The Grand Rail Trip of 2022 - PART 8
Updated: Jan 27, 2024
It was an epic adventure spanning four countries, two Theme Parks, one Grand Slam Tennis Tournament and over 1,000 miles of Train Track. This is the amazing story of what happened along the way!
TGV Trains & The Race to Roland Garros
This was to prove the most testing day of the trip to date, but started as positively and calmly as any other.
I had a little time in the morning, so made my way to the Old Market Place. The square is dominated by a striking redstone Town Hall with the intricate architecture I had got used to in many guises throughout the trip. I made my way through the archway and stared up at the Town Hall Clock.
After admiring the other buildings in the area, it was time to set off to the station, where I grabbed a few last-minute local delicacies and made my way to the platform, where the train was due in roughly half an hour.
Then the fun truly began... 15 minutes later, there was an announcement the Train would be 30 minutes late, then in a blink of an eye 45 minutes. Apparently, this was due to a "last-minute change of personnel", which I took to mean there was no one to man the train!
An inconvenience, I thought, but not a disaster at this point, as it had only just gone 1pm and entry into Roland Garros wasn't until 6:30pm. But things were going to get even more bizarre. The announcement now translated as the train "not being ready", and for the next 45 minutes, there wasn't an announcement in any language. A packed platform of stressed passengers, including several businessmen.
2pm rolled around, now nearly 90 minutes after the train was due, and finally another announcement (although not translated into English) that drew cheers, so I felt a bit more optimistic. Although getting to Roland Garros was going to be tighter than I ever envisaged.
10 minutes later, the train arrived, to ironic applause and no apology from TGV. We moved fairly briskly to the first of only 2 stops before Paris, but this was to be a false dawn, as we then waited at this station for 20 minutes (presumably because this had now become the next scheduled train!) Once we were in sync with the next train, this high-speed train thankfully started to get moving, and the countryside views did at least calm the tense atmosphere for a while.
I arrived at Gare de Lyon a whopping 133 minutes late! It was now nearly 6 instead of just before 4, and I needed to catch a bus to my hotel and then 2 trams to Roland Garros - easy when you're unfamilar with a big city...(!)
Of course, it was now futile getting to the Tennis for some outdoor court viewing before the big night match, so I gave myself a short time-out at the hotel, and thankfully arrived at the ground just after 8 (the evening match starts at 8:45pm).
Thankfully, it turned out to be a very intriguing match between French sweetheart Alize Cornet and ever-unpredictable Jelena Ostapenko, despite what seemed like a cursed start with a 6-0 opening set to the former.
The grounds are altogether smaller than WImbledon, literally nestled in the Bois de Boulogne Forest area of Paris. You can walk around the entire complex in 20 minutes, visiting all the courts. It was an amazing experience, and the partisan French crowd is quite something to behold in person!
At the end of the day, I felt very proud how I held myself together in such adversity. Travel tests you like that sometime, and it turned out alright in the end, despite the best efforts of TGV!
Comments