitting at one of the platforms. Meantime, the PA announcer was telling us that “the departure details are currently unavailable” – which was the craziest thing that I’ve ever heard seeing as at the time she was making the announcement I was actually looking at it.

Eventually we were called to the train – exactly where I said it was – and we could board it.

For part of the way, as far as L’Aigle, I had a very charming young female companion but after she left, I dozed off and there I stayed, fast asleep again, almost until we reached Granville.

Bang on time into the station we were, although it took me a few minutes to get my things together. And then I headed off into the rain.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of weeks ago a notice had appeared in the car park of the Parc de Val es Fleurs to the effect that a chapiteau – a marquee – was to be erected there.

Just for a change I came back home that way to see if there was anything exciting happening. And sure enough, we did have our chapiteau in all of its glory, surrounded by a load of caravans.

It’s a circus, apparently, and even as I watched a huge pile of schoolkids filed their way into the chapiteau. They were obviously going to be treated to a matinée performance all to themselves.

Now here’s a thing!

For the last I don’t know how many weeks we’ve seen Spirit of Conrad up on blocks in the chantier navale. But no longer, by the looks of things.

Here she is, in the inner harbour with Joly France on one side of her and Charles-Marie on the other side. But no Aztec Lady. It must have been her that we saw heading out into the English Channel in the wake of Normandy Trader the other day.

Barry Hay once famously told us “one thing that I gotta tell you man – that it’s good to be back home!” and he’s absolutely right. A year or two ago, for the first time ever in my life I felt the pangs of homesickness after I’d been away from here for a couple of months.

This place really is my home and I was glad to be back here, even if it was absolutely freezing cold with no heating having been on. And to my delight a parcel for which I had been waiting since the end of November has finally arrived, at long last.

Nevertheless I sat down in my nce comfy chair and did nothing until tea time. I’m entitled to a relax after my efforts of today.

For tea, in the absence of any special willpower just now, I grabbed a frozen curry out of the freezer – the left-over leftovers from a few weeks ago. With rice and veg, including sprouts and spinach, it was delicious. And followed down by fruit salad and lemon sorbet.

The rain held off tonight for about 5 minutes after I set out for my evening walk – and then I caught the lot. All of it!

The tide was well-in and there were several trawlers out there heading in to harbour with their catches so I took a pick of one.

The lights of St Malo were looking quite good tonight too but the wind was far too strong for me to take a steady shot with the camera. The tripod wouldn’t have fared any better either – the wind would have had that over in a matter of seconds.

But round by the chantier navale I could take a photo of the inmates there.

No Spirit of Conrad of course – just a couple of fishing boats and another one right at the back. But the photo is no good because of the wind and rain. I wasn’t going to stay out long.

Getting back into the rhythm, I managed my little run just to keep up with my progress. Whatever else I do, I have to concentrate on getting fit no matter how much it hurts me. I do actually feel much better with having less weight to carry around these days.

So having written up my notes for the day, I’m going off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be getting back into the routine. There are two and a half radio programmes that need finishing and that’s the priority task for this week.

So I need to be on form.

Thursday 23rd January 2020 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting in a posh living room in a duplex apartment here in Leuven.

The one thing about being a very regular customer of these apart-hotels is that if there’s a higher-grade accommodation vacant, they give me a free upgrade and I’ve struck lucky this visit.

A lovely big double bed, nice and comfortable. All I need is a nice and sweet young lady to share it with me and I’ll be well away. Ohhh yes – even at my age I can still chase after the women. I just can’t remember why!

The only down side is that I have noisy neighbours who seem to be partying. But I can’t hear a thing because I remembered to bring my really good headphones with me and with Colosseum Live going full-tilt into my ears I can’t hear a thing.

But that album has its downside, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. Although it’s one of the top five live albums ever recorded, it was the one that was going round and round on an endless loop while I was on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour in 2018 and 2019.

