81 (Not Quite) Murder on the TGV Express

(Lille - Marseille - Avignon - Lyon - Southern Belgium - Lille: 19th - 26th October, 2025)

TGV high speed trains are the pride of France. In fewer then 6 hours you can travel across the country from border to border at speeds over 300kph. Domestic flights shorter than 2 hours have been killed off (by politics as well as ticket sales) in favour of the more sustainable trains.

The passenger experience can be brilliant, or not…

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Sunday 19^th October:

07.23 First train of the day from Lille Europe promising to reach Marseille by lunchtime.

I’m boarding a pre-dawn, older, single-deck TGV with elegant curved seating designed by Lacroix in muted 1980’s warm reds and purples. The train is showing its age, but comfortable enough for zipping in a rear facing seat across the rolling farmlands of Haute-de- France, smoothly inducing the odd quiet doze through muted rush and distant engine howl at top speeds. The family of 5 in front of me is on a school holiday trip to the south of France.  Mum and three adolescent daughters settle into board games around one table;  Dad is parked across the aisle immersing himself in a brick-sized Stephen King novel.

8.20: We are bypassing Paris to the east, decelerating into the crowded platforms of Charles de Galle Airport T2. The train suddenly fills, with many boarding passengers presenting that bleary and crumpled jet-lag-exhausted look from too many overnight hours in Economy class, clambering in with the wide-awake business-attired locals.

8.30: Amidst the locating-of-seats-racking-of bags-and-many-“Pardons” scrum, are three “fresh”- off-the-plane Australian blokes: two slightly corpulent retirees and their somewhat less corpulent and not-looking-at-all-retired  Asian companion… who fuss and squeeze themselves and hand luggage into/under/around the 3 vacant seats  around the end table and occupied aisle seat of  Stephen King reading Dad.

 The ”leader” of the pack (who is dressed in brown corduroy and tweed from cloth cap to all points south), is barking instructions and complaints about what to do with bags, backpacks, coats; legs as he squeezes across towards one window. The other big bloke does the same with a cursory “Pardon” to French Dad who moves to side-saddle allowing a large butt’s access to the remaining window seat. There’s no longer any  squeeze room under or around the table as He-In-Brown launches into a seemingly endless and relentlessly loud  monologue to his friends, with unfortunately clear diction across the carriage. The friends nod (very) compliantly at the faux-educated-Adelaide vowels that drone on…

Asian friend manages about 7 minutes of this before reaching for a charger cable and immersing himself in his phone. Brown Bore (as he is fast becoming) uses his phone for during-the-speech research and show-and-tell to his corpulent opposite mate as he “informs” and entreats and cajoles an moans to his nodding mate on and on…

French Dad, by this time, has turned slightly to beseechingly raise one eyebrow to his family across the aisle. They stay immersed in board games, avoiding eye-contact at all costs. He sighs and returns to his Stephen King brick.

Brown Bore now settles in to effectively “hold court” in the rear corner of the carriage for more than 3 hours, seemingly able to breathe in while simultaneously moaning out, about the state of Europe and sights they must see and food they must eat and wines they must sample and how awful the flight had been and on and on and on… When interrupted by conductors or pausing as people passed,  he performs a sad, rictus, “please-like-me” smile before locating more important prompts on his phone screen the  droning on and on and on and on… 

9.25: French Dad twists in his seat to look behind at those of us in the next row, exchanging an eye-roll, as his hands reach behind one, then the other, ear. He is turning off his hearing aids. He then returns, undeterred, to Stephen King.

I managed a few more dozes through much this ambient, lecturing  Brown Noise… waking briefly to find that French Dad and Mum had negotiated some respite and swapped seats across the aisle, as the Brown Bore Sermon continues mercilessly… on… until:

11.33:  There is a sudden thud, a shut-down of carriage lights and air conditioning;  a decelerating howl to a standstill. Silence; a brief announcement in French apologising for a technical problem. The relentless Brown One has ceased broadcast Boring, now desperately searching his phone for an itinerary or explanation. Asian guy asks a passing conductor (in French) what is happening. Polite conductor regards the table group and says, in impeccable English, that a technical problem has stopped the train. “Oh, NO!” cries the previously incessant Brown Bore, “But WE have our lunch booked in Avignon at 12 o’clock!”

This is greeted by some extended, side-eyed and silent schadenfreude amongst surrounding passengers, feigning even deeper interest in books, phones, board games, backs of seats and swiftly overtaking trains….

