france - bikes on trains from Paris to Lyon?

mckraken

hello all,

myself and my good lady are about to cycle from london to paris in april then catch a train (Night train hopefully to save money) from paris to Lyon then cycle down to Toulon or Marseille

but i cannot for the life of me get any clarification on whether you can take a train with bicycles and where to find the cheapest way to buy these tickets...

has anyone done a similar trip ? and any hints or tips will be most gratefully recieved!

thank you !

mckraken

andymiller

I've made the trip from London to Marseille (en route to Corsica) a couple of times

I've got a couple of pieces of bad news.

The first is that I very much doubt that there's a sleeper to Lyon - the journey time is simply too short.

The second piece of bad news is that, if there's no sleeper, you'll need to take the bikes in bags. While there are some TGVs that take bikes, I'm 99 per cent sure that there are none on the TGV lines that run through Lyon.

So far as getting the cheapest tickets, my advice is that your best bet might be to pay a bit extra and ring Rail Europe. If you're prepared to faff about, you can order over the web but my advice would be DON'T order a through ticket. My experience (although they might have fixed this) is that trying to book a through journey results in missing out on the cheaper deals on Eurostar. It's better therefore, if you don't mind faffing about, to check the Eurostar prices separately from the price for the French trains. Look out for 'Prems' which give you the cheapest prices for booking early.

If you want to avoid changing in Paris, you can travel to Lille Europe - there are a couple of trains a day that go direct from there to Lyo (and to Marseille if that is your ultimate destination).

peejay78

second the advice on a bike bag.

it's a must. journey time from paris to lyon is two hours, pretty much bag on, and it doesn't stop.

cycladelic

I got a TGV from Paris to somewhere near Chamonix and didn't bag my bike.

I also got a local train from somewhere to Chamonix, again without mt bike being bagged.

This was in 2005. Has it changed a lot since then?

peejay78

well, all the advice and small print says 'bag it'.

but you pays your money, you takes your chance.

cycladelic

I will be there next month, so I will find out then.

In 2005, my wife and I also took trains in France from Lille to Paris, and again from Nancy east. Again, we didn't have any problems with our bikes.

andymiller

cycladelic

Here is the link to the French national cyclists' organisation's own website with information on carrying bikes on french trains

http://www.fubicy.org/spip.php?rubrique54

Here is the SNCF's own dedicated site.

http://www.velo.sncf.com/

You can carry bikes on pretty much all local trains. But most TGVs (the main exception are the newer trains on the TGV Est - this would include the train to Nancy) have no facilities for carriage of unbagged bikes. The position is changing a little, slowly, as newer trains come into use or are refitted.

I did a search on www.voyages-sncf.com. (When you get the list of trains and fares there is a little tab 'details'. Click on it and, if the train takes unbagged bikes there will be a a little pictogram of a bike). I found a number of trains to St Gervais Le Fayet (the nearest main station to Chamonix) where the TGV does indeed take bikes. Unfortunately for the original poster, I also checked trains from Paris to Lyon and out of the 15 trains I looked at not one took bikes. Sorry

cycladelic

Thanks, Andy

I won't be using TVGs - just local ones to get from A to B if it's raining or when I feel knackered.

jw1987

hey, i am in france at the moment and am taking my bike up from lyon on the train to aris, so that i can cycle back there, anyway the only way to take your bike from paris to lyon (and vice versa) is to go on the TER's which are slow trains, the journey takes 6 hours and you have to change at dijon, hope this helps. J

cthompso

There are some TGV's that do Paris to Lyon St Exupery TGV (Lyon airport) that take bikes. Though it leaves you a fair way from the middle of Lyon, that is not necessarily a bad thing?

You must reserve space for bikes on the TGV as you book your ticket - places are limited.

As for price, SNCF now operates a similar pricing system to cheap airlines - the further in advance and more flexible you can be on days/dates, the cheaper the ticket (though 3 months ahead is about the limit). For comparison Paris-Lyon St Exupery is 63 euro's next week, but 22 euro's at the end of May.

marksteven

hi ya 2 friends and i took nite train back from nice 2 paris a couple of years ago it had a proper room 4 bikes we also did a couple of tgvs they had bike racks that u hung ya bike by the front wheel

mckraken

yes thank you, all of your advice has been gratefully recieved and inputted as it were.

we've decided on london to paris via newhaven -dieppe route and we're takling it from there.

hoping the weather's as good as this!

thanks again!