Lille Travel Forum

What would be the best way to get from London to Lille on a Saturday in February? How does the whole Chunnel thing work? We're in the US, so I have no clue how to do this.

There are Eurostar trains that currently leave London Waterloo station that go above ground to the English Channel, then proceed through the Chunnel (a large tunnel that runs under the Channel) then run above ground again once on the other side. It is all "totally transparent to the user" as we say in IT.

The Chunnel portion is actually sort of boring - the tunnel is not lit and with the lights on inside the train reflecting off the glass, you could be anywhere in the world riding through the countryside at midnight.

When we did this several years ago (going to Brussels from London), they told us to show up early and give them our luggage. We waited in a waiting area, and then (as I recall) they rejoined us with our luggage as we boarded. It was all somewhat posher than the average train ride.

The ticket is pricey, but has the advantage of being fast and taking you from downtown to downtown (unlike airports).

Note that I seem to recall reading that the Chunnel trains are being moved from Waterloo to another station in London, but I don't recall when that is to happen...but watch for it...

All in all, it's very easy - you just sit there and enjoy the ride...

Bill

Except your ears don't pop in the countryside Bill! :)

But yes, it is all very simple. The only thing is that there are security checks before you board, unlike all other European trains. All this means is that you have to be there enough in advance to have your luggage screened (but just like at the airport you pick it up from the machine yourself). I've only done it from Brussels to London a lot (by now they even have UK passport control officers in Brussels) but Lille is similar.

They won't change from Waterloo yet so don't worry - they are just trying to tie it up to the rest of UK's main lines in a better way. Tickets are sometimes quite cheap if you can pick less popular departure times such as early mornings, Saturdays and so on when business people don't travel. Have a look here:

www.eurostar.com

You can book a ticket and pay by credit card and then pick it up at the station.

I suppose it's the same people who call the Channel Tunnel the Chunnel as call San Francisco Frisco, i.e. not anyone who knows it. The tunnel is a hole in the ground that works like any other tunnel, i.e. you go in one end and out the other! You can travel through it on 2 different types of train:
1) Car-carrying trains, formerly known as "Le Shuttle", now just called Eurotunnel (actually the name of the company that operates the tunnel). You drive your (or a rented) car onto the train at Folkestone and off again 35 minutes later at Calais Coquelles; you can get out of your car on the train and walk around if you want.
2) Passenger trains, known as Eurostar, which are high-speed trains currently leaving (London) from Waterloo International but mid-2007 they should start to leave from St. Pancras. After Waterloo they stop at Ashford, then Lille, on the way to Brussels (or possibly Paris), and they achieve top speeds only in France which is the only one of the 3 countries concerned to have completed the high-speed track needed by TGVs. The first respondent must have been travelling first class on Eurostar - normal passengers carry their own luggage and have to heft it through airport-type x-ray machines. See www.eurostar.com for timetables and further information. Eurostar trains are reservation only but you can sometimes get a reservation as little as an hour before the train departs.
In both cases (Eurostar or Eurotunnel), passport controls are carried out by both countries on one side of the tunnel only, to save you having to queue up on arrival. Thus if you go by Eurostar, at Waterloo you go through first UK departing then French arriving passport controls; on departure from Lille of course it is reversed, i.e. French leaving then UK arrival passport controls.
You can still cross the channel by ferry to Calais if for some reason you want to, although one of the blessings of the tunnel is that it isn't affected by bad weather the way the ferries are.

I suppose it's the same people who call the Channel Tunnel the Chunnel as call San Francisco Frisco, i.e. not anyone who knows it. The tunnel is a hole in the ground that works like any other tunnel, i.e. you go in one end and out the other! You can travel through it on 2 different types of train:
1) Car-carrying trains, formerly known as "Le Shuttle", now just called Eurotunnel (actually the name of the company that operates the tunnel). You drive your (or a rented) car onto the train at Folkestone and off again 35 minutes later at Calais Coquelles; you can get out of your car on the train and walk around if you want.
2) Passenger trains, known as Eurostar, which are high-speed trains currently leaving (London) from Waterloo International but mid-2007 they should start to leave from St. Pancras. After Waterloo they stop at Ashford, then Lille, on the way to Brussels (or possibly Paris), and they achieve top speeds only in France which is the only one of the 3 countries concerned to have completed the high-speed track needed by TGVs. The first respondent must have been travelling first class on Eurostar - normal passengers carry their own luggage and have to heft it through airport-type x-ray machines. See www.eurostar.com for timetables and further information. Eurostar trains are reservation only but you can sometimes get a reservation as little as an hour before the train departs.
In both cases (Eurostar or Eurotunnel), passport controls are carried out by both countries on one side of the tunnel only, to save you having to queue up on arrival. Thus if you go by Eurostar, at Waterloo you go through first UK departing then French arriving passport controls; on departure from Lille of course it is reversed, i.e. French leaving then UK arrival passport controls.
You can still cross the channel by ferry to Calais if for some reason you want to, although one of the blessings of the tunnel is that it isn't affected by bad weather the way the ferries are.

"I suppose it's the same people who call the Channel Tunnel the Chunnel as call San Francisco Frisco, i.e. not anyone who knows it."

