I think it’s fair to say that Nantes doesn’t have a Reform led council, but let’s not digress….. I thought I’d better explain what I was trying to achieve in France last week beyond walking around in excessive heat and photographing municipal art.
The basic plan was, as ever, reassuringly simple. I had booked a cheap Ryanair flight to Nantes for Monday and needed to be back in Norwich by Friday for London Craft Beer Festival, which was an important professional and cultural commitment I was not intending on missing. Ideally, I wanted to return on Thursday, giving me enough time to be ready for the event in London that started on Friday morning.
My preferred option was a £9 Wizz Air flight using my Wizz Multipass, although availability is only revealed three days before departure. This adds a pleasing element of suspense to travel planning, rather like waiting for lottery results except that the prize is Luton Airport. When the flights appeared, the nearest suitable departure was not from Nantes or anywhere that could reasonably be described as nearby. It was from Lyon, on the other side of France, introducing the relatively minor logistical challenge of crossing a substantial portion of the country to take advantage of a £9 airfare.
I first checked the direct trains from Nantes to Lyon and discovered that French railways were apparently under the impression that I wished to purchase part of the train rather than merely sit on it. The fares were considerably higher than I had expected, threatening to undermine the entire financial achievement of the £9 flight. To show the challenge I faced, the train journeys were showing at around £300 and I wasn’t paying that.
Fortunately, continued research eventually revealed a cheaper train from Nantes to Le Mans. By “continued research”, I mean approximately three hours of opening tabs, rejecting fares and moving imaginary passengers around France like pieces on a railway-themed board game. Le Mans did not get me especially close to Lyon in any immediate geographical sense, but the ticket was affordable and the journey allowed me to spend a night in another city, which I naturally regarded as an advantage rather than an additional complication.
The resulting itinerary involved flying to Nantes, travelling to Le Mans, spending the night there, continuing across France to Lyon and then flying back to Britain for £9. To some people this might appear unnecessarily elaborate, but those people do not understand the quiet satisfaction of assembling a journey from a collection of individually cheap components. Other people have high powered jobs and families to manage, I have to work out how to get home without spending £300 on a train. Well, we all have our burdens I suppose.
So, what could possibly go wrong with this new competitive sport I’ve started playing of cheap and complex travel?