jameshurrell.co.uk

Today is my mum’s birthday… Happy Birthday Mum! Hope you have a lovely day.

Well, the attempt to use the bus and trains to get to Paris was very successful. All the trains were on time and everything ran very smoothly.

Total journey time works out about 2 hours longer than with the plane:

12:54 Home > Wolverhampton - 35 mins by bus
30 minute wait for train at Wolverhampton
14:05 Wolverhampton > London Euston - 1h 54 by train
16:15 London Euston > London Waterloo - 20 minutes by underground
1 hr wait for Eurostar
17:40 London Waterloo > Paris Nord - 2h 37 by train
21:17 (CET) Arrive in Paris
22:00 (CET) Arrive at colleague’s house

The completion of the first half of the high speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link from the tunnel to north Kent has really helped bring the journey time down from what it was five years ago (when I last used Eurostar) - a reduction of around 20 minutes. Once they finish the second half of the high speed line from north Kent to St Pancras, then the journey time will drop even further (by another 20 mins, bringing Paris only 2h 15 from London).

Off to Paris today for three days work. Attempting to use the train this time (Virgin to London, and then the Eurostar to Paris) as British Airways - by re-branding their “CitiExpress” European scheduled flights to “BA Connect” - seem to have a) worsened the service (no complementary sarnie anymore) and b) doubled the price of the ticket!

Total price for a return to Paris (including London <> Wolverhampton) is half what BA wanted from me!

Also taking the opportunity to meet up with Emmanuel and his wife Marine, and Nik and Bruno. We’re going to meet for dinner at “le Domaine de Lintillac” - a small restaurant that Emmanuel once took me to.

Finally a little bit of respite from the heat of the last week or so. My office has been very warm, depsite being in an old building with thick walls.

The following graph shows the maximum temperature in °C over the last couple of weeks at RAF Shawbury, near to the office (click to expand):

Source: weatheronline.co.uk

A quick update to say that I’m in the process of putting in place a gallery to display our wedding photos. So far, we’ve got around 2Gb of photos - needless to say, I won’t be putting all of them up here for fear of boring you all to death!