Tsk, tsk, gami, that was unnecessarily catty...

To quote Wikipedia: "Before and during construction it was widely known by the nickname Chunnel, but today it is normally known as the Channel Tunnel."

As you can imagine, the use of the nickname "Chunnel" became widespread in North America, but because we don't work with it everyday, there was never any pressure on North American speakers to shift to the "approved" name of "Channel Tunnel". This is hardly the first time in the history of the world that different geographic areas evolved different names for the same thing...for example, the river that separates Texas from Mexico is called the "Rio Grande" by Texans and the "Rio Bravo del Norte" by Mexicans - why do Texans call it a name in Spanish that is different from the name that the Mexicans use? Who knows and who cares...

One of my customers is a software company that sold many copies of expensive (and good) software over the year to large insurance companies. The product for years was spelled with funny capitalization (as an example): SoftWare. At some point, the Marketing Department decided to normalize the spelling to "Software".

I write the RFP responses for this company, and frequently in the RFPs, existing customers looking for new software will describe their current environment, including the use of the product called "SoftWare". In my draft of the response, I spell the product the same way that the customer does: "SoftWare". I am always amazed that the salesguys correct my spelling to "Software" - after all, it was called "SoftWare" when the customer paid a large amount of money for it, and I think it's kind of insulting to imply to the customer that they don't know how to spell a product that they paid through the nose for.

Same thing here - when I first rode on the train that we are describing, the hole in the ground was still widely known (in North America at least) as the "Chunnel" - so forgive us for referring to it in the way we were taught...

Bill

Hi!

I have to admit that I find it faintly amusing to hear people refer to it as the "Chunnel", but never mind - it's quite cute :)

Anyway, getting the train (Eurostar) is easily the best option for going from London to Lille. It only takes 1hr 40min. It is very fast, smooth and comfortable, and departs from Waterloo Station in the centre of London (services from St Pancras do not start until November next year). There are about nine departures a day from London to Lille on Saturdays (between 6am and 6pm). They are mostly trains going to Brussels, but some Paris trains also stop at Lille.

Ticketing and pricing are airline style, so it is worth booking well in advance. Also, you have to book on a specific train, and your booking will include a compulsory seat reservation. You can book on-line at www.eurostar.com but you need to realise that the cheap tickets are only available as return fares, which means that even if you are only going one-way you will probably save money by buying a return and just not using the return portion. The basic, fully-flexible single fare London-Lille is GBP 125.00. This is the cheapest single fare, but you can get a return for just GBP 55.00 if you book at least 21 days in advance (this fare is non-exchangeable). When booking on the website, I think you can opt to collect your tickets at Waterloo Station.

As already mentioned, there is airport-style security and passport control, so you need to check-in at least 30 minutes before departure. You take your luggage with you at all times.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Andrew

Thank you, Andrew. I will add that if "chunnel" is so wrong, then why does the website for the operator of the Channel Tunnel (Eurotunnel) list "chunnel" as one of the metadata tags for its homepage (http://www.eurotunnel.com/ukcp3main)? Oh, and here is a headline from the BBC World News (from 1999, I'll admit): "UK Chunnel voted best of 20th Century" (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/302345.stm)...and there are more than 200,000 other web pages with the word "chunnel" in them (whether all of these pages are relevant is indeed a different story ;-) )...

It sounds like the UK used to call it chunnel, then changed to channel tunnel, and forgot to send the North Americans the memo ;-)

Bill

Clearly many UK "eurocrats" in Brussels were also not sent that info as they still call it the Chunnel.

I honestly can't remember when we stopped calling it the "Chunnel", but it must have been not long after actual services commenced (12 years ago). During construction it was obviously the tunnel itself that was the centre of attention, but once it had opened the services which used the tunnel needed to get an identity, which is when the Eurostar and "Le Shuttle"/Eurotunnel brands came in. It is a tribute to the marketing effort that they managed to get rid of the original terminology (I'm sure someone has written a thesis on it!).

In fact, these days the tunnel aspect is pretty much played-down. As has already been pointed-out, there is nothing very exciting about travelling through a tunnel (as opposed to going over a bridge, for example) - you can't see anything! So they concentrated the marketing on the speed and quality of service. And it obviously worked. I think of Eurostar as being the fast, convenient train option for geting to Brussels or Paris (or Lille, Avingon etc.). The fact that it uses the Channel Tunnel is almost incidental. What is more important is that we have this fantastic dirct train service from London to Brussels/Paris, and I never tire of that. The tunnel itself is, frankly, the dullest part of the experience. It used to take 8 hours or so to get from London to Brussels (train/coach - ferry/hovercraft - train/coach). Now it is less than two and a half hours. Brilliant! And next year, when they open the last bit of the UK high speed line it will be less than two hours. Ecstasy!

Andrew

Not to belabor the point (but I'm avoiding working), but I noticed on the BBC website, that while there were nearly 80 hits on the website for "chunnel", the usage was definitely tapering off (only one hit in 2005 and one in 2006, as I recall). And, more tellingly perhaps, it appeared (without really close inspection) that "chunnel" was used in the headline to save space while "channel tunnel" was used in the body of the article...so maybe the headline writer didn't get the memo either ;-)

Bill