Next month, I have a birthday that ends in a zero. Firstly, since the start of this year, Railcoop , a new railway co-operative, has been offering affordable long-distance travel between provincial towns and cities. The new trains meander for hours along unused, or under-used, secondary lines. Journey time: 7 hours and 30 minutes. This service used to be run by the state railway company, SNCF, but was abandoned many years ago. Other routes will eventually include Caen to Toulouse via Limoges in 9 hours and 43 minutes, and Le Croisic in Brittany to Basel in Switzerland with twenty-five intermediate stops in 11 hours and 13 minutes.
These itineraries — unbroken train journeys avoiding Paris — have never existed before, not even at the height of the railway boom at the end of the nineteenth century. Travel is restricted to off-peak hours and must be booked at least two days in advance. A journey that involves changing trains entails separate bookings, one for each leg, but you can book up to six journeys on any given day. None of these restrictions presents any real problems, and the card seems tailor-made for someone like me.
I love travelling by train. By this I really mean journeys that last a minimum of an hour or so. But on longer train journeys, something happens when one passes the hour mark. Noisy children have usually quietened down, and adults have stopped fussing about their seats and luggage. Conversation has become quieter and more sporadic. Some people read or use their mobile devices. I find this extremely relaxing. One can engage with it at will, or simply stare at it with unseeing eyes.
Dozing is not compulsory but highly recommended. I used to think that an ideal existence might be to be permanently in transit, stopping overnight, or occasionally for a few days, in favourite places. I managed this a couple of times when I was younger, Interrailing around Europe a few weeks at a time, and I loved every minute of it. Now that I am older and wiser … well, now that I am older, I realise that this is not really feasible as a long-term strategy.
However, these two new French rail initiatives present an attractive alternative, and this has given me an idea. My plan is to visit, in order, an A to Z of twenty-six French towns and cities, staying a day or two in each, all journeys to be completed by train for free, whenever possible , and ideally all to be done within one year. The main objective will be to travel as widely as possible throughout France, visiting all coasts and borders, and criss-crossing the centre in as many ways as I can.