Lights and air-conditioning returned. We were encouraged to patronise the buffet. Most passengers sat silently, patiently; well informed by the crew. As were those slumped Australian blokes whose big, booked lunch in Avignon was slip-sliding away…

12.25 the Eurail app suggested this would be a 2 hour delay.

1.30: A junior high school excursion group had joined the train at Lyon at 10.30. After regular progress announcements from the conductors (in extended French and brief English), surrounded by the regular high speed trains howling past in both directions, some students calculated that during 3 hours on the train, they had only experienced about 40 minutes of actual travel. Restive? Just a bit.

1.35: The calm and polite conductors’ announcement (very detailed in French; mercifully brief in English) is that we will reverse for about 15 minutes to Valence TGV Rhone Alps station. Another train is being found for us and it should arrive soon after 2pm. The school students are getting a tad tetchy by now (managed well by patrolling teachers in the aisle). Everyone else appears unconcerned and accepting: the conductors patrolling the train make us feel we were in good hands.

1.45 The train has reversed tentatively… and is trailing back to Valence TGV Rhone Alps. Frequent Marseilles-bound TGV trains keep relentlessly and spitefully zipping past us.

2.10: We are now in a concrete-bleak TGV station in the middle of nowhere-in-particular but apparently close to Valence. The school kids are let out to frolic and have grabbed part of the platform as their playground, supervised by Teachers minding their bags. Everyone else: still train-bound.

2.20: An empty, second class only, budget, double-deck “TGV Ouigo” slides in to the opposite platform. Announcement in English: “Please join the other train!”  This is our rescue!  (And too bad if you’d paid for first class). Within 10 minutes we are transferred, seated and on our way in a spotless and more comfortable train done out in cheap ‘n cheerful baby-blue and baby-pink plastic upholstery. Nice. The school excursion group and stoic teachers have a whole carriage to themselves. Nicer. I am nowhere near the ponderous, monotonous, whiny, condescending noise of the Brown Bore. Soooo much nicer.

2.40: I’m in an airy top-deck seat. Each passenger is being offered an “SNCF Voyageurs Assistance” ration pack (“A ce titre, nous vous offrons cette collation”), by our (same) passing-and-polite-under-stress-in-multi-languages conductors. Eating a canned bean and rice salad with a disposable wooden fork, plus juice, with cracker snack packs and gummy lollies to follow: life is pretty good as we hurtle south at 230kph towards Marseilles, glimpsing the sun bathed, glowing: Roquefavour Aqueduct in an olive-green gorge to the west as the train rolls down towards the Mediterranean coast.

 I’m not sure where else in the world a long-distance rail company could rustle up a spare and spotless high-speed train within 2 hours, with crew, and a ration box for each of more than 200 passengers, presented with a personal apology from their conductor… to tide them over for the final hour and a half of their journey.   Impressive!

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Avignon to Lyon:

Monday 20^th October: (The school holidays are ending: you have been warned…):

The wooden platform boards of Avignon TGV station were clumped with large groups around platform door signs for the approaching train. Families and youth groups formed most of the crowd, with substantial baggage. A group of excited pre-schoolers (each in a light-blue baseball cap with their felt-penned first name above the peak) is milling around and being farewelled by doting parents, many carrying and checking tiny blue backpacks for their offspring…

The 15.15 TGV service to Rennes roared in: doorways even more packed than the platform. The lower deck appeared very full as I was among the last to push onto the train. The “Bagages” area just inside the lower deck door was an overstuffed mountain of bags-of-all-sorts shoved in, around and above two folded bicycles.  Moving any part of this wall of luggage invited a landslide. I gave up on ever reaching my reserved seat in the far distant end of a lower deck scattered with belongings, settling quite comfortably perched on my own soft luggage, in the vestibule, wedged between the carriage doors and the ladies’ loo, offered a perfect view of the Van Gough/Cezanne landscapes of the passing Auvergne-Rhone-Alps countryside.

Two curt conductors in smart SNCF blue-with-red-trim uniforms and rakish caps tramped downstairs, approached me, checked my pass and seat reservation, muttering  briefly to each other about the congestion downstairs before one bloke gave me the Gallic “it-is-what-it-is” shrug before venturing into the luggage cave of lower deck, and I got stung by a bee.

I say: “bee”: it was a very plump, nasty dark-grey and yellow, 3cm long giant of a bugger, which I swiftly swiped from my arm with my cap… but too late! It had inflicted one prolonged stab and the bastard came back for more: landing on my shirt front and insisting it could stay until another vicious hat-swipe landed it on the floor within stamping distance.

