We have a rambling discussion about fracking, and then we pull into the station at Wolf Point, Montana, where I go for a platform stroll. As I do, an indignant woman approaches.
'He doesn't know anything about it,' she hisses. She'd overheard the ginger man talking to me earlier. 'My husband does. He's in oil.'
Her husband, a bald man, steps forward.
'We've been doing it over sixty years,' he says. He's talking about fracking. 'There's no problem. Everyone was rolling their eyes in the carriage listening to that guy. He has his right to an opinion but what the heck.'
At lunch I sit with a black family from Detroit. They're going on holiday to Seattle and like travelling by train. Daniel is a retired government employee and Allie is a retired care worker. Their son Brandon is with them, who works for Xerox. Daniel's father was in the US Marine Corps during the Second World War and was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. The Marine Corps was, Allie says, the 'last part of the US military that was integrated' – with black soldiers mixed in with white soldiers.
Our conversation hops about. Daniel bemoans the decline in Detroit's car manufacturing. 'You ever see a robot buy a car?'
'No,' I reply.
'That's right. Did you ever see a robot buy a car? Uh, uh, uh. People buy cars.'
Allie talks about the sad state of Detroit's once beautiful Michigan Central station, which closed when Amtrak stopped going there in 1988. Now it's a ruin. 'That 1920s train depot is a symbol of Detroit's blight: not putting new windows in. It's been stripped down. They found a body in it one time.'
We finish our chicken and mash meals. Sights in Seattle are recommended. Then Daniel looks out of the window and sighs.
'Yes, this is the life,' he says, after a while. We are rolling through prairie-land. 'This is easy. This is living. This is great.'
Which kind of sums things up for me, too.
I go to my cabin and watch clouds piling high in the sky as the sun fades. We come to the Rockies, at the point where Lewis and Clark crossed all those years ago. Darkness falls.
I go to sleep early and in the morning we are moving through the Cascade Mountains, passing apple orchards, rivers and a town called Leavenworth that is said to look like a Bavarian village.
A glorious expanse of water opens up: the Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, with Mount Rainier rising splendidly in the distance. We have reached the other side: from sea to shining sea. Cargo ships and US Navy frigates sit by marinas. Fishermen cast rods on jetties. Walkers lead dogs by the shore.
Then we wind past CenturyLink Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, and stop at Seattle's King Street station. This is another superb American train station, dating from 1906 and ordered by James J. Hill; a red-brick Italianate affair with a tower modelled on the Campanile of St Mark's Square in Venice. I sit for a while marvelling at the intricate cornicing, mosaic floor and original ceiling lamps. It's cool and calm and can't have changed much in a century. I love it.
Railroads do still mean a lot to America, and hopping on board this northern route across ten states – New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Washington – brings that home. It would have been 11 states, of course, had I not missed the seven-two-seven that everybawdy ay-else got. I bypassed Wisconsin thanks to my impromptu flight; though I learnt what challenges Amtrak faces when airfares are so low. Trains do seem old-fashioned in America these days and 'run on a dime', as Larry said. But that's also part of their slightly chaotic charm.
Now I'm going on a much shorter hop, and the journey begins at my front door.
10
BORDEAUX, FRANCE: FAST TRAIN COMING
ST PANCRAS STATION, 7 a.m. I've been here many times before. A few years back I wrote a travel book about the highspeed train revolution sweeping Europe entitled Tales from the Fast Trains: Europe at 186 mph during which I went on a series of jaunts from St Pancras, mainly with my girlfriend. The journeys catapulted me as far as Girona in Spain (great cathedral; loved the tapas; pleasingly eccentric Dalí museum), Marseilles (tasty bouillabaisse; interesting old streets by the port), Cologne (for a frankly debauched beer-drinking weekend), Lille (saw the First World War sites; watched a rock concert) and ridiculously romantic Bruges (a sure-fire winner on the bedroom front, as the tabloids might put it – and I just have).
