Having arrived in Amsterdam Centraal onboard a Eurostar service from London, the next stage of this Dutch adventure was to make my way to the city of Utrecht where I was staying. With numerous services connecting the two cities, I had decided to travel on a slightly rarer one, an International ICE.

It had been a while since I had to catch a Thameslink service as I was travelling before the first LNER, but back in October I was at the station in time for the 0419 to head into London. With Thameslink dropping me off at St Pancras, I had just two escalators to climb before reaching the next point on my journey, Eurostar’s check-in.

Well, if we’re honest, my first impressions of SNCF’s Transport Express Régional (TER) weren’t great. The morning of our planned trip to Paris, I woke up to an email (in French of course) from SNCF advising me that owing to our train taking a diversionary route, we would have to take a rail replacement bus to the next station.

After a great, but too short, time exploring Nantes, I was up early to make my way to the station ready to catch a train back to La Rochelle. Having booked a specific train in advance, the fares were reasonable and so I decided to spend a few euros extra and try out first-class onboard SNCF’s Intercités product.

Having arrived in La Rochelle on a Ryanair flight from Stansted, I spent a couple of hours having a late breakfast and wandering around the port before making the short walk to the town’s stunning Gare de La Rochelle Ville.

With a week off work that should have involved almost a dozen trains having turned into a week off work with none, I decided to make the most of my evening alone in Manchester and make the quick run up to Preston and back to tick off some stations and compare the operators running on the route, Northern and Trans Pennine Express (TPE).