alternative route please advise

metrovelvet

I was supposed to be travelling monday- knock to stanstead and stanstread to south of france to get my two year old medical treatment to be scheduled for surgery. Does anyone know an alternative route to get there?

Ponster

Ferry to France and then train ?

How flexible are you?

jhegarty

Ferry + TGV

flikflak

You can try either
Dublin, ferry to Holyhead, train to London, Eurostar then TGV
Rosslare ferry then cross to France as foot passenger then train
Rosslare ferry with your car then drive down

What ever you decided then better book it quickly as all routes off the island are very busy.
Good luck!

Stinicker

I would advise the ferry to France directly and drive there if you have or are a competent driver to do it, Ferrys and Trains will be coming under immense pressure as there will be no flights for the next week. Whatever you do I'd recommened bypassing the UK as it is chaos already, the French Motorways are very good although heavily tolled.

Get online now and book a ticket ASAP as they will be all booked soon because flights will not fly until next weekend at the earliest and this thing has to potential to last from anywhere between 6 months and two years and the only restbites that will come will be when the wind blows the ash away far north or out west over the atlantic.

Irish Ferries operate a route

Brittany Ferries Sail from Cork to Roscoff and Irish Ferries sail from Rosslare to Roscoff and Cherbourg

http://www.brittanyferries.ie/
http://www.irishferries.com

The German national Rail company Deutsch Bahn have excellent timetabling for trains throughout Europe not just in Germany and you can plan your train connections using it.

http://www.bahn.de/i/view/GBR/en/index.shtml

Irish Rails European Rail office in Dublin can book tickets as they are an Agent for TGV in France and I have used them before for trains in Eastern Europe and they were fine but charge a €10 surcharge andpost you out the tickets using swift post for next day delivery.

http://www.irishrail.ie/your_ticket/UK_and_european_rail.asp

If you decide to sail and drive Wikitravel has a good page on driving in France. http://wikitravel.org/en/Driving_in_France

I sympathise with your situation especially having a sick kid as I myself am currently trying to organise a rescue mission for three stranded holiday makers in the algarve and I am trying to route them by train to Santander in Northern Spain to get them to take the ferry to Plymouth in England and Sail & Rail from Swansea then.

Ponster

To add to what Stinicker said, the SNCF, French national rail company, have been on strike for a few days and will continue to be for the next week or so. Service is dropped to 50% in some areas but everything is announced in advance so no risks of things being cancelled at the last moment.

metrovelvet

Oh Im in a conundrum. I cant get in touch with the hospital until monday to see what kind of rescheduling I can do. The treatment is not emergent but is time sensitive. He is a two and a half year old. I cant keep him on a train for 9 hours which is what the tgv is north to the very south.

I have two tickets. One knock - stanstead - cancelled. And one stanstead -perpegnan departing at 2 which is not cancelled but my hunch is it will be and I obviously cant get there anyway and hope they will refund me even though it is not cancelled. I also dont know if I should reschedule while there are still seats available and chance that the med appts can be rescheduled reasonably soon.

Or if I should just cancel and book the ferry. I know the south of france ok but I have never driven the length of the country. I know Id need at least one stop over with a small child.

Ponster

Either way I think you're going to have to decide. This morning all of the ferry companies websites were down, Eurostar is pretty much full for the week and I paid €180 for a bus from Paris to London next Thursday !

I still think that ferry + train is probably the best but it'll be a 10+hour train ride.