Another train day, another good story day, so you know what that means.  Brace yourselves, there’s a rough ride ahead.

Some thought went into this ride, because there are multiple choices for taking the train from Montpellier to Perpignan.  First off of course, we’re taking one of the regional (TER) options; but within that constraint there is still a choice.  The fastest way involves a transfer at Narbonne, but there is also a slower (because it stops at every burg and hamlet on the line) but direct option, one that continues on beyond Perpignan to Portbou on the Spanish/Catalonian border..  We opted for the direct one because we have plenty of time (even the slow option only takes three hours) and there are fewer moving parts and risks that something will go wrong.  At least as important too is that Narbonne is unusual among larger French train stations in that there are still no elevators.  With only a 13 minute connection that would require us to hustle our loaded bikes down one set of stairs and up another, the choice to take the direct train is a no brainer.

We made our train reservations two weeks ago, but today there’s another reason that we made the right choice.  With my newly injured knee, I hardly need to be racing up and down stairs with a loaded bicycle.

The day gets off to a leisurely start.  Our train doesn’t depart until 10:49 and the station is directly across the street from our hotel so we have plenty of time to have breakfast, pull our bikes off the small balcony where they’ve spent the night, pack up, and get over there.  Just to be on the safe side though we arrive a half hour early and then wait around for about ten minutes until our departure gate is announced.  

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Fortunately the Montpellier station is blessed with elevators - two of them in fact, which is lucky today because the first one we come to is out of service and we are just groaning at the choice between the stair option or taking our chances on the escalator when an agent points out the second one way down at the opposite end of the long hall.

So that holds us up, but we’re still on the platform with ten minutes to spare.  While we’re standing there we note with approval that the platform is nearly empty and there are no other bikes to compete with.  Boarding should be a snap, even though one other bike does arrive while we wait.

Our train arrives roughly a minute behind schedule.  We carefully watch the cars as they roll past us for the one with the bicycle logo, see it’s the first car in the train, and start chasing the engine to the far end of the platform.  And then, catastrophe.  The doors open and a zillion arriving passengers instantly flood the zone. Rachael is just far enough ahead of me that she gets through, but I and the other biker are blocked by this impenetrable wave of humanity rushing our way.

We both finally get through and rush for the bike car.  He arrives first and tries to open the door, but we’re too late.  Pounding on the door and screaming has no effect, and neither does the fact that Rachael is on the other side of the door horrified and desperately trying to open it also.  The train rolls out of the station after being in scarcely a minute, and we’re screwed.

We’ve talked about this eventuality many times over the years, but this is the first time it actually happened.  I phone Rachael (and here, let’s stop and give a heartfelt prayer of thanks for the fact that we have two working phones - something that wasn’t  the case just yesterday morning - or then we really would have been screwed) and calmly start developing our plan.

First off, Rachael is quick to remember that she has the tickets on her phone, so she emails mine to me.  And then we hang up while we each research train schedules to see when the next train for Perpignan departs.  I go upstairs to the lounge, find an empty table, and get out the devices to consult the schedules.

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A few minutes later we’re back on the phone again, confirming that we’ve both seen the same thing - there’s another departure to Portbou in just two hours, which wouldn’t be that bad - she can just wait at the other end for me - but unfortunately even though it’s up on the departure board, the SNCF site says that it’s actually cancelled.  So we hang up again while I go to the ticket office to speak to an agent.  They confirm the bad news - the next departure really is cancelled and the next direct one after that doesn’t leave until three in the afternoon.  He says it I’ll be much faster to take the next train to Narbonne, and transfer there.

So, that’s the plan - a crappy one unfortunately because there’s still the problem of those stairs to deal with, but now it’s worse because I’m on my own so it’s harder logistically because we can’t partner up to carry the bikes and we can’t have someone watch bags at one end of the stairs while the unloaded bikes are carried to the other.  Not good.

But, a least we have a plan.  I call back Rachael to update her, tell her I’ll call her at each step of the way, and ask her to phone me when she gets off at Perpignan.  So we’ll fast-forward through the next steps, which basically go as well as can be expected: I have no problem boarding the train to Narbonne.  Rachael is doing fine on her train, finding comfort from the kindness of strangers who are sympathetic to her situation and willing to help in any way they can. And in a surprise development, the other biker who also missed the train when I did boards Rachael’s train later down the line.  Somehow he hustled and caught some other, faster train that got him ahead of the original one in time to board it.

My train arrives in Narbonne two minutes late, leaving me only 11 minutes to get across to the other track to catch my train which is already in the station.  I’m not optimistic I’ll make it, but I do my best.  I get my bike down from its hanger and load the panniers before we pull into the station, I quickly find out from an agent which gate I’m departing from, and I start carefully wheeling my bike down the stairs one stair at a time.  Its not easy, the bike is hard to control, my knee is complaining.  Halfway down though, a young man climbing the stairs sees my predicament, takes my bike from me and carries it the rest of the way to the bottom before rushing back up to catch his train.  And when I get to the up staircase another guy grabs the back end of the bike and together we carry it to the top.  I’m boarded with three minutes to spare, no problem. There’s no doubt in my mind though that without the helpfulness of strangers I would never have made the connection.

I call Rachael to tell her the good news, and not long after she calls back to let me know she’s arrived in Perpignan.  Getting off was easy - she’s been standing holding her bike the whole way, and it’s an easy roll-off when she arrives.  We discuss lunch because it looks like I’ll arrive in time, and she’s found a restaurant close to the station that takes reservations as late as 2:30.  It should be no problem.

It’s around 2 when I arrive, only about an hour later than originally planned because the Narbonne run is so much faster. Somehow though it takes nearly fifteen minutes before we finally locate each other.  She’s waiting outside of one side of the station and I’ve gone out the other, so she gives me a restaurant name as a landmark to map to and we meet there and then bike another half mile to the restaurant she’s booked for us.

We’re both starved, but that gets addressed sufficiently.  We’ve forgotten what she had but a large salad, a larger plate of paella and two beers later I feel revived and ready to bike to our hotel for the next two nights.  So in the end it’s no big deal - we’re back together, we’re fed, and we’ve got another interesting story to look back on with amazement in the years to come. Back on track!

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