Rail travel within France
TGV speeding through Burgundy
The French rail system (SNCF) is extensive and very efficient. We often use it to get from Paris to the start of our walk and back again at the end. We use the SNCF website to book our tickets out of Paris.
If you book in advance you can get a “prem” ticket, which is much cheaper. Prems can be purchased from 3 months before travel until 8 days before, but there are only a limited number available on each train, so book early. Prem tickets are non-exchangeable and non-refundable. The TGV (high-speed train) network is more expensive than normal trains, but saves time and is quite an experience.
Gare de Lyon
Tickets bought over the net can either be printed on your own printer or posted to you. For some unfathomable Gallic reason, you are only given this choice if your trip does not involve a change of trains. Otherwise you must have the tickets posted to you. There is a long list of countries to which SNCF will post tickets, including Antarctica and various Australian territories, but not Australia itself, nor New Zealand, nor the USA. The easy way around this problem is to buy separate tickets for each leg of your journey and print each one in turn.
A country railway station
A third option is to pick up your tickets at the departing railway station; in 2004 Jenny took this option. At Gare de Lyon she was asked for her “Carte Bleue de réservation”. What she was being asked for was the credit card she used to buy her tickets on the net. “Carte Bleue” is the brand name of a French credit card, but is also used to describe credit cards generally. Jenny had a confusing few minutes till she realised what she was being asked to produce.
Many French railway stations have automatic “billeteries”, into which you put your credit card to get a ticket. Foreign visitors should not use these – they will eat your card. Line up and speak to a human being.
In Provence we have used the local narrow-gauge railway, which runs from Nice to DIgne-les-Bains and is not part of the SNCF system.
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