Eurostar

Living close to St Pancras we did the booking in person. However the office where you book bikes (Eurostar Despatch) is quite different from where you book seats. We booked the seats first and then went to book the bikes only to discover that our outward train did not have any bikes places left. The train before it did so we booked our bikes on that. Living close, this was not a problem for us but could be for other people. Not sure what the solution is - one person booking the seats and one booking the bikes, connected by mobile phones?Jean tells me that to do it by phone they recommend you make multiple phone calls checking on availability of seats and bike places before you book anything. Two good things:

1. They sort of recommend that you bag your bikes but it’s not mandatory.
2. During the journey home we asked to speak to the Train Manager and asked him whether we could collect the bikes straight off the train, rather than from the despatch office. He agreed and it meant that we could load up the panniers on the platform rather than struggle with carrying them around the station.

Eurostar in Paris

The place where you deliver/collect your bike is at the far end of the station – a very long walk with panniers. There are luggage lockers (consigne), 1 level down at the front left of the station. There’s a security scanner, You need the right coins and it’s a really unpleasant place but we found it very useful.

While delivering our bikes at Paris we learnt (through acting as unofficial interpreter on a phone call) that at Paris they don’t take bookings – you just turn up with the bike. It seems strange but that was the view of the (nice, sensible) man behind the counter.

Sleeper train

We’d been told that our bikes had to be in bags so that was a bit of a pain – taking off the front wheels and turning the handlebars – but we were expecting them to go into some sort of guards van. No way – we were expected to have them in the sleeper with us! And we did! We hoisted one up onto a shelf near the ceiling and the other rested on the floor. It was very cramped but amazingly it worked.

Lessons learnt:

1. For 2 bikes you need 3 bags, one for each bike and one for the 2 front wheels. Depending on the type of bag you might find some parcel tape very useful.
2. Try and find out which platform your train will be on, and where your carriage will be on that platform. Carrying all your panniers plus 3 bikes bags is no joke.

Richenda Walford