From London to Paris in 12 hours - a Eurostar saga

Claire and I set off from from London for Paris on Friday 21 April at 8pm expecting to arrive 2 hours later on the super fast Eurostar train. It turned out to be a comedy of errors with one technical failure after another. As a result we spent the whole night stranded on a broken down train in the middle of the French countryside, mostly in the dark and with little information provided. To make matters worse, people were allowed to smoke in the bar car which filtered through the other cars affecting myself and others with respiratory health issues. On the plus side, the staff were very helpful and responsive when alerted to medical issues. It was hard to know whether to laugh or cry as the situation went from bad to worse.

By 4am, in the absence of information updates, there was growing uncertainty and when the silhouetted figures of large darkly dressed men carring guns appeared in the doorways, it was not at all clear whether they were police coming to help or armed terrorists. Fortunately most passengers remained calm though frustrated and the gun-toting men were in fact police marshalling us to get off the train and walk along the track to the replacement train that had finally arrived from Paris. We then had a very slow journey to Paris towing the beleagured train behind us, arriving a little after 9am Paris time.

Upon arrival in Paris we were given some light refreshments (sweet sticky muffins and orange juice), taxi refund vouchers and an address for claiming a refund. Having lost a night's sleep, and therefore half our weekend we did not think that was enough and will be writing a letter.

Initial news report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7356283.stm

Preliminary inquiry findings: (apparently the driver was to blame..... )https://outlook.education.tas.gov.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2112787920080421