Impromptu four-day tour, day one: Bordeaux - Leominster

I'm travelling to the UK a little last minute to attend a memorial service, so am sacrificing an Interrail pass to do it as it's significantly cheaper than buying point-to-point tickets.

Like with my last impromptu trip to the UK, I decided it would be best to set off from Bordeaux, mostly for logistical reasons. While there is a bus that will get me to Angoulême for 07:25, which I have taken before, it does leave little margin for error for catching the 07:36 to Paris. Realistically, I'm sure it would be fine to try for that connection, but pragmatically speaking, not this time.

Friends took me to Thiviers for the afternoon train to Bordeaux. I had ample time at the station for a quick excursion for coffee and cake in L'HanGare, one of the old freight hangars which has been converted by a local association into a much nicer place to wait for a train than the actual station, with coffee, cake, and co-working space.

A spooky Hallowe'en cookie affair and a café allongé helped me pass the time, and I consumed them in front of a window, through which I could watch the drizzle fall onto the platform outside from the comfort of my bar stool. In the children's play area next to me, a little girl was keeping herself quietly amused with what looked like fabulous toys, while a volunteer member of the association told me about the various goings-on at L'HanGare during the week. It's not open all the time, but as it's run by volunteers it seems churlish not to take full advantage of it when it is.

Refected and abluted, I made my way through the now more-than-drizzle to the station proper and boarded the 16:36 TER to Bordeaux. Outside the window there was a lot of weather, none of it nice. I tried to bond with a man with a ThinkPad, but he was far too busy entering information from a pile of Tesco receipts into a spreadsheet, and seemed unimpressed with my advances or appreciation of his firm red nipple. In light of this I was not inclined to show him mine, and instead tried to look aloof and important, like the seasoned traveller I tell myself I am, as the rain lashed the windows. If I'd had a newspaper, I'd certainly have ignored him studiously from behind it.

There was even more weather in Bordeaux. I immediately made a beeline for my hostel, where everything was once again most satisfactory for 27€ a night. A young and very enthusiastic American computer science undergraduate poked himself into my little pod to introduce himself, and explained he was at the tail-end of an investigatory mission to learn about wine. He thought that Bordeaux would be a good place to start, and to that end had been diligently learning about wine in some of the properties in the neighbourhood. It is his intention to come back and work, once he's managed to sort out a visa.

I was hungry and now thirsty, and considered a trip to the Bouillon once again, but luckily remembered that a long time ago, on my way to Lourdes, I had wondered what it would be like to eat at the Beirut Kitchen in Saint Michel. There was no time like the (then) present, really, as I'd had a little snooze and was now contemplating such things much later than was helpful. One quick stomp back to the station later, and I soon boarded a tram in the right direction. Just. From the tram stop at the other end, it was a stone's throw to the restaurant, which was cosy and not too busy.

The menu was full of very yummy-looking things, and if I'd known what Beirut was like I would probably have felt myself transported there. I was a little disappointed that the manakish were not available, but found the substitute falafels and mountain of flatbreads most satisfactory. I promised myself while ordering that if the falafels failed to sate me, I'd order an additional bowl of hummus or baba ghanoush to top up the shortfall, but with the accompanying salad and yummy bits, I found myself with only room for pudding. This was an Eish el saraya, a dessert of breadcrumbs soaked in syrup and topped with cream flavoured with orange flower water, laced with crushed pistachios and raisins. You can imagine my disappointment.

With a glass of wine, which I studied closely, the whole came to 21,50€. I paid and left, most contented, and set off to look at a fairground next to the Place des Quinconces, where it suddenly started to do more weather, quite forcefully.

I conceded I should take a tram back to the station and head for bed so as to be up bright and early in the morning. As I'd had a little power-nap on arrival, I wasn't feeling over-tired, and so used up some calories looking around the station, which was significantly nicer at 23:00 for not being rammed full of angry wet people in a hurry. There was a solitary Intercités on platform one, freshly-arrived from Marseille and disgorged of all its passengers, probably waiting to be shunted somewhere to sleep for the night.

