Travel France by train
Why choose fast and furious if you can go sweet and slow? Simon Calder crawls through France
Published: 14 January 2006
Another coffee and another half-hour and I'll be on my way. Meanwhile, I can breathe deeply on the mountain air, survey the way the landscape crumples on its way to the horizon and tune into the cackle of a pair of bickering birds. France has some monumental railway junctions: at Toulouse Matabiau, for example, the trains arrive every few minutes. You can change platforms for the Mediterranean, the Atlantic or the Pyrenees, while admiring the splendid architecture. But here at Veynes, high in the Provençal uplands, trains are as rare as the atmosphere. When one finally arrives, you can be sure it will be a train à petite vitesse, and take you on a dazzling, dawdling journey.
Twenty-first century travel: terrific, isn't it? Soon after seven next Monday morning, you could leave London Waterloo, pause in Lille for a mid-morning coffee and arrive at the majestic Mediterranean station of Marseille St-Charles shortly before 3pm. Or, you could revert to the 19th century, and go the slow, pretty way through the old grandes lignes of France.
Instead of a clatter of steel wheels, the interior is haunted by a dull, other-worldly hum - the sort of noise that spaceships are popularly supposed to make. Opening the TGV Nord track from Paris to Lille in 1993, President Francois Mitterrand chided les rosbifs: "Next year we will set off at high speed across the northern plains, then push into the Channel tunnel, and afterwards we will be able to dream at a very slow speed in Britain to admire the landscapes."
And what's wrong with that? Rather than just glimpse the scenery of France, as you whizz through at 187mph, how much better to savour it. To sign up for such a trip, though, you have to have the twin virtues of patience and independence. Your first task is to remove yourself from the high-speed comfort of a London-to-Paris Eurostar almost as soon as you are through the Channel Tunnel and into French territory. Here, at Calais Fréthun, you have to hang around possibly the least appealing station in France while the crowd you have just left are speeding to Paris. They will reach the capital in 87 minutes flat; if all goes according to plan, you should be able to join them three hours later. But while they have seen northern France as a blur, you will have had the joy of cutting through the backyards, farmyards and villages along the way.
As you gaze from your window seat, you will enjoy a succession of temporary neighbours who use the excellent low-speed trains to trundle from ville to ville. You will have enjoyed more than just a glimpse into the lives of this constantly changing congregation - just as soon as you get beyond the bleak blot that is Calais Fréthun.
The humdrum train that eventually appears is the polar opposite of the express you stepped from half-an-hour earlier. It rattles and shakes as it snakes through the gentle countryside between Calais and Boulogne. The former is one of the busiest ports in France - but the latter is one of the finest. Going the pretty way allows you to stop off anywhere you wish, and linger as long as you like. Walk up the cobbled lanes past enticing cafés and patisseries to the high town, and revel in being somewhere so deeply French and profoundly historic - yet barely 50km from the coast of Kent.
With five times that distance between you and Paris, time to get the "classic" Corail train to the capital, averaging 100km/h but pausing for 10 minutes or so at Amiens - enough time to stretch your legs and get the coffee that eluded you at Calais Fréthun. Sit back and watch Picardy roll past the window, as the train sways back and forth along the valleys of least resistance. On the final, gentle approach Paris teases your senses slowly, like the ideal aperitif, to whet your appetite for the capital.
The Impressionists' Express from Paris to Marseille takes three hours. That is not an official name for the TGV but it is an appropriate one, because all you will get is an impression of the landscape as you hurtle south at Mach 0.25. When your nose is pressed up against the glass only five metres from a Bar Sport or a boulangerie, you realise that there is much more to rail travel than sheer speed.
Le Cevenol is the one surviving daytime "classic" train between the French capital and Marseille. Every day, rain or shine, public holiday or not, it departs at 8.47am every morning for a run which will take it 11 hours.
