Europe is open! Who's going?

[Blue Hills]

can folks please leave brexit out of this?
the thread is supposed to be about something else.
The politics bit, with its various performers, is thataway ....

 

[randynewmanscat]

am very impressed.
but still puzzled.
you separated yourself from the bike?
where was this other train sat/going with your bike on it?
can you travel inter-rail with a bike these days?
(I know that interrail isn't - very sadly - quite the same thing these days)
Good thing about cycle touring is of course that as long as you still have decent health and care not a sod what anyone thinks you can maintain the carefree attitude to travel of youth.

In the late 70's and to the mid 80's when I had both time and money (a rare thing in life) it was difficult to book your bike on the same train.
You would visit the bagages and book your bike in and be told what time it would arrive at your own destination. I think they used to send bikes on night trains for the long hauls and god knows what trains for the shorter journeys. You called in at the bagages with your counterfoil and had fingers and toes crossed that your bike was in one piece with all of its paint still in place, it always was.
I made many short hops and usually the bike went with me, sometimes in the carriage in the lobby spaces at the end.
I used to buy an annual European timetable, I can't remember the name but it was a fairly thick red covered book of the cheapest paper. I would cut out all the pages of routes I thought I might use in the countries I might or might not visit.
I bought my last ticket in 1986 two months before my 26th birthday which signalled the end of my ridiculously cheap travel costs.
I don't know if it's still possible to interrail with a bike. If SNCF still exist when I become a pensioner I get a decent reduction with a card, if my legs and brain are still turning I would like to try another "spin the wheel and see where we end up" bike and train tour.

 

[randynewmanscat]

One of my friends who was due to visit but baulked at the idea of two weeks within his house on return is having second thoughts as he realises he is mainly curtailed from much of normal life in a suburban environment anyway.
He has read that the French intend to reciprocate on quarantine and I have told him to wait and see. Last time this occurred the French made it clear that it was advisory rather than enforced and I wait to see what the state has to say. It's safe enough here at the moment, if he was not such a cautious person he would more likely bring the corona with him. His rants about seeing packed out beer gardens on his journeys to shops tells me what I need to know about why there are localised confinements in Manchester.

 

[Blue Hills]

thanks for the reply - we are roughly the same age - wonderful memories of the freewheeling go where you want (even the other side of the iron curtain) monthly interail pass.
I know a few young southern italians - (actually a big island) - a few of them had never really gone abroad let alone round their country until what to me was a pretty advanced age - basically because they expected to fly everywhere - wouldn't consider trains or ferries. also cited lack of money - when i told them I'd just got on trains and slept wherever (most nights not in a bed) one or two said "ah, it's not the 80s anymore" - still not sure what the hell they meant - the same possibilities are still there* if you take them.

* not sleeping on the steps between venice railway station and the grand canal unfortunately though - italy has got too prissy.

and to the folks determined to bring brexit here (please go elsewhere) all of this gloriously free travel was before the modern EU.

 

[randynewmanscat]

thanks for the reply - we are roughly the same age - wonderful memories of the freewheeling go where you want (even the other side of the iron curtain) monthly interail pass.
I know a few young southern italians - (actually a big island) - a few of them had never really gone abroad let alone round their country until what to me was a pretty advanced age - basically because they expected to fly everywhere - wouldn't consider trains or ferries. also cited lack of money - when i told them I'd just got on trains and slept wherever (most nights not in a bed) one or two said "ah, it's not the 80s anymore" - still not sure what the hell they meant - the same possibilities are still there* if you take them.

* not sleeping on the steps between venice railway station and the grand canal unfortunately though - italy has got too prissy.

and to the folks determined to bring brexit here (please go elsewhere) all of this gloriously free travel was before the modern EU.

Yes its all still possible I think. Not as cheap as the golden age when regular walk on tickets did not hurt the wallet too much if you travelled after 09:30. As a kid I used to travel first class on window licking trips to Manchester, paper rounds financed 1st class tickets from pocket change. When my parents extended my leash I used to travel to London on the Piccadilly to Euston train, first class on that too without putting a dent in my slim and moth infested pocket.
Nice to Montparnasse by TGV in 1990 £20 booked in the ticket office on day of travel. Times have changed in France and the service is crap and the tickets not cheap, SNCF privatisation being prepared I think, Noam Chomsky hit the nail squarely with his take on that.
Anyone reading this thread who tours or wants to should do what Mr Blue Hills and I have talked about while swerving off topic a lot. It is a rite of passage you will not regret if you are young or perhaps old and footloose to set out on a not so organised tour.