The breakfast option was, I think, 4€ for the "express" breakfast – coffee and viennoiserie – but the woman who checked my room number when I wafted into the restaurant this morning said I had access to everything. I took full advantage of this, and worked my way through the breakfast buffet sufficiently to prepare myself to sleep most of the way to Paris. I had hoped to go through Lille, but there were no helpful coincidences of TGV and Eurostar for Interrail pass-holders, so Paris it was. This at least meant I could leave on a later train after a hearty breakfast, for if I were to have to deal with Paris Maquis-de-Sade and the line four, it wasn't going to be on an empty stomach at an ungodly hour.

It was a very blustery morning as I made my way to Saint-Jean to discover the 09:46 TGV to Paris had been only slightly delayed despite the best efforts of Storm Benjamin. This left me with time to buy a fresh copy of Courrier International and a Charlie to keep me amused along the way.

When I booked, the train looked quite full, but it was actually quite empty and as soon as we were under-way, everyone relocated to quiet individual seats for the direct journey to Paris. During booking I had deployed my modified "get the seat you want" approach to pass-holder seat reservations.

On the SNCF web site, start the booking process for the train you want and once you get to choose your seat, make a note of the carriage and seat number. Then, abandon that and start a group booking for a party the size of the number of remaining free seats, block them all out during the seat selection phase, and take the booking to checkout, where your chosen seats will be held for you for about ten minutes. Buy the pass-holder seat reservation on Raileurope and wait for your "randomly-allocated" seat to show up in the order information. Finish by cancelling the open reservation on the SNCF site.

Enjoy your window seat.

We arrived in Paris later than expected, because as we made our way north, some sections of the LGV were speed-limited due to the rather severe weather conditions. I had a spare métro ticket left over from my return at the beginning of the year, so the transfer to the Gare du Nord was simple in logistics, but horrific in execution.

I had to admonish one fellow traveller for pushing past people who had been waiting longer than she had (rude), and was reminded almost immediately, as a fellow passenger briefly interrupted picking at his scabs to share the contents of his stomach with the floor around us, why, exactly, it is absolutely worth getting the train at six in the morning just to be able to go through Lille. As the metro rocked from side to side, so the lumpy liquid was spread around generously, inviting people to walk through it and spread it some more. I inserted a Fisherman's Friend.

The Eurostar was late. It had been late leaving London and was late coming into Paris, but I found a hitherto undiscovered waiting area of the Gare du Nord, at the end of the departures hall up a spiral staircase. There were hardly any other people, so it wasn't an unpleasant delay.

We eventually got under way about 30 minutes late, and the journey was as wonderful as Eurostar journeys always are, save for the English-speaking angry vegan in seat 35 who had taken umbrage at being told by the French-thinking friendly train lady that as he'd not ordered a vegan menu, he was not going to get one, but that she could pick the fish out of another meal, which seemed only to enrage him more.

Another man across the aisle wearing earbuds then piped up that the other lovely lady had been rude to him in French when she said he'd shouted at her. "I speak French," he exclaimed from behind The Spectator, "and understood everything" – proceeding immediately to use his French to demonstrate that actually, no he didn't and that still no, he probably didn't. All this without removing his earbuds, in a voice that could've blasted the fish from Angry Vegan's meal from the other end of the train.

The vegetarian option that I had ordered on booking and which was delivered, despite the delays, was a lentil, quinoa, red pepper, and curried courgette salad bowl, with a bread roll and eased down by a baby bottle of red. There was a disappointing lack of pudding, but it did come with chocolate, which I looked forward to washing down with coffee. Sadly the delay meant there was no hot water, so I was forced to wash it down with a second baby bottle of red.

Despite the lack of pudding or coffee, it was probably the tastiest on-board free stuff I've had in a while.

The weather did its best to dissuade us from rocketing through it and onwards to the tunnel, but by the time we pulled to a halt in Saint Pancras International, we'd made up some of our delay and had arrived only fifteen minutes late. I was happy with this as I'd left time between trains to get some hardcore snack action in the lounge in Euston, where I discovered the 17:00 to Crewe was also delayed, and that I had all the time I needed to gorge on free stuff without having to stuff it into my face unceremoniously. I had a cheeseboard with a can of pop, and a packet of crisps and a cookie – which I stashed for later.