Of course it immediately brings back all kinds of memories, mostly good but some quite bad and there are people like The Vanilla Queen and Castor and Pollux going through my mind as I listen to it.

Somewhere I read something along the lines of “anyone who spends any time in the High Arctic will come back a different person” and that’s certainly true.

Just for a change, this morning I was up quite smartly and it didn’t take me long to get everything ready for leaving. I’d had a shower last night before going to bed so I didn’t even need to deal with that.

Plenty of time to go a-voyaging too. The first little trip had something to do with the website and about how I’d changed round the radio programmes or something like that so that there was a whole new series of numbers starting on 1st January 2020 on the first January of the year with all kinds of different – there were two different strands of numbering now one of which was the radio concerts and one of which was something else but I can’t remember any more about it now unfortunately
Later on, there was a huge dispute between us over something or other and it led to someone coming storming round to our house going to throw a cup of cold tea over everyone. I had a cup of cold tea ready and he came storming in. I told him to sit down but he said “I’m going to throw this cold tea over you. What are you going to do?” I replied “I’m at my house. I’ll throw a cup of tea over you and you’re the one who is going to have to suffer”. He looked at me for a minute and then said “I can see that you aren’t going to flinch. You are brave enough”. I asked “so how are we going to sort this out?” He said “we need foue elastic bands like this size” and he showed us one of them. Of course I didn’t have any that size so I had to go across the road and ask one of the neighbours. We were in Vine Tree Avenue at the time during all of this.

Back in the Land Of The Living, I finished getting ready. The rubbish went out of course and then I followed it up to town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking plays a prominent role on these pages.

Hardly a day goes by without me seeing some new depths to which the general public has sunk and here’s another prime example. We’re at the roundabout at the end of the rue Lecampion and this motorist has decided to park his car right across the entry to the new block of flats.

The motorist in the big SUV can’t get his car out of his own car park because of it, and I would have loved to have had the time to hang around and see how this story would unfold.

Instead I headed off to the station and there I was treated to the delight of the train being already at the platform.

No coffee though. Once again the coffee machine is out of order and this is really annoying. How am I expected to go on a journey like this without being armed?

The ticket-stamping machine was having issues too and it took several goes before it would accept my ticket and stamp it.

Bang on time we set off and I fell asleep. A right deep sleep too and it took the ticket collector a good minute or so to awaken me from the dead to check my ticket.

We were 15 minutes late arriving in Paris but it didn’t quite matter so much because, as predicted, out train now arrives in the main station rather than in the vaugirard annex and that saves me a considerable amount of time.

The metro was running too and was quite rapid, so I had a good half-hour to spare before my train to Lille.

That half-hour was spent in a queue at the SNCF office. I’d had an e-mail yesterday telling me that my seat had been changed and I would have to make further enquiries.

Eventually I managed to make someone deal with me quickly and, armed with a new seat number, I could take my seat on the train.

It’s one of the older “Reseau” TGV trainsets, number 226 which puts it in the first wave that were delivered between 1995 and 199.

Nice and comfortable they are, and I could sit and eat my butties and fruit in comfort, which is always nice. And have another little doze too. I’m not in any great rush to do anything.

Due to “affluence on the line” our train was 20 minutes late arriving in Lille- Flanders.

With only 15 minutes (and having to cross town to Lille-Europe) between trains, you might think that I would be panicking by now.

But not a bit of it because if there was “affluence on the line” for us, there would be “affluence on the line” for the Marseille – Brussels train that would be folllowing behind us too and that was the one that I was catching.

Sure enough, that one was half an hour late so I had plenty of time to ring up the hospital and check my appointment time. 13:30 it is tomorrow.

The trainset that came for us is a model that we have seen before on a regular basis because it’s this type that does the Paris-Brussels service, The Thalys PBA trainsets, albeit in a different livery.

My place here was quite comfortable too and I even managed to doze off for half an hour or so yet again.

In Brussels I only just missed the 15:58 – I had my hand on the door when it pulled away.

