Oops, no, this was the day we returned to London. Train all the way, Yverdon to Lausanne, Lausanne to Paris, Paris to London. Being booked on specific trains, I was keen that we left in plenty of time. Though the Paris train left Lausanne at 13.03 I wanted to make sure we were there in plenty of time. But I still found time to photograph some of the interesting plants in Anne’s garden. Most interestingly were Anne’s attempts to grow Jerusalem artichokes from seed. “May grow to 2 metres” said the seed packet. At 3 meters they fell over. The flowers are pretty and we used a few in a vase in the house. Anne dug up a few of the plants and we saw some small tubers, the artichokes. Seems, from the Wikipedia article, that they need to be replanted to grow properly. Still, they appear to be quite good at absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere!
Mark kindly took us to the station so that we could get the 10.54 train from Yverdon. Anne had said to get Mark to take us to Vallorbe, but I preferred train travel. So we arrived in plenty of time. I was able to take lots more photographs of trains, like this double headed freight. Marianne took her last opportunity to read the free newspaper that’s given out on all the stations.
Standing around on Lausanne station for 90 minutes was probably not very appealing to Marianne, but great for me observing train movements! The train finally arrived and we got on to discover we had backward facing airline seats—yuk! I risked to food, even though the waitress didn’t understand the meaning of the word “garlic”. I took a bit of a risk as the French tend to put it into everything, but thankfully it was free of the disgusting stuff. The journey was pleasant and mostly fast, getting us into Paris only a few minutes late. Then the queue for the taxi. We managed to choose a blank Mercedes cab with a Moroccan driver who spoke no English. Clearly a new taxi driver as he drove so carefully and politely—except when he bumped the rear tyre of a motor-cyclist rather heavily.
Gare du Nord was reached in plenty of time, but it took some wandering around to find the entrance to Eurostar. After a cup of coffee we joined the security and passport control queue. They need to grasp the efficiency of a single queueing system. There were two queues and we weren’t in the same one. Marianne sailed through. I had a couple of Chinese girls in front of me and it looked like they had all their worldly possessions on their trolley! It took me another ten minutes to get through after they had persuaded the passport control lady that they could be allowed into Britain.
The journey was quiet and uneventful. Airline seats again, but at least they faced forward. Not a lot to see as darkness fell, but the meal was very pleasant. After a lengthy stop at Ashford we arrived at St Pancras on time. Making it out onto Euston Road we had fun looking out for Pom who came to collect us. There had been some incident around Holborn that had delayed here for some time, but eventually we spotted her and set off for Camberwell and a good nights sleep. The next day Pom again transported us, this time to Marylebone and the 17.30 train to Gobowen. Being mainly in the dark there was not a lot to see. We were grateful for Des picking us up at the station and we got home and collapsed, with piles of post to wade through—but that could wait. Besides, I had to preach the next morning.