Summer mini-Interrail: Three days in one.

I went to England. And then came back again. On the train. My quest for the full-on Transport for Wales dining experience remains unfulfilled.

The reasoning behind my decision to dash to the UK last-minute at the beginning of August is boring and beyond the scope even of my ability to turn nothing into fifty words, but suffice it to say that the United Kingdom was not the cool refuge I was hoping for.

After weeks of temperatures in France in the very high thirties, and more days than were necessary in the low forties, I was really looking forward to some perpetually grey, rainy, and endlessly unpredictable Albionian weather. This was not to be, for the hot weather seemed to move north with me, and the green and pleasant land was uncharacteristically brown and toasty.

Bordeaux, as it happened, did not smell of smoke when I got there. Only a week or so previously, the local radio stations had been broadcasting non-stop apocalyptic alert messages warning us not to undertake unnecessary physical activity or even breathe outdoors as the smoke from the wildfires in the Gironde hung over my little village in the Dordogne. I was half expecting to find a scene from Blade Runner when I stepped out of Bordeaux Saint-Jean, but found myself – for want of a better phrase – pleasantly disappointed that there was no charred wasteland to greet me.

I stayed at Jost again, and this time was rewarded with a yellow bracelet on check-in – because I am special now – that allowed access to a breezy rooftop terrace where I felt a little out of place taking photographs of a finger puppet while young things draped languid across pool furniture between goes in the hot tub and trips to the bar. My dinner snack was a particularly yummy hummus concoction, washed down with most of the spectrum of colours from the cocktail menu.

I retired to my pod to get plenty of rest before the 07:45 to Paris.

The journey to the UK was uneventful. The woman in the seat next to me on the TGV to Paris was most put out that I'd dare ask for her bags to vacate my seat, but busied herself for most of the journey with very busy and important things on her laptop, and occasional trips to the bar. In Paris, nobody was sick on the métro, and at the Gare du Nord I had time for a very civilised beer on a sunny terrace in the time before my train to London, where I dutifully grazed in the lounge at Euston before the Avanti train to Manchester just in case I'd not had enough to eat on the Eurostar.

The lounge in Manchester was closed. My Transport for Wales Premier service had been cancelled. There was no posh nosh.

Fast forward four weeks to this Friday, and after a month decidedly devoid of train action, and with three days remaining on my pass, it was time to leave before it expired. The dreams and schemes department had been entertaining the idea of a couple of nights in the Train Lodge in Amsterdam before a gently-cushioned cruise back to France over the weekend, but in the end I decided to work with something simple that let me delay my return until the last possible moment, but not waste the remaining days on my pass.

I booked the 16:01 Eurostar to Paris and the night train to Toulouse.

Once again, Transport for Wales denied my expectations, and the 10:12 to Crewe was not the train with first class and a restaurant that I was promised. Still, it arrived on time in Crewe, where I had time for a coffee and a bun (and a packet of crisps, some jelly beans, and a flapjack) in the lounge before the 11:55 to London Euston, on which a Bloody Mary eased digestion of my complimentary pasta salad. I waited in the lounge at Euston until ten minutes before the "please arrive at" time on my Eurostar ticket – because Saint Pancras doesn't seem to do waiting areas particularly well – then followed the Somers Town wellbeing walk to international departures. It was busy, but moving. A man with a badge asked how many bottles of cider I had. (Not enough).

For my last few trips on the Eurostar I've pre-booked the vegan meal, on the basis – perhaps ill-founded, I'm not sure – that if only around 4% of the travelling population requires a vegan meal, there's a very good chance it's put together specially, rather than catered en masse. And, because pudding.

On the way out, the meal was a tasty orecchiette salad with aubergine, peppers, and poivronade, followed by a melon, pineapple, and pumpkin seed salad with five spice, although the veg option – feta and roasted pepper salad bowl, organic green and red lentils with rice and runner beans, red onion and spinach – looked equally tasty. As someone seems to have put me on a list, I was offered all three colours of wine to wash it down.

For the return journey, they absolutely nailed it. My main was a "tikka tofu" split pea salad with pickled cucumbers and greenery, and the obligatory bread roll with sunflower spread, all washed down with a dinky bottle of organic rosé. Just the one this time. For pudding, there was a bar of organic Raw Halo dark chocolate, which was really good. Thoughtfully, there was an individual sachet of oat milk on my tray, in case I felt the need to adulterate my coffee.

Replete, I slipped in and out of snoozy time until arrival in Paris, where I'd left just under an hour to get from the Gare du Nord to Austerlitz on the line 5, altogether a much more pleasant transfer experience than Montparnasse and the line 4. The Monoprix on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital was open, and I procured a sandwich "just in case" I felt peckish in the middle of the night.

The 20:53 Intercités de Nuit left Austerlitz on time, and I shared my four-berth couchette with three very quiet people who seemed unfazed by my train slippers. I didn't sleep as well as I could have, but I didn't have an uncomfortable night either. On arrival in Toulouse, I headed straight to the lounge and once I'd had my shower, sat in a corner with lots of free coffee and ate my sandwich for breakfast.

I wanted to stay in the Hôtel Pastel the last time I visited Toulouse, because I'd been intrigued by photos of its rooms, the walls of which are galleries of local artists. The original plan was to deposit my bags there, use day three of my four-day pass to go somewhere for the day – just because – then use the fourth day to travel home, on the last day of validity. As it turned out, my hotel reservation had not been confirmed, but the nice man at reception noticed he had a "residence" immediately available – a little self-contained studio with art on the walls – which he offered for the same price as a single room in the hotel proper; this cost me half of what it should have.