But there was another one right behind – the 16:13 to Genk. It’s one of the push me – pull you train sets and coming into the station in reverse so I didn’t get to see the identity of the locomotive pushing it.

So by 16:50 I was in Leuven after a relatively painless, straightforward voyage for once and wasn’t I a happy bunny?.

Having organised my room I went shopping at Delhaize. Tons of stuff for the next few days to keep me out of mischief and I shall have to add “herbs and spices” to the list of things that I bring with me from home. I’ll make up a sachet of oregano, basil, tarragon, garlic, chili powder etc and put it with the coffee.

So tea tonight was a vegan burger with mixed vegetables, spinach and pasta, all tossed in a tomato sauce and it was delicious. Pudding was peach halves with mango sorbet.

The party next door seems to have finished so I can go to bed. Nothing much to do tomorrow morning so I’ll have a lazy day before I head off to the hospital round about 12:30, something like that.

I wonder what they will tell me.

Sunday 15th December 2019 – AND FINALLY …

… I made it back home.

And the journey was exciting, but nothing like as exciting as the outward trip.

Once again last night I was in bed early with every intention of watching a film. But before I went to do so, I carried on listening to the radio programme to which I had been listening before I slipped beneath the sheets.

And that’s how I found myself a couple of hours later. Out like a light of course. So I switched off the laptop and went back to sleep.

During the night there had been a few voyages. And strange ones they were too.

There was a fancy dress party taking place and I had decided to go as a woman, don’t ask me why because I don’t have a clue either. I had the dress and tights everything like that and I went out all dressed up and people were looking at me rather strangely as you could imagine. But I ran out of time and didn’t have the make-up so I had to do without the make-up which spoiled the whole effect as you can imagine. But I went outside and there were all these people outside, cheering me on, men were pretending to chat me up, so on. There was Malcolm Madeley (!) and he clearly didn’t recognise me, something like that and he made some kind of offensive remark. I said “you want to get a grip, Malcolm” to which he suddenly stopped and disappeared. He realised that it was me. I had to walk round to Aunt Mary’s. I knocked on her door and the guy who was with her who was a guy a lot younger than she was but was something to do with our family from somewhere or other and these two little kids about 3 or 4 came out. We were talking about some kind of court case involving these kids. Aunt Mary was saying “well now they are here it’s only 5 weeks to go before this case”. But as these kids walked out of the step there was this pram coming the other way. It hit them and they flew through the air and actually landed on top of the pram. I thought “these kids are going to get hurt. They are always doing these kinds of thing, always getting hurt, all kinds of stupid accidents, breaking their arms, breaking their legs, something. But this time they were all right which was quite a surprise. Then we had to hobble off – me hobbling on my high-heeled shoes back towards picking up my car to go to this do again but it was this thing with the kids that was so surprising. And I’ve no idea what that was all about at all.
Later that night I was with someone last night and it might have been Nerina but it might not and we were in Northern Wyoming, somewhere like that. On our way to visit some battleground, somewhere like that of the Native Americans. The road was a really difficult road. It started off being a decent road but was all gravelly, a dirt road as you might expect. We were behind this lorry and there was a car coming the other way, a big jeep-type thing swerving in and out of the traffic and he nearly hit us going past this lorry. We were wide-eyed about that. The GPS was talking to us about this road, giving us a talk. We suddenly breated the brow of this hill and came to where all these dressed stones were, in a pile like some kind of wall. It was telling us that this was where the fort was this was the barbecue was, all this kind of thing .We dropped down the hill into the village by the river and there were ancient railway locomotives on display there. We went inside the museum and there were all beds there with people sleeping in them like they might have done 100 years ago, 2 or 3 to a bed, babies in the bed, all this kind of thing and newspaper reports about “how my parents are going back to the UK after visiting us”. It turned out that we were now in Newfoundland and Labrador for some unknown reason and we were giving a tour of this museum with all of these toys and artefacts going back 100 years or something and life must have been really primitive for people living there in those days. So we had a tour of this museum with these old toys and old dirty beds and dirty people sleeping in them and I remember saying to whoever I was with that we ought to be going as we have a lot to do and in any case I wanted to see these old steam locomotives but she was busy engaged there talking to people and she didn’t really want to come away.

