Monaco to Suffolk overnight without flying

The Côte d'Azur near Cannes from the TGV, March 2020

Having had an interesting morning surrounded by the money of Monaco and having visited two new countries (truncated from the original plan of three), it was time to get back to the UK. The boring way would have been to fly back from Nice, but then I'd get home late in the evening and get back to work the following day. But once I added in the cost of getting an airport coach home, it would have cost very similar to getting back over land by train. Of course I'd choose the latter, and actually see much more of France on the way back. Then there's also the extra bonus of being able to bring wine back from France...

Incidentally, had I done this trip a few years ago, SNCF would have still been running their sleeper train from Nice to Paris - the direct descendent of the former ultra-luxury Train Bleu, the great symbol of the belle-epoque period used by the rich and famous to get to the French Riviera, with a dining car famed in its time for its haute-cuisine five-course dinners. It would have been perfect for my journey as I'd have had time to explore Nice as well, and a Nice-Paris couchette followed by a £25 Eurostar Snap ticket to London that afternoon would have been much more comfortable and time-efficient - and I'd even have a free morning to spend in a Parisian museum. Alas, it was discontinued at the end of 2017 after 131 years. My experience of SNCF is that their TGVs are excellent, but everything else is just being run down - incidentally, the onboard network maps when I took the Geneva-Lyon train were old enough that they still had the old SNCF logo, and a much more extensive intercity and sleeper network than today.

Now, the easiest way to return from the Riviera back to the UK is to take the TGV to Paris and then the Eurostar to London. But I'd booked this trip without much advance notice, so the Eurostar would have been much more expensive than I was willing to pay and so instead I booked an overnight coach from Paris to London for only €13. 

Waiting for the Nice train at Monaco-Monte-Carlo station. 

I'd need to take a local TER train from Monaco to Nice first, though. The cheapest Nice-Paris TGV was with SNCF's budget TGV service, Ouigo, which cost me only €29 for the whole journey - excellent value for an afternoon at 320 km/h. Ouigo services do have a 30-minute check-in as tickets are checked before boarding, so I planned a leisurely transfer in Nice. But this was not to be, as the wait for my takeaway lunch from Monaco's only affordable restaurant was longer than I expected. It meant that I had to take the next train back to Nice, arriving just at the 30 minute limit, but even so it turned out I needn't have worried. 

The classic station at Nice-Ville, built in 1867 in the Louis VIII style. 

It seems that the 30 minute check-in isn't strictly enforced (though I wouldn't want to push it), and the incoming train was delayed anyway so I had plenty of time. 

Ouigo trains are very cheap and travel at full TGV speeds, but have some budget-airline-inspired restrictions to stop people trading down from ordinary TGVs. 

We departed Nice with a slight delay, though this was almost made up by the time we arrived in Paris. The journey has two very distinct parts: it first takes the classic coast-hugging route up to Marseille, and then takes the high-speed line all the way up to Paris. The first part takes 2h49 to travel the 240 km to Aix-en-Provence, while the 730 km high-speed run from Aix to Paris - nearly the whole length of the country - takes 3h07. 

Running along the beach near Antibes

The entire journey takes 5h56, but that's hardly a chore going through the scenery of the Côte d'Azur. It certainly beats the view from the Stansted airport coach. 

Palm trees near Cannes

There's even cinematic history along the route, and it's not just at Cannes: the train passes through the station where the Lumière brothers filmed the 1896 film L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat. The story of cinema-goers fleeing in terror at the sight of the train approaching is probably an urban legend, but it remains a great landmark of early cinema. 

Sunset came near Lyon, and we soon arrived at Paris Gare de Lyon. Built for the 1900 Paris Exposition and with its distinctive architecture, it's long been the traditional station for those going to the south of France. It's also home to the iconic Le Train Bleu restaurant, a designated national historical monument, though €120 was rather outside my price range for dinner. 

Gare de Lyon, with the Train Bleu restaurant - one of the most glamourous in the world. It even appeared in the Mr Bean film. 

Instead, I went for a short walk around the opposite bank of the Seine and bought a salad and some bottles of wine to bring back to the UK. My walk to the Bercy coach station did go past the François Mitterrand Library, which I should really go back to and visit at some point. I'd have returned by Eurostar if it had been at all affordable, but the reality of it being a service aimed at business travellers means that it's priced to match this expectation if you're not booking months in advance. 

Bercy is an underground coach station under the park of the same name. It's not a particularly pleasant place, with its combination of concrete, tarmac and diesel fumes, but it was fine given that I'd paid €13 to get from Paris to London. With a 2115 departure, the coach arrived at the Calais Eurotunnel terminal at around 0030 where the passengers all got off and went through Schengen exit checks, then got on again for a short drive to the juxtaposed British entry passport control. It wasn't anywhere near as slick as the Eurostar, or even the ferry terminals at Dover and Calais. The ferry takes an hour longer, but the tunnel shuttle train only runs around every two hours so the cross-channel coaches pick the tunnel or the ferry based on timings and traffic on the day of the journey itself. As the coach drove onto the 0146 shuttle train, I went back to sleep expecting to arrive at the scheduled 0615. At the very least, I was able to get a couple of hours of sleep on the drive through France, and I expected at least another ~5½ hours before arriving back in London. Maybe it would even involve waking up to the sights of London at sunrise, as something similar to my last overnight coach journey. 

Flixbus coach arrived at Victoria coach station in London, 3 hours early. In hindsight, I probably should have just asked the driver if I could sleep on the coach for another few hours. 

Both of these suppositions were mistaken. It turned out that the 9 hour journey is a worst-case estimate involving taking the ferry and with traffic during the journey, but neither of these cases applied and so I arrived in Victoria coach station at 0330. It was far too early, but I took a night bus to Liverpool Street expecting to take an early train back to Suffolk - but the first service of the day would only leave at 0600. I had a couple of hours to burn, so I just laid back on a night bus for around an hour before taking the first Hammersmith and City Line service of the day from Hammersmith back to Liverpool Street just in time for the first Ipswich/Norwich train of the day. 

I was at least able to get some rest on the comfortable seats on the old soon-to-be-withdrawn locomotive-hauled carriages, at least until seeing the sunrise over the Stour estuary at Manningtree, though I'd have enjoyed that sunrise much more had the bus taken the ferry instead so that I'd have had an extra couple of hours of sleep. I didn't know this at the time, but it turned out to be my final ever trip on the old slam-door trains before their final withdrawal at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown - but at least I got a final chance to lean out of the door window and feel the cold morning wind in my face as the train pulled into Ipswich station. 

Looking back, it was overall still a very good overland trip, though it was my own fault that it was too late to buy reasonably-priced Eurostar tickets. But even with the overnight coach, I got home at around 0800 and went to work an hour later, with having had a whole extra afternoon of leisure time on the TGV the day before instead of flying back. Would I do it again? I'd certainly take the Nice-Paris TGV again, especially at €29 for a 1082 km journey at 320 km/h. With the Paris-London coach though, I'd still probably be happy to take it again, but I'd take much more care in booking a coach that is scheduled to allow more sleep by both picking a service that is more likely to take the ferry, and picking one that departs later so that I can try and get to sleep immediately. It would give 7 hours of sleep instead of 5, which would have made all the difference. I'd still pick the Eurostar if it were at all affordable, though. 

Summary: 

Date: Wednesday 11th March 2020

Main experience: The TGV running along the French Riviera, but an unexpectedly early arrival in London. 

Cost: Monaco-Nice TER: €3.10, Nice-Paris TGV: €29, Paris-London coach: €13.