Sleeper train report

I'm sitting writing this, for posting later, on the train from Madrid to al-Jazeera Algeciras. Continental trains are so uncivilised: this one has at-seat radio like on 'planes, and screens (CRT—how quaint!) for a film (which, most annoyingly, was an American film shown with Spanish dubbing and Spanish subtitles—you'd have thought they could have used some of the channels on the radio for playing other languages), but no bloody power sockets! These are standard on British trains now, and even St Pancras International Station is chock-full now of power points, both British and continental, and at convenient desks, but I've seen nothing better than a shaver socket on a train since I left London.

From London I got the Eurostar to Paris, and then the sleeper train to Madrid. I promised tea_cantata I would report about the sleeper train, so here's my report. You get put up in a four-passenger berth, which, frankly is pretty cramped: you got no more leg room than on a normal train. (The train I'm currently on, by contrast, has loads of leg room.) A short while into the journey, the guard comes and takes your ticket and passport; says he'll give them back to you in the morning. What the point of that is I don't know, particularly as passports are not needed between France and Spain. [Update: I figured it out later, but forgot during the three-day period I didn't have access to coronium—damn!]

One of the passengers said on the web it said that places came with towels; they don't. They did, however, provide each passenger with a bottle of water, a fold-up toothbrush and earplugs. (The ScotRail sleeper service, FWIW, also includes shaver, deodorant, flannel and I forget what else—a cow-orker of mine who often took this train gave them to me once.)

There's a label saying to ask the conductor to lower the beds from the wall at ten o'clock; in practice, he came around at ten o'clock and lowered them. Each bed has its own reading light, which means the main light can be turned off; the curtains over the window come with velcro so external light can be fully excluded. (This is a good idea I independently implemented at home!)

I didn't sleep very well, partly because I was woken at quarter to midnight by a text (sent by someone a timezone behind in Blighty)—though at least this made me turn my 'phone off so I wasn't woken again by any welcome text from the Spanish 'phone company once we crossed the border), and partly because the temperature in the berth fluctuated dramatically between hot at the start of the night, and cold after we'd climbed up into the Pyrenees. I've never seen the Pyrenees before... and I slept through them this time (though even if I had been awake, I wouldn't have seen anything as it was night).

I associate the Continent with better trains than the UK, but this journey has disabused me somewhat: the only high-speed (TGVesque) trains I took the whole voyage were between London and Paris, and my return trip between Madrid and Toledo. If a high-speed train with limited stops had existed, I could probably have done the Paris to Madrid leg in a lot less than the thirteen hours it actually took.

Finally, as an addendum to the trip report, I had intended, after dropping my bags at the hotel, to join the free Sandemans walking tour of Madrid I read about on the Web, but I arrived at the tour start point to discover it had been cancelled: the Sandemans tour guides had received threats from the operators of the for-money walking tours, and they'd had to suspend their tours. The other tour companies had spread misinformation about Sandemans by deliberately mistranslating what they said, and when a non-English-speaking policeman had turned up the day beforehand and cautioned the tour operator, he had refused to listen to the testimony of the Spanish speakers in the troup as "they would be biased." Good grief.

If anyone reading this is thinking of going on a Sandemans tour in future, apparently the thing to do is check their Facebook group to see if they're operating. Evidently I've been left behind by the future again, if even reputable tour companies liaise with their clients now through Facebook.

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It would appear that Gibraltar is frequently cloudy even when the surrounding areas of Spain are sunny. I thought this must be because the Rock forces the air flowing over it to rise and cool, making the water vapour condense out into clouds; but I am told by a Spaniard that the real reason Gibraltar is frequently cloudy is actually because it's British.