So I’m leaving Paris and the day dawns clear and sunny, albeit brisk. You wouldn’t read about it.
8 am on a Sunday morning and not many people on the Metro.
It’s a 20-minute ride across to Gare Montparnasse, from where my Bayonne train will depart. The platforms haven’t been assigned to all trains yet so waiting travellers gather expectantly in front of the departures board until the numbers come up and then hurriedly migrate en masse to the platforms.
I prebooked a seat before leaving Melbourne. I didn’t prebook the large man with blocked nasal passages who sat opposite me and alternately snorted, snuffled and snored for the duration of the trip.
Bayonne is around five hours from Paris. (The train to St Jean Pied de Port leaves from Bayonne. I’ll catch it tomorrow.) A really enjoyable journey through the French countryside: flat and sometimes gently undulating agricultural land, field after field of brilliant yellow canola crops separated by green pasture, scattered cotton-wool clouds, stands of dense thin-trunked trees with delicate green foliage, clusters of old farm buildings here and there, every so often a small village, vines around Bordeaux (not unexpectedly), extensive pine plantations beyond.
I noticed heavy snow on the mountains in the distance to the east as we neared Bayonne. I have an idea they might be part of the Pyrenees and wonder, if they are, whether there’ll be snow where I’m walking the first week or two. Maybe my thermals will get a workout after all. I’ll wait until I get to St Jean Pied de Port to find out more about conditions.
Bayonne station is pretty.
As is the town.
So pretty!