Summer mini-Interrail: Sums

This was not the trip I'd hoped for, but was nonetheless a trip.

My presence was required to plug in a modem that never came. At first I thought I'd go and do that and – interwebs working and everyone happy – I'd then use the days remaining on my pass to go somewhere else before heading home, like the Córdoba trip. I still did this, but not with enough time to really enjoy the pass on the way back.

tl;dr:

It was 747€ cheaper to use an Interrail pass at the last minute.

For the outward leg, I needed to make reservations for Bordeaux to Paris on the TGV – 10€, or 64€ if I'd bought a full-price ticket – and then the onward Eurostar to London for 40€ over the 236€ lastish-minute fare. I think I was lucky to get both given I made my reservations only four days before travel.

In the UK, no seat reservations are required, but I saved myself 183€ for the Avanti train from Euston to Manchester, and 65€ onwards, had there been a Transport for Wales Premier service to dine on. The final leg of that journey south involved faffing in Manchester (lounge closed) and Crewe (lounge closed) and I would have been far better off just changing in Crewe anyway, were it not for my determined mirage-chasing of a three-course meal in first class which has thus far been repeatedly foiled.

By the end of the first day of travel, I'd already saved: the point-to-point tickets would have totalled 548€.

For the start of the return journey, I recklessly waited until just two days before departure before making seat reservations. I went via Crewe, and while there was no Transport for Wales Premier service for breakfast again despite being timetabled, the lounge in Crewe and the train to Euston provided free nibbles and that all-important Breakfast Bloody Mary. Without the pass I'd have paid 47€ to Crewe and 159€ onwards to Euston.

I grazed and snoozed on the Eurostar to Paris (40€, not 276€) and then snoozed some more on the Intercités de Nuit to Toulouse, a first-class couchette costing 20€ for the reservation – compared to a possibly-reasonable last-minute fare of 131€. I might have liberated an amenities kit or two. Like last time, the morning shower and coffee in Toulouse were both very welcome.

Here is where things didn't really go as planned; I didn't have time to use the third day of my four-day pass. That said, I really enjoyed my lazy day in Toulouse.

My final journey home started on a TGV to Bordeaux with a screaming child and indifferent parent, about whom I would have been even more annoyed had I paid the 56€ fare instead of a still-begrudged 20€ for the seat reservation made only two or three hours before travel. The full-price ticket from Bordeaux to Périgueux costs 27€, but TERs don't require a reservation with an Interrail pass, so I walked on waving my pass, glamorously.

Those exciting sums in full.

Buying the tickets individually would have cost 1,244€. A four-day pass in first class without discounts costs 367€.

On top of this, I paid 130€ in seat reservations, a total of 497€ for the whole journey.