On the Austrian Straight and Narrow Part 2

 Tuesday, 3rd August 1982

Three days after leaving home and after calling at various friends along the way, my holiday finally began. I'm almost certain that I bought a through train ticket from London to the Austrian border as I remember the booking clerk at Feldkirch station commenting on it, so I'm surprised to see that my diary records that I left London from Victoria Coach Station at 10.30 on a National Express coach to Dover. I even made a note of the fleet number (311). But 1982 was a summer of strife on the railways with strikes by train drivers resisting changes to working conditions so perhaps I'd bought a coach ticket as an insurance policy and then had to use it.

I recall spending the afternoon in Dover and then crossing the channel on the "Princess Anne" hovercraft to Calais, which took just 33 minutes although it was running 40 minutes late! This was my second and, until recently, my last hovercraft trip. On both occasions I found them disappointing - the seats were set too far below the window line and too far away for passengers to see anything other than the sky and that was always obscured by the spray!  They were also excessively noisy and uncomfortable. Speed was their only virtue and even that wasn't of much benefit when they were forty minutes behind schedule.

My diary doesn't record what I did about eating that day and neither the hovercraft nor the overnight train offered any catering to speak of, but by 20.00 I was aboard "train 396" a through train from Calais to Vienna via Strasbourg, Basel, Zurich and Salzburg.  In 1982 trains left from Calais Maritime station to which one could stroll from the ferry and which, combined with the rather similar Dover Marine station on the other side, made for a relatively seamless journey across the channel.  Anyone attempting the same route today would not only find a complete lack of international trains from Calais to anywhere but would also be faced with a bus journey between the main line stations at Dover and Calais and the ferry ports.

My train to Austria at Calais Maritime.

I'd booked a couchette berth, in a compartment where the seats could be converted into bunks, three each side for overnight travel. Leaving Calais I was the only occupant of my compartment and was pleased to find I'd been allocated the top bunk. At some stage during the night I was joined in the compartment by another passenger - a young lady - who took the bunk opposite. Never having been in a couchette before I had no idea of the etiquette as to whether I should greet her or even acknowledge her prescence, so I took the easy way out and pretended to be asleep.  When I awoke in the morning, she'd gone.

to be continued...