Reims; Friday, 12 April, 2024

I was booked on the last Eurostar of the night out of St Pancras, so after finishing work at the normal time I headed down to my location station to catch the train into town.

I had a smooth journey through St Pancras and was soon in the lounge with a little while to wait before our train was due to board.

We were called about 25 minutes before departure time to head up to the platform to board and consequently we were all boarded and closed up with a good 5 minutes to go before our scheduled departure time, but we still had to wait until our scheduled departure to actually head off.

The journey across Southern England and through the Chunnel was uneventful, though we noticeably started to slow towards the end of the Chunnel, and by the time we emerged on the French side we were noticeably crawling along, culminating in the train grinding to a halt in the station at Calais-Fréthun for about 15 minutes.

Thankfully the train managers were proactive in letting everyone know what was happening, the train ahead of us had struck a deer and was at a standstill, so we were going to have to wait for the train to be checked out before we could move.

Eventually we set off, but with the time lost to slowing down and speeding back up again we were running about 20 minutes late, and didn’t make up any of that time before we finally arrived into Paris.

As my train the following morning was departing from Gare de l’Est, I’d booked to stay overnight in a hotel over by that station, so after arriving into Gare du Nord there was a 10 minute walk through some of the sketchier parts of Paris on a Friday night close to midnight to reach my room for the night and, as soon as I’d checked in and made it to my room, bed.