Up and away in good time and bought a couple of croissants for the journey. French Rail seems pretty straight forward. My train arrived on time, was clearly marked and left on time. It was clean and comfortable, the announcements were clear and backed up with a digital display and it arrived five minutes early. Not at all like BR then.

No time to see much Marseilles but I’ve put my bags in left luggage so let’s see what we can find.

In fact not very much. Usually the main railway station in a big city is surrounded by enterprises catering for the needs of travellers; not in Marseilles. Here they appear to have demolished all the useful things like shops, bars and restaurants and built what I think is a university. Now that’s progress. I’m sure that useful facilities do exist but it’s too damned hot to go walkabout today.

There are of course shops and restaurants in the station but I still refuse to go to McDonald’s. In the event I did manage to find a small and very busy place which offered a very acceptable plat du jour of salmon in a light cheese sauce with rice. Just the job.

Anyway, back in sunny Gatwick and the bags came up in record time so over an hour to wait for my train. Always a conundrum; do you book an early train and risk missing it if the baggage is slow or book later and have time to kill.

Mrs Sixwheeler is glad to hear that I’m back and is looking forward to ‘the present’. Hope she likes it.

I’m home, she did. Result!
Sixwheeler
27 September 2013