The joys of winter travel

Hello and welcome to the first blog of 2026 on The Olivia Rose Diaries. We’re leaving the UK for a house-sit in Strasbourg for a couple of weeks before going home to Le Shack.

Because we don’t have a car, our journeys are often complicated, a sometimes bewildering concoction of buses, trains, trams, tubes, taxis, ferries and, very occasionally, a plane. We have learnt over the years that schedules and timetables can be fickle travelling companions.

‘This bus is late,’ I said, stamping my feet and jogging on the spot in an effort to keep warm. Storm G had just swept its way through the UK and, whilst the snow had largely disappeared, it was still freezing. The bus company has an app which allows you to track exactly where the buses are, a useful tool, but here in the heart of wealthy commuter-belt East Sussex, we find ourselves still in the dark ages as there is no mobile signal whatsoever.

‘They’ve been late all week,’ said Michael. ‘Give it ten minutes.’

Twenty minutes later there was still no sign of it and the window of opportunity for catching a train in nearby Haywards Heath for the next leg of our journey was shrinking fast. A biting wind added to the joy of the moment and my jogging on the spot turned into a fully fledged aerobics class in a bid not to turn blue with the cold.

‘Is everything alright?’ asked a local man walking past. ‘Do you need help?’

‘No, we’re fine, thank you’ I said, with that false gaiety that comes from being brought up with the British stiff upper lip. ‘We’re just waiting for the bus.’

‘Ah,’ he nodded in instant understanding. ‘Good luck with that.’

And then it arrived, skidding to a halt, the doors opened and a blast of warm air welcomed us aboard. We usually travel light, but this had been a Christmas trip, and so we barely had enough hands to carry all our luggage: one suitcase, one large rucksack and another smaller one, and three big carrier bags stuffed full of Christmas goodies and those naughty little impulse buys. It took us a while to get ourselves on board and I could see the driver glaring at us, a desperate sort of impatience all over his face.

‘The bus before this one didn’t turn up at all,’ proffered the lady opposite as I unwittingly caught her eye. I couldn’t help but notice that, rather strangely for a freezing January, she was wearing trousers that had been cut off at the knee. ‘There was a pile-up near East Grinstead.’ she continued. ‘Hold on to your seat. He doesn’t hang about, this one.’

Our bus driver, possibly east European but I’m hopeless with accents, must have been a rally car driver in a previous life and hadn’t yet adjusted to the fact that the narrow country lanes of Sussex are not a racing track, no matter how late you may be. As we hurtled at terrifying speed through the villages, careening round blind bends, I hung on to the rail with one hand and gathered my Christmas bounty around me with the other in a bid to prevent it shooting off down the aisle, doing a passable impersonation of a bag lady protecting her stash.

Thirty minutes later we were on the train to Lewes, where we changed for Newhaven and the 1700 ferry to Dieppe. I’m not keen on ferries. I’ve been on loads of them but on each trip I know that there will be a moment when I am plagued by the thought that one of my least favourite ways of dying is by drowning. Luckily, this time we arrived without mishap, our primary concern as we neared the harbour about how we would get from the port into the town to our hotel. I had a typically perplexing conversation with the information office about the timetable for the shuttle bus, laid on by the ferry company specifically for foot passengers.

‘It says here that the bus doesn’t meet this ferry in the winter, doesn’t begin until May in fact. Which is strange as your ferries run all year round.’

‘Ah, yes. That is what it says, but it doesn’t mean it.’

‘So there will definitely be a bus waiting for us?’

‘I think so, yes. As far as I know.’

‘You think so? And just supposing, for the sake of argument, that there is no shuttle bus?’

‘Then you will have to take a taxi because it is a long walk. Even longer than usual because they’ve shut the bridge for repairs. Maybe 5 kilometres. But the taxis don’t like to work too late…..’ he shrugged apologetically.

I hardly dared look as we came out of the terminal booking, but it was a win for logic because the shuttle was indeed waiting for us and, ending the day as we began it, the sight of a bus made me incredibly happy. Forty minutes later we were in our hotel and heading for bed.

The following morning saw us at the station, waiting for a train to Rouen, where we would change and take another train to Paris. From there we had an hour to get across the city to catch another train which would take us directly to Strasbourg. All our tickets and details are on our phone which is just as well as there comes a point where we start forgetting things.

‘So,’ said Michael, his head bent over the screen. ‘We can sit anywhere on the first train. We arrive on platform one and have ten minutes to get to platform three where we’re in carriage 3, on the lower deck, seat numbers 42 and 44.’

I nodded, wondering what happened to seat 43. Two minutes later I realised I’d already forgotten the platform number.

‘What platform was it?’

‘Oh for god’s sake, I can’t remember.’ And out came the phone again.

With tight connections every minute counts and getting off the train quickly is paramount. Unfortunately everything came to a grinding halt in our carriage as one of the passengers was travelling with a rabbit. The rabbit itself wasn’t the problem, as it seemed to be quite happy in a bespoke carrying case, but its owner was also transporting a cage, big enough to house a small colony of rabbits, which got wedged in the aisle. Seeing everybody queued up behind him, his attempts to free it became ever more frantic until one particularly violent shove did the trick and out he popped, with other passengers close on his heels.

Finally we arrived in Strasbourg, on a cold, wet night in the dark. Tomorrow we were due to pick up a hire car as our house-sit is 20 km away but for tonight it was another hotel. We headed out for something to eat, finding a curry house that provided a very pleasant meal but which tasted nothing like curry, and then it was back out into the drizzle because I can’t visit this city and not go to see the cathedral.

We’ve been here several times, but my first visit is the one that I will never forget. We went to see the ‘son et lumière’ that takes place on summer evenings in the high season, using the cathedral as its backdrop. Strasbourg by night is a magical place and the cathedral seemed to me to be straight out of a fairy tale: softly lit, towering spires reaching so high into the sky I could almost believe they might get somewhere close to heaven, gargoyles and carvings and stained glass windows, romantic, inspiring, just gorgeous.

It didn’t look quite the same on a bedraggled winter’s evening, but even so there was enough of a hint of the old magic to satisfy me.

I still have the memory of that first visit and I will never lose it – although the way I am struggling to remember seat and platform numbers doesn’t bode well.

The next morning we gratefully stowed our cumbersome luggage in the hire car and set off for what would be our home for the next two weeks. It occurred to me that in times past we would have undertaken this whole journey in our old campervan, certainly easier and more convenient, and yet I don’t wish for a return to that way of life. Life is so much more interesting on buses and trains!

See you next week.

MJ