motorail in France

[Murph]

Doing a trip in October and for a number of reasons if we were able to get on a train in Northern France and overnight to South of France it would help. Seems like the Calais to South of France Motorail finishes end of September. Anyone know about whether there are other options to get mbike and ourselves on a train from say Paris to South of France ?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[wesleyjohn]

how about the ferry to the north of spain instead?

 

[Mike Werner]

Here's the SNCF site for info on car/bike trains. It's in French..... so much for customer service..

SNCF

 

[bladerunner]

Hi

We had bad experiences with Motorrail a few year's back. The coaches are old, hot and past it, the loading is unpleasant with lots of hot cross brits.
Somewhere in France I suspect some yoofs poured acid down from a bridge - 30+ cars on the upper deck were etched - paint and windows - with 10p sized blobs which could not be removed. These were BM's and Mercs so the total cost would have been huge.

Not such a problem for me as the wife wrote off our car during the holiday!

Since then I would chose either to ride the journey, or take a ferry to Spain and ride up. The latter with a nice cabin can be a great start to the holiday. IMHO there is nowt to beat the thrill of turning up to a port at night with a big trip ahead.

cheers

Simon

 

[Deleted account W]

I've used the German company DB Autozug, here

Typicaly German, clean, efficient and well organised. If you don't mind getting to Düsseldorf to get loaded then they're a good option. They accept block bookings for groups of bikes as well

 

[Murph]

Thanks for all the replies. Ferry to Santander it is, and then 800 miles of fun before Winter. Have now swapped the GS for a 1200RT so I'll see how they compare.

 

[Taff]

Do you know what the red squares indicate Whatton? Some don't have connections and 1 is in the Baltic Sea.

 

[Deleted account W]

Do you know what the red squares indicate Whatton? Some don't have connections and 1 is in the Baltic Sea.

They're all the terminals they use, I only highlighted the ones that leave from the North.....

Have a hover with your mouse over the red blobs below

<iframe frameborder="1" height="800" scrolling="auto" src="http://www.dbautozug.de/site/dbautozug/en/booking/find__book/find__book,variant=imgPopup,imgId=251612,siteProxyId=251574.html" width="950"></iframe>

 

[Andy Davies]

I'm taking the last southerly train in September. I'll let you know how I get on! From up here in Scotland, I still think that it's the quickest way to get to southern France!

Andy