The two lines start and end at the same termini - Paris Gare de Lyon and Marseille St Charles - but in between they part company by up to 100 miles. The slow line south claws its way through real life: from the French capital, threading along valleys and rising to traverse the Massif Central before descending through Provence to the Med
Start with breakfast at Le Train Bleu, the ornate Art Nouveau brasserie at Gare de Lyon, and look with disdain on the tickets of passengers who are rushing their petit déjeuner to get aboard the TGV. Instead, relish the dramas ahead.
The line south from Fontainebleau cuts through the former royal forest, then joins the valley of the Loing, paralleling a canal with the same plan. All three dip beneath an autoroute that treats natural contours with contempt. At Gien, the track begins to shadow the Loire for a long stretch to Nevers. Towards Moulins, the line adopts the Allier - a tributary of the Loire, which is to be the railway's ally almost all the way through the Massif Central.
Roll on Vichy, which has changed so slowly that the tilework on the station still announces Trottoir No. 1. Two stops later, through a landscape strewn with expired volcanoes, you reach the capital of the Massif Central, Clermont-Ferrand - a city studded with dark, Satanic rock.
Railway buffs will always pay extra attention when a line reduces from two tracks to one: it shows there is some excitement ahead. The driver has a one-track mind as he coaxes the locomotive uphill from Clermont-Ferrand to Ales, while the adjacent Allier rushes downstream. The curves get tighter and the speed gets slower, leaving more time to enjoy the gradual, warming transformation from the greyness of northern villages to the red roofs and pastel shades of the south.
Ten minutes south of Brioude, a skeleton of a castle atop a hill speaks of less placid times, shortly followed by a field of lavender waving gently in the draught of the train. A sense of desolation may grip you when the line starts to switchback through the brooding hills, scarred with brooks that sprint down to the valley. Standby for the architectural highlight of the ride: the creators of Le Grand Viaduc, just before Chamborigaud, dreamed up the insane idea of a bridge that arcs across a valley in a tight 90-degree swerve.
The descent to Nimes is (relatively) fast, but to arrive at just another TGV station is an anticlimax. Still, you are scheduled to have 10 minutes during the change of engines, long enough for you to get to the station buffet - and, with luck, back. Next stop, Arles, where Van Gogh travelled by train. One more hour will get you to Marseille St-Charles, where you can spend the evening sating your desire for seafood, and the night dreaming of trains.
Next morning, your dream train leaves from a distant corner of this grand terminus. It climbs steadily to Aix-en-Provence, where it stops at the real, central station rather than "Aix TGV", as the halt on the fast line calls itself. From Aix, the engineers have performed heroics, coaxing a plausible course from increasing dramatic landscapes. At Veynes, you should hop off - unless your heart is set on Alpine Italy - and enjoy a serenity never found at Clapham Junction.
The connecting train chases another valley, the Isère as far as Grenoble, where you should find a connection that will get you to Lyon - a fine city for another night stop - before dark.
Lyon to Strasbourg may not sound like a dazzling journey, but it is. You leave France's second city on the old line to Paris, hugging the Rhone. Then it branches off to speed through some muscular terrain, now and again dotted with railway relics from another era; outside Besançon, you may glimpse some old carriages marked TEE, from the days when a trans-European Express was the stylish way to travel around the Continent.
At Mulhouse you start to skirt the Vosges mountains to the west, and get glimpses of the Black Forest to the east. You could stop at the lovely small town of Colmar, or continue to Strasbourg - one of Europe's most elegant cities (see page 8). Either way, you need an early start and an expert eye on the timetables to find your way back towards the Channel. Aim for Metz, along another switchback stretch of track that is soon to be superseded by a TGV line. Stop in the city long enough for a stroll to the young Moselle. Then set a course north-west that shadows the Belgian border, and offers a sequence of dreamy landscapes punctuated by weary stations that have been bypassed by modernity.
You will be feeling older by the time you reach Lille, but resist the temptation to jump aboard the first Eurostar to London; instead, enjoy the grand terminus of Lille Flandres, and find a train to ease you slowly back to Calais.
Quick and quiet is good, but slow and clunky can be better. French railways are getting better and faster; so get here soon, even if the train doesn't.
by Independent.co.uk
