Letting the train take the strain, either by putting the car on board or saving the hassle of going through the airports, was popular... but is now only for foot passengers.

We know that this page gets a huge number of visits from people looking to bring their car down by train, but sadly that is no longer possible: there are no longer ANY trains in France that will transport cars (Other than the eurotunnel which kicks you off as soon as you emerge in Calais).

We hope that the details and links we have here are useful to you if you are trvelling as a foot passenger and help you have a pleasant and smooth journey down to the sun.

While you're here we hope you won't mind that we've added details about our gites - after all they are the reason that this site and this page exist in the first place!

We have four individual self-catering cottages (gites) here, two with two bedrooms, one with three bedrooms, and one with four bedrooms. The gites are set with our home in five acres of the Pyrenean foothills, bordered by a pretty stream, and benefit from our 10x5m pool, table tennis, table-football, boule court, free wi-fi etc. Pictures of the gites and our property are to the right and we'd love to see you for a holiday or a longer off-season stay.

Bringing the car down by train

As we said above this is no longer possible in France.

This excellent page on www.seat61.com shows the very few routes that still exist in Europe. 'Seat61.com' has a huge amount of very knowledgeable and helpful information about train travel across Europe.

Travelling as foot passengers

As foot passengers there are many ways of crossing France, especially if you are coming from the London area. Timetables change all the time, but the regular schedules are roughly:

• Quickest: St Pancras to Lille (Eurostar); Lille to Narbonne (180mph TGV). Leave St Pancras at about 8am, arrive Narbonne about 6pm, pick up a hire car and be with us for 8pm.
  On the return journey leave Narbonne at abuout 7am and arrive St Pancras 4pm.
• With a stop in Paris: St Pancras to Paris (Eurostar, about 3 hours 30 mins), then Paris to Toulouse (180mph TGV, about 5 hours 20 mins), we are just over an hour from Toulouse by car.
• Via Toulouse avoiding Paris: St Pancras to Lille (Eurostar); Lille to Toulouse (180mph TGV). As a small detail on this route there is a 500m walk to change stations at Lille.

For more details see the timetables on www.seat61.com (France page). (This is a HUGE page, it takes a while to appear on your screen and we recommend you don't print it!).

How to make your booking

As you would expect, booking train tickets is more complicated than booking ferries or flights - while there are tens of ferry routes, and each airline has tens of air routes, SNCF (the French rail company) has thousands of rail journies between hundreds of stations. Again, look at the How to buy train tickets to France' page on seat61.com to avoid a frustrating experience!