 

[Blue Hills]

>>if you are young or perhaps old and footloose to set out on a not so organised tour.

at the risk of continuing the divert of the joy of freewheeling cheapo travel, and age*, I well remember interraiing on a train to budapest sharing a carriage with a fellow inter-railer (I seem to recall she said she could get it or something similar for older folks) - she was well into her 60s I think - smallish woman with a large backpack - having the time of her life.

Life not risk-free of course - one year we narrowly missed the Bologna station bomb.

 

[Blue Hills]

Good news for anyone with a brommie?
BBC News - Eurostar to launch £40 Amsterdam to London trains
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53890139

 

[Julia9054]

Good news for anyone with a brommie?
BBC News - Eurostar to launch £40 Amsterdam to London trains
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53890139

Add to that the million pounds it costs to get the train from North Yorkshire to London.

 

[BoldonLad]

I don't see that I am at any more risk of spreading/catching covid19 on a rural campsite in France than I would be in Britain somewhere. In my experience, campsites in Britain are often more overcrowded than in France

Exactly.

Travelling in your own vehicle, via tunnel, not as if you are sitting in a confined space for 3 hours with 200 other people.

Enjoy!

 

[matticus]

I live about a third of the distance that julia does, and my travel to St Pancras costs way more than the train to Amsterdam!

 

[Blue Hills]

Add to that the million pounds it costs to get the train from North Yorkshire to London.

Pedal it juia.
You can't blame eurostar for the arrangement of the british landmass/the planets/the universe, even tho some may like to think all circle around yorkshire.
This by the by comes to you from an unmentionable yorkshire beer garden (ok,yard)fuelled by one of Naylor's finest seriously strong yorkshire brews.

 

[BoldonLad]

Or goes into the toilet block and leaves covid on everything they touch, and what fun it will be filling in the forms the French had people doing, just to go to the supermarket as they did a few months back, try arguing that with a gendarme, not to mention if the cafes and restaurants are closed, but you do what you want, have fun

We travelled by road, to UK, from Spain, in April this year, via France.

Filling in form was no problem.

We did get stopped twice by Gendarme, at roadblocks, they were helpful and pleasant.

The biggest problem we had was weeding the facts out of the hysteria posted on the internet by our fellow countrymen/women.

 

[Julia9054]

Pedal it juia.
You can't blame eurostar for the arrangement of the british landmass/the planets/the universe, even tho some may like to think all circle around yorkshire.
This by the by comes to you from an unmentionable yorkshire beer garden (ok,yard)fuelled by one of Narloy's finest seriously strong yorkshire brews.

Could do with a beer right now. Back wheel stopped spinning, had to be rescued, freewheel hub appears to be seized, can’t get the cassette off and the bike shop is shut on Mondays. Fed up.

 

[BoldonLad]

I hope not. Foot passengers provided the operators with running cost money during the dead periods and seasons via day trip booze and cig cruises. That will be dead next year with the customs union exit so the attraction of courting none car travellers will fade.
My golden age of cycle touring was as a youngster with no car but an interail ticket and a cross channel ferry. The country would be like a prison for people with no car or motorbike if shanks or pushbike was stopped permanently.
"I would like to leave the island next week".
"Have you got a car sir"?
"No".
"Ah then you'll need to travel by plane".
"But I have a serious fear of air travel".
"Sorry to hear that sir, perhaps you could buy a canoe and paddle across".

Perhaps you could get a cheap seat in one of the many inflatable boats, presumably, going back empty?

 

[matticus]

Julia9054 said:
Add to that the million pounds it costs to get the train from North Yorkshire to London.

Pedal it juia.
You can't blame eurostar for the arrangement of the british landmass/the planets/the universe, even tho some may like to think all circle around yorkshire.

No of course, we can't blame Eurostar - but it does very often feel like a service built primarily for Londoners. I guess they need to get away, there is so little to do in the capital, and I'm sure it's the poorest part of the UK ...