Europe seemed almost to be shrinking as high-speed tracks spread across the continent. This has continued apace since, with Paris to Barcelona now a super-speedy 6 hours and 25 minutes.
So I know St Pancras and its marvellous hotel designed by George Gilbert Scott (first guests: 1876), as well as its magnificent and enormous William Barlow train shed, opened in 1868 and inspiration for Grand Central's very own such shed. I have read the words at the base of the statue of John Betjeman, Britain's (rather more portly) equivalent to Jackie Onassis, who campaigned to save St Pancras from demolition in the 1960s: 'Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where / A misty sealine meets the wash of air'. Yes, it seems to capture the setting perfectly (even though the lines were written about Cornwall in the poem 'Cornish Cliffs'). I have passed so many times through the tunnel towards Kent that I've begun to recognise the graffiti. There's my old friend TOXIC CUT, and there's the more uplifting HOPE. Glad to see the authorities haven't rubbed you out after all these years.
In short, I have become very accustomed to the old place.
Yet why is it I still get a buzz every time I visit?
I'm travelling to Bordeaux with an old university friend and we have chosen our destination on the basis of a certain local produce: its wine. While we both agree that this is an excellent enough reason to visit, we are informed that there are also many cultural sights to be seen in this western French city. Danny was my partner in crime in Cologne when we visited many of the city's biggest dives in what seems, looking back, to have been some sort of attempt to break the weekend world record for consumption of Kölsch beers, while also devouring our fair share of Wiener schnitzels, wild-boar sausages and goulash. In between, we appear to have bothered to take in a gallery or cathedral or two.
We have, however, grown up quite a bit since then, we have told ourselves. Danny even has three kids (although he did already have two of them in the Cologne days) and I now have nephews and nieces. It is 20 years – OK, plus a bit – since the British educational system spewed us into the world of employment. We are still in jobs; responsible, sensible adults heading off for a cultural weekend, with a couple of glasses of bon vin rouge in the evening over which to ruminate on our day's aesthetic pursuits.
This is what we have been saying, at least, in the run-up to Bordeaux.
On a 'serious trains note', though, I have a background plan. Yes we're intending to have a great weekend away, but a visit to Bordeaux will also, I hope, reveal something about how important railways can be to a destination almost 200 years since the first passenger train between Liverpool and Manchester transformed Britain's industrial north and set the ball rolling for big changes across the globe.
That is what I've been saying to myself, at least, in the run-up to Bordeaux. I'm hoping that the 'one or two' bons vins rouges don't get, too much, in the way.
'I love old stations: bringing order to chaos'
London St Pancras to Gare du Nord, the Paris Métro, and Gare Montparnasse to Bordeaux
'Zee doorz will be clozin' zuun,' says a muffled announcement. Danny and I are running slightly late. We have business-lounge passes and have been drinking complimentary coffees and eating complimentary croissants while reading complimentary papers at stools by a slate table. Danny has tucked Le Monde beneath his arm. 'Posing value,' he says. Then he looks around and comments: 'It is only when you see the moneyed elite up close that you realise how unattractive they really are.' He is prone to such pronouncements, said for exaggeration to get conversation going. There are plenty of very good-looking, very wealthy people about. We argue about the matter for a while, slurping further compli
mentary cappuccinos and munching second rounds of complimentary croissants.
On board we have a four-seat table to ourselves. It comes with purple leather armrests and headrests, plus a table lamp. We are close to seat number 61, but the legendary train guru Mark Smith, also known as The Man in Seat 61 (whose first-rate website ought to be any reader's first port of call when it comes to the practicalities of arranging a train trip), is not there. Smith chose the name for his train-booking and reference website on the basis of this being his favourite premier-class seat on Eurostar. Today his spot is taken by a woman reading a book.
