vliegle

Hi all,

I'm looking to take the train from London to the south of France in mid-September. I use a manual wheelchair. I'm having a hard time booking online (it keeps telling me there are no trains available). Does anyone have experience with this? I have a hard time believing it's all booked up, this far in advance and on multiple days....

Thanks.

DeafFlyer

Is this posted in the right forum? How does it saying there are no trains available have to do with your wheelchair?

Katja

Please continue to follow this thread in the European Rail Travel forum.

Skiddie

Can you provide more details about what and how you're trying to book? I just tried a booking on eurostar.com for a wheelchair passenger from London to Cannes, Sept 19-27, and there was plenty of availability.

If you're trying Avignon, eurostar wasn't giving me any availability for those dates due to the direct service (I think)-- though I think this is a bit of an error.

KQ321

European train reservations generally open 3 months in advance, and Eurostar opens 4 months in advance. So, reservations for London-France in September should be open (although the occasional train might not be, if the timetable hasn't been finalised yet due to planned engineering work - SNCF can be quite late to finalise such things) and it's unlikely that trains in September would have fully sold out, this far in advance.

Which website are you using? And which route(s) are you looking at? If you are searching with a 'include wheelchair' option turned on, you may be better searching without it first, just to get an idea of which trains should be available.

As always, Seat61 has some useful info as well: Passengers with special needs

Note that if possible, you should try to change trains in Lille (where it's a single station change, which I'm fairly certain will have lifts) rather than in Paris, where you'd have to transfer between stations (which would likely require a taxi).

stut

If it's the Avignon service, it's only running until 1st September:

http://www.eurostar.com/UK/uk/leisur...timetables.jsp

Skiddie

But why won't Eurostar.com give me connections in Lille to Avignon in mid-September? It seems a bit weird (when trying to book, the website advises to call if you want to travel outside of the dates of the direct service).

KQ321

Hmmm. I agree it's a bit strange. It seems that Eurostar.com will only sell the direct service London to Avignon, not anything involving connections via Lille or Paris. However, it will sell tickets to Aix-En-Provence with connections in Lille or Paris - and Aix is the next stop down the line after Avignon!

You may want to try www.raileurope.co.uk or www.voyages-sncf.com (if necessary, build the journey up as two separate legs). Otherwise, just call Eurostar...

Reason077

Normally it shows connecting trains to Avignon just fine. But for some reason it currently won't let you make bookings to this destination after September 9th.