The "residence" building was a five-minute walk away at the Jeanne d'Arc end of the Boulevard de Strasbourg, where locals were closely studying fruit and vegetables at the market in the shade. Once installed, I had a little lie down to ensure the bed was comfortable, and then magically it was after midday, and the window of opportunity for travel elsewhere had become significantly smaller than that onto my private balcony with two chairs and a table.

Instead, I donned summer attire – I own espadrilles now – and explored more bits of Toulouse. My idea of tourism is probably best described as quiescent hedonism: I like to wander, looking for things that might be interesting, but also acutely aware of opportunities for refreshments. I walked around with good intentions for easily more than long enough to justify stopping somewhere for food or drink or, ideally, both. Around the Capitole, all the restaurants were heaving, despite the over-zealous pricing on the lunchtime menus.

Bakeries around the centre were also cashing in on the lunchtime rush, I wasn't in the mood for fast food, and eateries beneath the arcades du Capitole were having a laugh if they thought I was paying that much. All I needed was a little bistro where I could sit at the bar, order a beer and an Emmental-beurre baguette – and nurse both until I'd decided what to do. I found Le Select, a proper old bar-tabac on a road leading from one corner of the (non-geometric) Square Charles-de-Gaulle, where I contented myself with free peanuts and the presence of a Française des Jeux terminal.

Above the bar, a large television was showing the Tour of Britain without sound. While waiting to be served, patrons would occasionally look at the screen long enough to determine that it wasn't the Tour de France, shrug in disgust, and then look expectantly at their empty glass. The girl of the impossible nails – which must've made it difficult to use the touchscreen for the scratchcards – dashed occasionally from the tobacconist corner to the bar, made conversation, served a beer, and then went back to selling perplexed tourists juice for their vapes.

Behind me, a woman of advancing years sat on a comfy seat that had progressively been reupholstered in and held together by black duct tape. She was doing crosswords or insulting the man sitting on the stool next to me who was apparently aware who she was and therefore disinclined to take offence at her opinions, of which there were many, on most things. Silently declaring occasional ceasefires, both would break off hostilities for the obligatory diplomatic cigarette break.

A marching band became the catalyst for a brief alliance, and when it was decided I'd been at the bar long enough without talking to anyone other than the girl of the impossible nails and that I must be safe, both engaged me in friendly and knowledgeable conversation about the city in which they live. Eventually, I had to make my polite excuses and leave to look at more of the place about which they waxed so lyrical.

I stumbled upon Galerie Al-Khamel, a small gallery showing an exhibition – in the presence of the artist – of panel illustrations from a graphic novel called De mémoire de réfugié. This tells the story of Abu Iyad, a resident of the Zarqa Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, who is determined to preserve the memory of the village from which his family was expelled in 1948. I got there as the artist was packing up and preparing to go home, so didn't get as much time there as I'd have liked to study the various framed panels on the walls of the tiny room, but the artist was keen to engage with everyone there and it was a serendipitous cultural find.

I ventured forth again.

The têtes de bergère – shepherdess heads – are an ornamental feature about which I previously knew nothing, to the point of total ignorance. They are ubiquitous yet overlooked, meticulously sculpted brass shutter stops of the 18th century which adorn their windows with a sign of nobility and elegance, and the wealth of those who commissioned them. If there's a window with a shutter, there's a very good chance it's being held in place by a sculpted bucolic head.

Look closely.

If you're lucky, one of them may have been redecorated to become one of a growing collection of colourful Petits Clowns by Carlota Gri, a Spanish street artist living in Toulouse. There is no exact or official figure for the total number of little clowns painted on the streets as she continues to add more, but there were sufficient in the part of the city I was in to keep me entertained for a good part of the afternoon. I like to think that they are as harmless as the many other coats of paint applied to the original brass over the last two hundred years, and they're so cute.

Istanbul Grillades provided an acceptable evening falafel right next to my hotel-cum-residence, after which it was time to go to bed.

I was woken by church bells and a sudden panic that I didn't know what time I needed to check out, or what time my train was. The bus that completes the journey home leaves Périgueux station at 18:05, so by working backwards I determined that I had plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast on my private balcony – Avanti lounge loot and Aeropress coffee – before I even needed to think about making the final seat reservation of my journey home on the 12:15 TGV to Bordeaux.

Outside the Hôtel Le Bristol opposite the station, a group of English rugby fans were exchanging colourful adjectives for their respective hangovers while a parade of classic cars drove past, loudly and confidently demonstrating the efficiency of their collective horns. I had a beer and kept an eye on the station clock.

There was a child on the train. It was not of the age to grasp the importance of its parents' whispered words of gentle encouragement towards silence, nor were they aware of the irony of whispering so as not to disturb other passengers, as if this would somehow mitigate the horror of it banging things and trying out its new words at full volume. The man in the row in front eventually abandoned all hope and moved to a different carriage. Emboldened by the solidarity of his resignation, I mouthed a pleading s'il vous plaît – with suffering yet compassionate face – which finally spurred one of them into putting down their phone and taking the little shit out just long enough for it to recharge its lungs, but absolutely no longer than that.

It was a joy to arrive in Bordeaux. I had time for lunch in the Bouillon: kir, vegetarian Caesar salad, rum baba, coffee, Poire.

The 16:23 left for Périgueux with me on it, gently snoozing until it was time to change onto the bus home.