Familiar warehouses, tower blocks and TOXIC CUT lead to a tunnel as we are offered 'perfect start to the day' breakfasts with recipes by the French two-Michelin-star chef Raymond Blanc. These are either an English breakfast with a spinach and tomato flan or smoked salmon with cream cheese, red onion and capers. Which don't sound especially two-Michelin-star, perhaps… though we put them away happily enough, washed down with more coffee, as the train zips through Kent, passes a white horse on a chalk hill and plunges into the black echo of the Channel Tunnel (opened: 1994).
We are through to the other side at 10:27, skirting fences with rolls of barbed wire to protect the tunnel from illegal immigrants hoping to sneak through. The sky is grey. The fields have been ploughed in corduroy grooves. I settle back and read a paper that reflects on the recent bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, quoting the 'Official Bulletin' of The Times of 22 June 1815: 'Glory to Wellington, to our gallant Soldiers, and to our brave Allies! Bonaparte's reputation has been wrecked, and his last grand stake has been lost in this tremendous conflict.' Stirring stuff as we enter the Little Corporal's old stomping ground. Meanwhile the Daily Mail runs a report under the headline PM: UK MUSLIMS HELPING JIHADISTS that seems uncannily pertinent to this part of the journey. The British prime minister is reported to be about to give a speech condemning 'Islamic State and its medieval outlook', saying that it is 'one of the biggest threats our world has faced… There are young people, boys and girls, leaving often loving, well-to-do homes, good schools and bright prospects travelling thousands of miles from home to strap explosives to their chests and blow themselves up and kill innocent people. To live in a place where marriage is legal at nine and where women's role is to serve the jihadists, to be part of a so-called state whose fanatics are plotting and encouraging acts of despicable terrorism in the countries from which they have come.'
Fresh out of the tunnel – beyond the barbed-wire coils – it seems more than strange that anyone would be willing to head out of the UK to go to a dusty jihadist stronghold in a faraway land, while so many others are desperate to come the other way.
We speed on through muddy fields and wind farms, reading our various complimentary papers. The grim tower blocks of the Paris banlieue soon arise. We enter a tunnel that leads to a wall covered with graffiti and more towers, before arriving in Gare du Nord, bang on time at 12:57.
'I love old stations – another age. Bringing order to chaos,' says Danny, launching into a mini thesis on the topic as we weave between green steel columns to the M4 Paris Métro line, buy tickets to Gare Montparnasse and stand in a carriage next to a group of college-aged American students, one of whom is complaining about French cuisine: 'I don't like fish food. Why is there so much fish food?'
This culinary conversation continues to Montparnasse, whereupon we wait in a nondescript modern concourse until our platform flashes up and we board our SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) to Bordeaux. We have another four-seat table, first class, except that this time we are facing an elderly French couple.
The tall elderly Frenchman in front of me, who appears to wear some kind of corset, promptly falls asleep with his legs stretched out so there's hardly anywhere to put my feet. I roll my eyes and manoeuvre into a church-pew-style sitting position. Danny helpfully tells me, 'Don't be too harsh. You'll be old and doddery one day.' All very well for him to say: he has plenty of room as the elderly man's wife, opposite, is tiny. And off we go through suburbs, past wind farms, golden cornfields, copses and bales of rolled hay. Chateaux with fairytale towers come into view, needle-shaped church steeples, dragonflies above a sultry river, towns of bungalows, medieval stone bridges and then vineyards – many, many vineyards. We appear to be heading in the correct direction.
We pass a golf course. 'I will never play golf or ski,' says Danny.
We hurtle onwards eating club jambon et fromage sandwiches delivered by an attendant. My knees have gone numb from my unusual sitting position. We cross a bridge beyond a derelict plot, and the train comes to a halt.
We have arrived in Bordeaux, where, much to Danny's amazement, I go to the front of the train to check the locomotive, which appears to be a number 307 TGV.
These trains, at a push, can reach 574.4 kmph (357.16 mph) – a record set in April 2007 between Meuse and Champagne-Ardenne stations. This is the fastest a conventional train has ever gone and you can watch a rather startling YouTube film of the event. This clip has had almost 5 million views, outdoing even the Excited Train Guy's stats, and I say 'rather startling' as it just doesn't seem right for a regular-looking train to be going quite that fast.
