Taking the night train

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on September 9^th 2023.

As promised, or threatened, at the end of the last blog I have included below two short videos of Olivia Rose out of the water and in the slings. With four hundred other boats for company she will spend the winter on dry land in this boatyard on the River Linge in The Netherlands. In the spring of next year we shall paint both above and below the waterline, and then head back out on the waterways once more.

From the boatyard we took the train to Rotterdam and then to Paris for the night train, which left at 9.45 pm and arrived in Tarbes in the south west of France at 7am the following morning, where our friends Sue and Ev would be waiting to drive us home. It is indeed a measure of friendship when people are prepared to leave their beds so early on a Sunday morning!

This was our first experience of a night train. We had booked two couchettes in a cabin of six bunk beds, three on each side and were pleasantly surprised to find we had been allocated the two bunks on the lowest level. No climbing ladders for us! To say these cabins are small is something of an understatement. There is so little floor space that only one person can stand at any one time. As we were the first to arrive it seemed sensible to get our luggage stashed under the bunks, unpack the bedding provided and slide ourselves into our tiny space so that there would be room for our cabin-mates to get themselves settled as they arrived.

We soon realised that once you were in, the only position was to lie down flat. Sufficient headroom to be able to sit up in the bunk evidently wasn’t deemed necessary. As people arrived at the platform, boarded the train, and passed by our cabin, we began to harbour hopes that the train was not going to be fully booked and we might have the space to ourselves.

However given that this stage of our journey had cost us the bargain price of 29€ for the two of us and that night trains have become extremely popular, particularly amongst those looking for an alternative to flying, we weren’t too surprised when three French people, a husband and wife with their female friend, arrived in the doorway, complete with walking sticks and hiking boots. It transpired that they were going on a guided walking holiday in the Pyrenees.

It soon became obvious that there was going to be a problem with a lack of luggage space, which was limited to underneath our bunks. One of the ladies on the walking holiday had a suitcase almost as big as she was plus two smaller bags. She could barely lift it, and I felt sorry for the husband of her friend, to whom fell the duty of being luggage manager. Eventually our final cabin member arrived, a young French lad in his twenties with a pair of headphones glued to his ears who resolutely refused to look anyone in the eye or make any attempt at conversation. He also had a large case and tutted to himself when he saw what little space was left available to him. I assumed he would have to leave the case outside somewhere but, working on the principle that if you shove something hard enough it will fit into even the smallest space, he proved me wrong.

The train departed right on time and we all lay in our beds, quiet as church mice. When you are lying flat, stacked in tiny bunks one of top of each other with no opportunity to make eye contact or smile, it is not easy to strike up a conversation. And then you wonder whether someone is trying to get to sleep and so you say nothing. Michael and I whispered goodnight to each other and then settled down. France was in the grip of an unseasonably late heat wave so it was a hot night, even more so in such a confined space.

I have taken a night train in the past in Thailand and remember the clickety-clack soothing me to sleep. Either my memory was playing tricks on me, or this was a different type of clickety-clack. It wasn’t soothing. It was deafening. The train was travelling at quite a speed, screeching round corners in a way that I had never before noticed on a train, sending me rolling from one side of the bed to the other. After a particularly violent lurch woke me just as I was on the cusp of sleep I had a vision of the train driver at the wheel, a manic grin on his face, reminiscent of Toad in Wind in the Willows when he gets his new car and terrorizes the neighbourhood with his driving antics.

Thankfully nobody snored, including me. I don’t normally snore but you can always guarantee that a different bed and a room full of strangers will have you doing something to embarrass yourself. Two of the other occupants got up to use the bathroom down the hall at 5am and with a squeaky sliding door there was no way to do it quietly. I waved silently in the semi-darkness to Michael, knowing he would be awake, and thought longingly of my bed at Le Shack, where all I could hear would be the hooting of the owls.

Despite the efforts of our train driver to keep us all awake, I must have got more sleep than I realised as I felt tired, but not exhausted, the next morning. We wrestled our luggage from underneath the bed and walked out into a heatwave, unseasonably warm even at 7am.

‘So what do you think?’ asked Michael. ‘Would you do it again?’

I thought for a moment and was surprised at my answer. ‘Yes I would. I rather like waking up and finding myself at my destination. It’s definitely better than spending hours sitting in a car in traffic, incredibly cheap and I imagine I would get used to the noise and motion if I did it a few more times. And even if it was not the most comfortable experience it was worth doing it to keep our carbon emissions low.’

And that draws a line under our summer season. Now we head back to Le Shack and the inevitable wilderness that awaits us. The area has had some massive storms and very heavy rains in our long absence so we wait to see what we will find. More news on that in the next blog.

Hope all is well and see you soon.

MJ