**snip**
to Clermont Ferrand
**snip**
tl:dr - Graham will have a lovely time, I'm sure and has already had a smoother start than did I to this location.
This was the destination for a shortish break trip (quite some time ago) publicised via a newspaper marketing tie-in - and stated (somewhat correctly) as a rail-based holiday in France - the group size was about 34 people. Correct in that the heavy lifting was done by train - Eurostar from Waterloo - across Paris to Gare du Lyon and then south to Clermont Ferrand in... I can't recall if they were then marketed as 'Service Teoz' - it might have been before that time. The trip was peppered with memorable hiccups, the first of which was that the tour company rather than take everyone on the Paris metro had organised a coach for the transfer - which turned up an hour late owing to some BST confusion or other on behalf of the travel company. Consequently the party had just a few minutes to put themselves onto the long distance train at the Gare de Lyon. The coach driver achieved this by taking the coach on a route between the station and dropping everyone off 'Traffic-side' from where we made our way to an entrance from road level. Within about a minute of the coach stopping, up turned the gendarmerie on motorcycles and were not at all pleased with everyone concerned.
Anyway, a gallop up to the platform and there was the train - these are electric loco and what feels like around 16 carriages. Quickly boarding, the tour guide even more quickly found that the block of reserved seats for us were occupied by a school party, off on a stay away, but their travel plans hadn't gone as far as reserving seats themselves - they'd been delighted to find a bunch of reserved seats all together though and refused to relinquish them.
(The mix of people on this tour was... challenging to manage and this cross-Paris leg set things up for the rest of the week.)
From Clermont Ferrand, the next (short) leg was a coach - the hotel for the week was in a town called Chatel Guyon - which has lost its rail link, though its sizeable station survives as a facility for various activities.
On arrival at the hotel, it transpired that it had been under heavy refurbishment, which hadn't completed on time and it appeared to have been reopened in haste. Allocation of the rooms turned into a lottery for the party - we were fortunate in that ours was complete. Others were not so lucky. Alarmingly the external fire escape was in use storing building materials...
There was a silver lining to this. The hotel management announced that for the week's stay, at evening meals, house wine would be provided on the house. Given the tensions in the party, this could have been disastrous, but as it turned out, the impact was mostly positive. Mostly.
Chatel Guyon itself holds a curious place in French history, and for multiple reasons. A medicinal spa and destination for recuperation and hydrotherapy, I think it had recently lost a tranche of funding from the french health service. It was still possible, though, to see fragile people delicately walking in the general direction of La Valée de Sans Souci clasping a small glass bottle in a wicker case, a receptacle for the town's medicinal water. (For some reason I've not fathomed the area's a hotbed of vulcanism that has only recently somewhat subsided and there are still hot springs to be found, not to mention the topography).
Now, the week's activities: provided was a series of day tours to various spectacular towns, villages and churches. By coach - which left some of the party who'd hoped for some rail interest slightly miffed. Especially as the hundreds of miles between Paris and Clermont are pretty flat, the ohie electric train maintaining an impressively fast and steady speed for hours on end to eat up the distance. At Clermont the railway hits the hills, and from then on things are full of railway interest, and some of said railway is still in use. Not, however, the line across the Fades viaduct, the scale of which has to be seen to be believed.
The week's excursions did give the occasional glimpse of something railway though - and on one memorably wet and cold day there was a collective sigh from everyone as we glimpsed one of those single carriage shuttlecock shaped railcars in use on more minor French lines, swinging around a curve about 100 metres away. Then, a visit (by coach) to the town of Mont Dore, which has a charming and hairy funicular (closed at the time, now back in use) and a rail terminus, (open at the time, now out of use). Also the view from the chapel Saint-Michel d'Aiguilhe in Le Puy-en-Velay - a distant view of a viaduct on the edge of town with a somewhat archaic works train happening to cross it.
It was some years later, looking on Google satellite imagery, that I found at that location the Ligne du Puy à Langogne, much of which is a voie verte (and france has no qualms about re-using railway tunnels for these, it has to be said). It was some years later still that I noticed on satellite imagery *another* out of use trackbed branching off this first one on the edge of the town - the part-built line - La Transcévenole - sections of which seem to be emerging as a voie verte as well and whose story is *most* improbable - one of its tunnels (Le Roux) has been reused for a road.
Anyway, back to the long-ago holiday which concluded as it had begun and by the time the entire party was aboard the Eurostar back to Waterloo, I have a vague memory of a grand emotional bust up that resulted in the group, for the general benefit of one of the party, splitting into two caring factions, each taking themselves off to a separate carriage. It has to be said that this particular tour wouldn't have been one that the tour guide would have looked back on with fondness....
Mark
[Edit as I'd fantasised about Le Roux tunnel's altitude. Still wouldn't want to take a vehicle through the thing, mind...]
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