I returned my distracted eyes towards the scenery and the book.

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It was an hilarious time at the Rue de Bonnel After-Hours Pharmacy in Lyon, seeking advice about my rapidly swelling upper arm. (Thank you, again: Google Translate! I can at least wander in with the “issue” described on screen in something like French and receive a quiet, knowing smile from the assistant). The adjacent pharmacist was being berated by a screaming customer with a fist full of what looked like screwed-up prescriptions, but not for the medication she actually wanted….

I was invited into “la salle” out back for a bit of show-and-tell; mime-and-grimace, away from the noise, then a tube of something anti-histamine and:

“Are you allergic?”

“J’ai le Prednisone.”

“You’ll NEED it!” she exclaimed in Anglais parfait.

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Tuesday 21^st October: The discrete charm of French Railway Bureaucracy

The Lyon Perrache “Voyageurs” booking office is unusually free of waiting customers in queues and I need to rebook onto a later train from Lille on Sunday. Belgian Railways are imposing the mixed “delights” of weekend trackwork north of the border I will lose my TGV connection to Paris.

Standing at the end of the empty queue-tape are two uniformed concierges. I have typed my re-booking request into Google Translate on the phone ready for my probable failed French for this simple transaction.

“Ah… Monsieur…” sighs the female concierge, sweeping her gaze across the vastness of floor space and empty seats between ourselves and a two occupied guichets in the hazy middle distance, “I think the man on the droite may assist.”

I slither across shiny tiles to the “Man on the Droite”. He peers uncertainly through round spectacles at my sad documentation and sadder Google Translate; “Ah… Monsieur, I do not believe it is possible…” sliding my paper seat reservation back in my direction.

“I just need a seat on a later train to Paris. Is this not possible?”

“But, Monsieur, you have a foreign booking. Is not possible. Best for you to get to Lille then go to the Voyageurs office when you miss your connection. They will replace it for you.”

(WHEN I miss my connection…(!))

“Is there no later train I can reserve from here?”

I slowly slide my reservation papers back towards Man on the Droite. He pushes the little round specs further up his nose and turns to confront the computer screen again, tapping more sparingly this time.

“Yes, but you will pay for the change.”

“I would like to pay.”

(Pause)

“I will see if it can be done.” Turns to computer. Taps quickly and gazes intently through those small round specs. “Monsieur, it seems it may be poss-ible to change your reservation but not at this office.”

“Where will I need to go?”

“Monsieur, I will check.“  More tapping and intense gazing… “Monsieur, it seems that I can reserve you a seat after all, but there will be a fee.”

“I am happy to pay the fee.”

More intensive tapping, intense gazing through those little round specs, even further tapping…

Man on the Droite abruptly swerves his computer screen around for me to read: “Here are the later TGVs to Paris,” (There is one every hour) “Which would you prefer?”

I select the one which will allow more than an hour for a change of trains, hopefully with time for a civilised brasserie dinner on the square outside Lille Flandres station.

The screen is unswerved. Increasingly intent focus; increasingly intense tapping follow;  another push of those little round specs further up to the bridge of the nose.

A sudden receipt is spat from a counter printer.

“Monsieur, here is your seat reservation for the 19.18 TGV from Lille Flandres to Paris Nord for next Sunday. And, Monsieur, on your pass there is no charge for this ticket. Merci Monsieur!”

Voila!

And 25 minutes of my sightseeing time in Lyon has been well spent, non?

Sunday 26^th October: The lines less travelled…

I largely avoided dodgy TGV experiences for the next few days by taking relaxed and less crowded regional and local trains north across eastern France and into Belgium. I found myself surviving the interminably slow Belgian Sunday trackwork “bus bridge” from Saint Ghislain to Tournai, arriving into Lille Flanders just as a TGV to Paris was simultaneously departing.

I’m so pleased the SNCF computer at Lyon Perrache eventually said “Oui”: I enjoyed a leisurely steak frites at a traditional corner brasserie opposite the station with a passable Durif, surrounded by gregarious locals who had settled in for a long afternoon of le football… The final TGV ride to Paris was top deck with 3 uni students around a shared table and single powerpoint. Negotiating our various phone charging cables in three languages succeeded well, so that all of us detrained at Gare du Nord with working phones.

After arriving into the terminal, unfortunately I found my travelling  iPad had also suffered a terminal experience… and stubbornly refused to be revived.