Big Night Out – big city dreams
Bordeaux
There is a story behind the choice of Bordeaux for this weekend. While the current journey from Paris to the famous wine city is a reasonably zippy 3 hours 19 minutes, this will be reduced to just 2 hours in 2017. It is all part of a major scheme known as the Ligne à Grande Vitesse Sud-Europe-Atlantique, involving the laying of a new high-speed track between Tours and Bordeaux – one of four such grands projets now under construction. France has always been good at high-speed trains, launching its first such line in Europe in 1983, the Ligne à Grande Vitesse Sud-Est between Paris and Lyon, with speeds of 186 mph. This Lyon service was Europe's first truly fast long-distance train.
The slicing of travel time between Paris and Bordeaux is much anticipated as it is expected to contribute in a big way to a rejuvenation of a city that, 20 years ago, was not in the best of states. Its port area was by all accounts dark, dreary, rundown and home to 'a seedy underworld', according to a group named Bordeaux Expats, consisting of Britons living in the region. Pollution, traffic gridlock and ramshackle buildings were the order of the day. Since then, however, a magnificent new bridge across the river Garonne has been built, which opened in 2013, connecting banks near the port; a network of trams has been introduced to reduce road congestion; and development of the port and its docks has begun, with yuppie apartments springing up and a multimillion-euro futuristic wine museum about to open – which looks like some sort of UFO, or perhaps a squeeze of toothpaste, depending on which angle of observation you take.
The brainchild behind much of this is Alain Juppé, a former French prime minister who is now the city's mayor. Yet underpinning it all is the new train line, which many believe will see people commuting to Paris – with its overcrowded suburbs, and expensive property prices and rents, and tricky public transport – while bringing up families in leafy Bordeaux, taking advantage of its relatively cheap, spacious apartments. This is Bordeaux's train dream.
Danny and I take a taxi from the Gare de Bordeaux-SaintJean. It's a distinguished station dating from 1898, with grand archways and a fine railway clock. This clock is 'defended' by a lion-like figure with a grotesque, devilish grin – looking a little as though the beast has had one too many.
Our route takes us past a row of shops and La Plage nightclub.
'That looks promisingly seedy,' says Danny, oblivious to Bordeaux's new clean-cut image.
Beyond kids playing basketball, a square with a grand fountain and the Charles Dickens Pub, we reach our hotel, The Yndō, a new, small, arty place on a side road, where we have two rooms with doors with crazy locks that require positioning an electronic key and then twisting the handle in a certain precise manner. These locks are tricky enough to start
with but are likely to prove nighon impossible upon our return later, as we are about to embark on the city's new Urban Wine Tour, another part of the local government's plans to make Bordeaux a place you'll want to visit.
While waiting in the lobby for Danny to return from his room (perhaps he's locked himself in), I ask the hotel's owner, Agnes, a charming woman who I can tell has already detected a certain Keystone Cops element in her new guests, what the unusual hotel name means: 'Neer-thing! Neer-thing! It is zee way of life: softness, tenderness, smile, calm. It eez a very contemporary way of life.'
I nod as though I understand what she's going on about. Danny returns.
We strike out into the early evening along cobblestone, labyrinthine streets.
Our first stop on the Urban Wine Tour (which seems to consist of a few recommendations of bars on a simple map you can print off the internet) is Brasserie Bordelaise, a dusty-bottled place with rough walls painted white and simple wood tables, near the fine medieval church of Saint Rémi. We take in our surroundings and order wine and various hams and cheeses, soon getting talking to the owner's wife Stessi, who says, 'When we get the new train, Bordeaux will be on zee up! A lot of Parisians will come! They will install their families! That is why today, if you buy a house, you know the value grows. The trains will change our lives, for sure.'
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