I waddled to the man on reception who had no further information about the 17:00 Avanti service to Crewe, so I installed myself near a screen and set about annoying the man next to me by commenting on his excellent choice of yellow-stitched footwear. He suggested that I should complement my lounge spoils with a can of tomato juice, as apparently nobody gets too angry at pilfering, so long as you don't sound of bottles chinking as you limp out of the lounge dragging your bag behind you. He too had had the foresight to stock up on snacks, and while we discussed our snack-hauls was casually refreshing an app which told us long before the man at reception the platform from which our train would leave. He didn't seem too disturbed by the presence of a finger puppet, but had just come from Brussels so had probably seen worse.

We hoofed it down to the platform as it was announced and went our separate ways at different ends of the same train. My seat was not the seat I'd hoped for, and I don't know whether that was because it was late coming in and not pointing the right way, or because I was looking at the wrong map when I asked the lovely lady on the phone for seat K6 – for I am a seasoned traveller, after all – but a complimentary gin and (Fever Tree) tonic soon mitigated any discomfort borne from having to share a table of four with a man with a laptop and a woman with high-rising terminals.

Avanti's first class offering is quite expensive – although Interrailers travel for free – but it does come with generous servings of free stuff. Around Milton Keynes I had the coronation chickpea and onion bhaji sandwich. The onboard team were lovely and ever so slightly Welsh, and I warmed especially to the lady who announced "I also have puddings" – sticky toffee pudding and clotted cream – as she brought me a baby bottle of red to help wash down the gin. I was sad to get off in Crewe, not because it's Crewe – although that is a perfectly good reason to be sad about anything – but because I was quite enjoying my Avanti pamper-fest.

We had been timetabled to arrive at 18:50, but when we did finally pull in it was closer to 19:20. This was no problem, however, as the onward 19:10 Transport for Wales there's lovely service to Cardiff had been delayed. It was going to be a tight connection, but the Avanti service pulled onto the adjacent platform, so I had time to spare as the TfW train slowly slipped down the platform departures board to make way for other services. All this chaos was due not to Storm Benjamin, but "unexploded wartime ordnance near a train" in Bridgend, which was having a severe knock-on effect decades later.

By the time the final train of the day pulled in, there was some uncertainty whether it would actually leave again as driver and crew were on a northbound service also delayed by the unexploded bomb. This left me plenty of time to install myself in my big comfy leather seat and wonder whether I was going to eat or not having inadvertently pre-stuffed myself on earlier trains. I texted Friend, who was collecting me at my destination, to tell him I was "on the train", and enquired about a cup of tea from the kindly young man in a TfW uniform who looked as if he might have access to tea.

Our departure time continued to elude us, like the plot of a Christopher Nolan film. Texts went back and forth as the app gave new times which didn't really match the times we were seeing on the platform display. At one point, Friend messaged to tell me my train had been cancelled, which seemed as odd as it would have been frustrating given I was sitting on it and just about to tuck into a cup of tea in a proper cup. We then became the 20:10 service behind us, which was promptly delayed and rescheduled to leave at 21:11.

A man in a Transport for Wales fleece boarded and produced a microwave lasagne from his bag which he then heated in the restaurant car and consumed vaingloriously with a wooden spork. I acquired biscuits. A youth in noisy tracksuit bottoms arrived from the other class enquiring for somewhere to charge his phone. I made a mental note to buy an EU-UK adaptor for next time. I ate all (both) of the emergency biscuits.

At long last, we pulled out of Crewe at 20:43, only 33 minutes later than we weren't supposed to, and 28 minutes earlier than we were. I was brought more tea, and another packet of biscuits, and some crisps. I had hoped that there'd be more of a dining experience than this, but never mind – for part of my return journey I'm hoping to make it to Manchester, which should provide time for at least two courses.

After very many hours on the train, I was deposited on platform two at Leominster station only an hour and forty minutes later than planned, where a very forgiving Friend piled me into the back of a van and took me home.

Richard Francis was my organ teacher and a mentor through the nineties, despite my focus on a repertoire that was exclusively loud and vulgar. Mischievous and a train-nerd, he would have delighted in today's chaos.