But despite all of this, I was soon up and about when the alarm went off at 06:00. Beat the second alarm by a country mile.

First task was to make my butties because I had a feeling that this was going to be a long day. Tidying up everything and packing my bags and collecting up my shopping, I headed out for the station.

I arrived at the railway station about 06:50 and didn’t have long to wait for a train.

There was a direct train at about 07:20 direct to Brussels but there was an earlier one from Genk at 07:08 that goes via the airport and on the basis that a bird in the hand is worth any number in the bush I leapt aboard that one.

It’s one of the AM96 multiple units built by Bombardier and delivery to the SNCB started in 1996. They have a peculiar characteristic in that the driver’s cab pivots round 90° so that when two or more of these multiple units are coupled together, the passengers can go through from one unit to the next.

My train to Paris was at 08:43 so I had about an hour to kill. I drew some cash out of the bank and then bought my raisin buns for breakfast from Carrefour.

I didn’t have to wait long because the train came in quite early and we were ushered up to the platform.

It’s one of the Belgian SNCB PBKA (Paris Brussels Cologne Amsterdam) train sets, number 4302 upon which we have travelled on previous occasions. These PBKA train sets are becoming somewhat long in the tooth these days, being first delivered in 1995, but they still rattle along at an impressive 300 kilometres per hour when there’s nothing in the way to slow them down.

While we were waiting to move off, I had a quick look on the internet. The 13:54 to Granville was still down as running so I hoped that it would still be listed by the time I reached Montparnasse.

Bang on time we were, pulling into the Gare du Nord. I wandered over to the SNCF offices where they checked the trains. The 13:54 is still listed as running for the moment, but there’s nothing else going anywhere near Granville now for the rest of the day so it’s that one or nothing.

The girl stamped my ticket to Caen to effectively prove that I’d been to the SNCF offices (one thing that I’ve learnt since living in Europe is that European officials love paperwork and rubber stamps so you should never ever miss out on an opportunity to have a rubber stamp put on a document whenever there’s a crisis looming).

Well over three hours to go before my train, and the day wasn’t too bad out there so I decided to walk.

Unleashing the big Nikon D500 I took a test shot of the big hotel, the Hotel Terminus Nord, just across the road from the station.

There is also this rather bizarre statue here too, just outside the station and I’ve absolutely no idea what it’s supposed to represent. I imagine that it’s some kind of winged beast, but that’s about it.

According to the route map that I consulted prior to setting off it was something like 5.5 kilometres as the crow flies between the Gare du Nord and the Gare Montparnasse.

But the way that I was planning to go, it worked out (I checked later on the fitbit) at 7.5 kilometres because I wasn’t going to miss out on a few of the sights while I was in the vicinity. Paris isn’t my favourite city – far from it in fact – but there are still places to see that ought not to be missed.

Like Notre Dame for example.

It’s been years since I’ve seen it and it doesn’t half look different now. On 15th April 2019 it caught fire and was very badly damaged. The roof has gone and it took the spire with it. It’s really in a sad condition like now and so here’s hoping that like a phoenix it will rise again from the ashes.

The estimates are that it will cost billions of Euros to restore it, although a considerable part of that money will be to restore parts of the cathedral that were in poor condition prior to the fire.

Across the Pont Neuf or “Bridge number 9” we’re in the Latin Quarter, so puer amat mensam to you, hey?

My intention was to go for a wander around for half an hour but I completely forgot, being sidetracked by this beautiful outfit here. A horizontal twin motorbike, which might have been an elderly BMW or a more modern Urals or Cossack, with a very period sidecar attached.

