STP-PND Eurostar – Standard

Operator: Eurostar

Headcode: 9O04

Route:    STP-PND

Class:    Standard

Seat:     C5 S14

Date:     Friday 4^th August 2023

For our summer holiday this year we were heading down to the Atlantic coast of France, not far from Bordeaux. However, rather than head to Gatwick, Luton or Stansted and fly out to Bordeaux, we decided to let the train take the strain and so we started our holiday with a night in a London hotel and an early morning walk over to London St. Pancras International.

The first leg of our journey to the French coast was going to be taking a Eurostar under the channel from St. Pancras to Paris’ Gare du Nord. We were on the 0701 departure, the second of the day from London to Paris and so following an 0500 alarm, we walked into the Eurostar concourse at St. Pancras around 80 minutes before departure.

Check-in and security were seamless, with us only really stopping to load our bags onto the conveyor belt at security. Passport control took a little longer as the E-gates for people with non-EU passports had broken down so everyone was having to go via the two officers of the French border police. We’d have had to see a human for a passport stamp even if we had used the e-gates, so this really didn’t slow us down that much.

Less than 20 minutes from stepping through the doors of St. Pancras, we were sat down at the Station Pantry and ready for some breakfast. Unfortunately, with a captive market, prices are a little steep although comparable to at an airport. A mocha, a hot chocolate and two ham & cheese croissants cost £18.20, so not the cheapest, although the quality was good.

With a bit of help from Real Time Trains, we headed to the bottom of the travelator at around 0630, before the platform had been announced and as such we were some of the first onto platform 9 when boarding did begin at 0636. Emerging onto the platform, I was a little disappointed to find that our service was being operated by a pair of class 374s, also known as an e320, Eurostar’s newer trains produced by Siemens. The reason for my disappointment was that I’ve not yet had a chance to try out the older class 373s, or e300s, whilst all my previous Eurostar journeys (here, here and here) have been on the e320s.

Don’t get me wrong, the e320s are nice trains but I do hope to try out the older trains at some point. Inside the e320s, standard class is in a 2-2 layout either side of the aisle with seating a mix of ‘airline’ style and groups of four around extendable tables. There are large luggage storage areas at the end of each coach and the overhead luggage racks have enough space to store a hiking rucksack.

There’s plenty of legroom, or there would have been if the gentleman sat opposite me at the table hadn’t have had their legs stretched out fully. As we all settled in for the journey, we departed St. Pancras at 0700, one minute early, and headed for the first of the London tunnels which connect St. Pancras to Stratford and then Barking.

From experience I know the Eurostar Wi-Fi to be patchy and the trains to be really fast faraday cages and so I’d downloaded a few episodes of ‘The Newsroom’ to watch during the journey. An occasional glance out of the window saw us passing over the Medway and past Ashford on the avoiding line and within about half an hour of leaving St. Pancras we were slowing down to pass through the Channel Tunnel.

Passing through the tunnel takes around 20 minutes with Eurostar services limited to 100mph, and we were soon emerging back into the daylight in France. Not long after exiting the tunnel we passed by Calais Frethurn, a station that until 2020 was served by three Eurostar services each way between London and Brussels. Services stopped calling at the station during the Covid-19 pandemic and at present there are no plans for services to start calling there again.

From Calais we headed to Lille, passing through Lille Europe station without stopping. As we headed south from the city, I was able to see Lille airport out of the window along with an Easyjet flight departing to Nice. This surprised me as I thought France had banned domestic flights, and they have but only those that can be done in under two-and-a-half hours by train. Even with France having an extensive high-speed network, the quickest journey time for Lille to Nice that Google could come up with was seven-and-a-quarter hours, so well over the limit!

With another episode of ‘The Newsroom’ under my belt, we were soon passing through the Paris suburbs on our final approach into Gare du Nord. Weaving our way through Saint-Denis, we passed two railway deport, the Technicentre de Paris Nord and the Technicentre du Landy. The first of these looks after the Transilien commuter fleet that operates within the Île-de-France region, whilst ‘Le Landy’ depot mainly looks after the high-speed trains of TGV, Thayls & Eurostar along with the fleet of TER Hauts-de-France.

The station throat of Gare du Nord is pretty wide, but its not surprising given that Gare du Nord is the busiest station in Europe, serving around 700,000 passengers per day. The main station has 28 platforms split between the original train shed and the more recent extension, whilst there are further platforms underground for the RER and Metro lines that also serve the station.

One top tip for travelling to Paris by Eurostar is try to get a seat in a high numbered carriage. Whilst this will mean a longer walk at St. Pancras, it’ll mean a much shorter walk at Paris. We were in coach 5 and had to walk the length of most of the train to reach the exit which is situated at the very front of arriving trains. However, as all checks are completed at St. Pancras, the arrival ‘process’ is non-existent at Gare du Nord and you exit the Eurostar platforms directly onto the main concourse.

If you’re heading on holiday to Paris, Lille, Brussels or Amsterdam, taking the train is definitely a stress-free way of doing this even with luggage. Travelling further afield is a bit more stressful if you have to transfer across a city via the Metro (foreshadowing!) but I can’t fault Eurostar for our holiday plans. This journey from London to Paris was another great Eurostar experience!

Lounge              0*

Seat/Facilities     4*

Food               3*

Service             5*

Punctuality         5*

Overall Rating      17/25 (read about my rating system here!)