Back to the Netherlands on the night sleeper

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on April 22^nd 2024.

We are on the move once again, taking the night train to Paris and from there to the Netherlands. I can’t sleep. I’m guessing it’s the early hours of the morning and I can tell from the restless movements on the berth above me that I am not the only one who is wide awake.

There are six of us in this cabin, 3 bunk beds stacked one above the other on each side. A single ticket costs €29 and at that bargain price, not surprisingly, the train is full. There is something very appealing about going to bed in one corner of the country and waking up twelve hours later with a huge portion of your journey under your belt. Or there would be, if you could get a good night’s sleep.

Sleeping with strangers in a space that makes a shoe box seem like a luxury apartment by comparison is an experience. This is the second time we’ve done it – the jury is out on whether we shall do it a third time. However on both occasions our fellow passengers have been unfailingly polite and considerate. Although we have to date shared our space with French people, this train picks up passengers in Lourdes, a major religious destination for pilgrims, and from that point on you can hear accents from all around the world as you walk down the carriage. The night trains are used by people of all ages, by solo travelers, couples, families and groups and from our limited experience they feel safe places to be.

Night falls and we all climb into our sleeping bags, which are supplied by the train company, together with a small pillow, a sleep mask, ear plugs and a bottle of water. The human race makes a wide range of noises that are quite separate from everyday, face-to-face communication. We get used to these noises from our loved ones, the people we spend all our time with so that their habits are something we hardly notice any more. It’s different when you are in a confined space with people you don’t know. We sniff, grunt, sigh, cough and mutter to ourselves under our breath and yes, before my nearest and dearest gleefully hit their keyboards to inform me that I am a constant mutterer, I confess to my crime – guilty as charged. And then there are the noises we make when we are asleep, although we have been fortunate on both trips and not had to put up with heavy breathing or snoring.

I have come to the conclusion that there are three reasons I sleep so badly on night trains. The first is that there is always someone in the cabin who stays up late and, whilst the main cabin lights are turned off, each bunk has a reading light. Invariably that person will be on their phone and I personally find it difficult to sleep with the lights on, particularly blue light. Eventually I put on the sleep mask and this certainly helped.

Secondly, the train travels at speed, enough to send you staggering from one side of the corridor to the other if you happen to be on your feet when it shoots round a bend. When lying down, the movement is less noticeable, but there were still several times when I was just on the cusp of blessed sleep and a well-timed lurch woke me up.

Lastly, there is the noise, and the ear plugs didn’t help me on this one. Strangely, the clickety-clack as we went along was not particularly a problem. At some time in the night the train stopped for a couple of hours, a normal part of the timetable, presumably because otherwise they would arrive in Paris in the early hours of the morning, but during those stationary hours they left the generator for the heating system going. It was one of those loud, insistent noises that gets inside your head and then you can’t switch off from it. Or at least it got inside my head……

Notwithstanding these small niggles, the journey went like clockwork from beginning to end. We arrived in Paris, grabbed a taxi rather than endure rush hour on the Metro, took the Eurostar to Rotterdam, followed by a couple of smaller train connections and a local bus and by mid afternoon we were standing outside our B&B. We were the only people on the bus and the driver had kindly dropped us by the door rather than at the bus stop. This would be our home for the next ten days while we carried out maintenance work on Olivia Rose, long days of sanding, priming, and painting, one of the more dubious joys of owning a boat.

After our disturbed night we were in bed by 8.30pm and slept for 11 hours solid. A tip for anyone tempted to take a night train is to make sure you give yourself time for a long sleep and an easy day afterwards!

We had left our balmy southern home after weeks of summer temperatures, the seasons all out of kilter, but now we found ourselves at the other extreme and the difference literally felt like a slap in the face. Temperatures close to freezing at night, barely reaching 10 degrees during the day, heavy rain, grey skies and very windy weather.

We are hopeful the weather may improve for the next week, but regardless of what it throws at us we are happy to be here. We like the Netherlands and we particularly like this area, not far from the pleasant town of Gorinchem, a name that we find impossible to say correctly in Dutch.

From what we can see this immediate area along the River Linge seems to be a thriving smallholder community, and so there are chickens, goats, sheep, even guinea pigs and rabbits, and it feels as if the clocks stopped a couple of decades ago. People are friendly and relaxed and the pace of life is slow, which suits us perfectly. And everywhere we turn there is water, the rivers, canals and lakes, mercurial, mesmerising, changing colour and mood on a whim.

Those of you who have been following my blog for some time will be very familiar with Olivia Rose, but for my newer followers I will try and put up some  pictures of her next week. At the moment she is sandwiched between other boats on the hard standing at the boatyard so I can’t get a decent shot.

We hope to put her back in the water around April 30^th and after that your personal guided tour of this beautiful country will begin anew. Although if this weather doesn’t improve it will be a very slow journey – we are strictly fair weather sailors!

The sun came out this afternoon and so I rushed out and took some pictures for you. I confess I indulged myself, as you can see from the animal theme.

Best wishes.

Mary-Jane