Paris to London

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The weather forecast said rain developing later today, but it was already pissing down when we woke up!! As we were eating breakfast we tried to ring for a taxi, but there was so much demand for taxis that we could not get through - our calls kept terminating before we could be connected to the despatcher!!

So, once again, we had to go to Plan B! Today that meant hauling our bags to the Metro station Cardinal Lemoine in the rain and making our way to Gare du Nord by train. It wasn't too bad actually - it was only a short walk in the rain to Cardinal Lemoine and after that we were underground all the way and out of the rain.

After we had negotiated the stairs at Cardinal Lemoine and changed lines at Cluny La Sorbonne we didn't really have any other obstacles to negotiate. I even had a lovely young man help me with my bag - chivalry is not dead in Paris!! Or ... am I starting to look old enough to need assistance???

Our check-in for the Eurostar to London went smoothly and very soon we were all aboard for London for an on-time departure. When the train came out into the daylight (by which stage we had been underground for a couple of hours!) it was still raining. Not bad for a forecast which said 'showers developing later'.

I took note of the time when we entered the chunnel and established that the train is only underneath the English Channel for about 19 minutes!! I didn't want to think too much about the chunnel bit of the journey - I don't even like going through the Burnley Tunnel on CityLink - but that section of the trip passed surprisingly quickly.

In no time at all (it seemed) the Eurostar was pulling into St Pancras station in London. For intercity travel within Europe the very fast trains certainly provide an efficient alternative to air travel. Any additional time spent on the journey is ameliorated by the shorter check-in times. We have enjoyed the rail legs of our trip and would definitely travel by train again in Europe.

St Pancras International Station connects to the King's Cross London Underground Station so we made our (via escalators and lift, thank goodness) down to King's Cross where Bernie topped up our Oyster cards at one of the machines. Too easy! We were able to take the blue line from King's Cross directly to Heathrow where we picked up our hire car. We probably could have collected the car in the city, but we didn't want to have to worry about negotiating the traffic in central London and whether or not we would incur the congestion tax and so on. We have driven between Heathrow Airport and Pinner (our ultimate destination) before and it was easy to go the extra distance on the train.

As we walked through Terminal 4 at Heathrow, Bernie spotted a vending machine selling Broadband only SIMs so we bought another SIM for the mi-fi. Hopefully this one will be a better proposition than the French one???

From Terminal 4 we caught the courtesy bus (via ALL the other terminals) to the Hertz car rental depot where they didn't have any cars in the category that Bernie booked!!! Well actually, they did have some cars in the category, but not any that Bernie wanted to drive?? I think we could have taken a base model Ford Focus, but we had one of those last time we were in the UK and Bernie didn't like it all that much. If they'd had a Ford Focus Zetec he would have taken it, but he didn't want to drive the base model for the next three weeks. So, for a mere £300 Bernie arranged to upgrade to an Audi A4 which is a very nice car!!

The Audi comes with LOTS of gadgetry (electronic parking brake, climate control, parking sensors all round) and features including built in SatNav. Oh dear, Edna (TomTom) has been rendered obsolete - I hope she will still be speaking to us when we get home??!

With Marilyn and Jim's address programmed in, we set off for Pinner where we were made very welcome, once again. After meeting Jim's business partner over a cup of tea, we set out on a short walking tour of Pinner before dinner. Jim showed us all the points of interest and dropped the names of various celebrities who have lived in the town - Ronnie Barker and David Suchet being a couple of names in a long list that we actually recognised!! Apparently, Pinner is close enough to London to be convenient, but far enough away to have some privacy.

As we were finishing dinner, Jim's daughter, Kate, and son-in-law, Carl, dropped around. I was talking with Kate and she mentioned that one of her teaching colleagues is from Australia - she used to live in the Victorian town that was abandoned and then moved to Nelson?? We thought she must have been talking about Yallourn (abandoned to allow for the expansion of the open-cut brown coal mine), but Nelson had us beat because the only Nelson we know of is in New Zealand. So, I started reeling off the names of towns in Gippsland. Moe, no, Morwell, no, Trafalgar - yes, that's it. Obviously!!

Kate was so excited that we were familiar with her friend's home town that she called her so that I could have a chat with a fellow country girl from Gippsland. Although we are about the same age we couldn't establish that our paths had ever crossed when we were younger. THAT would have been way too freaky!

To conclude the evening the six of us tried to straighten out the net over the fishpond. Marilyn and Jim had someone in to clean it recently, but they didn't do a very good job of replacing the net to protect the fish from voracious grey herons. It must have been quite a sight - six grown adults perched around the side of the fish pond turning the netting every which way trying to make it fit back over the pond!! Definitely in the same category as trying to fold a fitted sheet neatly - it can't be done. After a lot of mucking around it was better, but still not quite right.

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Comments

[Leo]

Gipsies, Scams and other traps!
Hi Tracey and Bernie, Love the photos, especially the night shots around Paris ... makes us very nostalgic! Experienced travellers like you would know how to avoid the 'angry gypsies' at Sacre Coeur ... I just tumbled in much to Lyn's concern. As for the ring scam, it was tested on us about 5 or 6 times but we managed to avoid being ripped off. Love to you both ... and please seay hi to Janet.