It’s not the kind of thing that you see on the streets every day and it took me completely by surprise.

Something else that took me by surprise was on the corner of the Boulevard St Germain.

It goes without saying that on my travels I’ve seen plenty of polar bears, but never one on a street corner in Paris. We’ve seen actresses standing over the air grids of the Paris Metro and seen their skirts disappear in the updraught, but an inflatable polar bear family is something else.

It made me quite nostalgic for the High Arctic and I wonder how I’m going to get there next year, having had a little disagreement with some people

By now I was starting to flag a little, so it was with an enormous sigh of relief that I caught sight of the Tour de Montparnasse at the end of the street as I rounded the corner into the rue de Rennes.

It seems to have slipped my mind to mention that I was not actually travelling light today. I had my rucksack which was quite heavy anyway with this and that, and a carrier bag with with a pile of heavy shopping in it.

And even though I can see the Tour de Montparnasse, my walk is far from over. The railway station is a good few hundred yards behind the tower and then I have this enormously long hike all the way down the station to reach the Vaugirard annexe.

Walking down the rue de Rennes I came across this wonderful sight.

Definitely a sign of the times, this is. With the European Union promising to phase out the manufacture of the internal combustion engine by 2040, there needs to be more electric vehicles on the streets. But there won’t be unless the authorities provide places where the owners can recharge them.

And so this charging station here shows how far along that road the French authorities are in this respect – in great contrast to how they are in several other countries, including the UK.

On that shocking note I went past the Tour de Montparnasse and there in the distance behind it is the Gare Montparnasse.

The original station, the one where the Granville train failed to stop all those years ago and went hurling across the concourse and out of the end wall into the street, was actually on the site of the tower. And that explains why when the metro from the Gare du Nord throws me out at the “Montparnasse” metro station, I still have this very long underground walk to the Montparnasse railway station.

Yes, they moved the railway station but they didn’t move the metro station with it

Looking at my watch, it was 12:00 or thereabouts when I reached the Gare Montparnasse. 90 minutes or so it had taken me, and that was really impressive considering that I’m not at all well and I had my heavy load to lug around with me.

Mind you, it’s not something that I want to do too often because I was pretty nigh exhausted after that. I was pretty much at it non-stop, without a rest. Next time I do it, if there is a next time there will have to be a pause-café somewhere along the route.

There was a long wait for the train but we were allowed on board earlier then usual. And so we had a longer wait for the train to leave, seeing as its start was delayed by 15 minutes.

Without a ticket I had to sit anywhere in a vacant seat. And so of course it goes without saying that it was reserved to someone else so I had to move.

The ticket collector came by so we had a chat about my ticket, in a delightful conversation where I spoke in French and he replied in English.

And that was one thing.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that having gone for time after time after time in the past without having my ticket checked, it was checked on every train today. Probably a grève de zèle or “work to rule” going on too. So it was just as well that I’d been to the SNCF office to declare myself a “stranded traveller” and have my ticket rubber-stamped by an official.

After all of that I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until we reached Vire. And we pulled into Granville bang-on time despite the extra stops that we had and the 15-minute delay.

Having left the station and feeling surprisingly fit considering my long walk today, I walked back through the town to the apartment.

While I was going up the rue des Juifs I looked over the wall and there tied up at the unloading quay is our old friend Thora. She’s come in on another trip from the Channel Islands.

This evening I’ve not done much. Finished off the falafel with some veg and cheese sause, and I declined the opportunity to go for a walk. I reckon that with 162% of my daily activity carried out, I’ve done enough. No wonder I was exhausted.

But now I can’t sleep. So I’ll probably be awake for ages but we’ll see how it hangs out. I have a busy day tomorrow.

And as an aside, there were plenty more photos from where these came from that haven’t made it onto this page. If you want to see them, which I hope you do, you need to go to THIS PAGE.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Category Archives: gare montparnasse vaugirard

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