For happy travel across Europe, avoid the black hole of Paris

This week I narrowly failed to reach the Mediterranean coast of Spain from the north of England by train, within the daylight hours of a single day. The problem was Paris. Train buffs (and rail service planners) read on.

Let’s begin at the end. High-speed rail from France has until this month always hit the wall at the Pyrenees. From Paris you set out on the TGV at a tremendous lick until Avignon, as high-speed track yields to something more sedate. And in the Languedoc, where the Pyrenees totter into the Mediterranean, everything used to slow down further. From Perpignan to the Spanish border the old line squeezes and sidles painfully slowly the long way around a bulge of coast, by way of dreary Portbou. The motorway, meanwhile, punches a huge short-cut through the range. From Figueres in Salvador Dalí country you then rattle along to Barcelona at a reasonable pace.

To Barcelona, then, by rail from most of Britain, has meant travelling to London, then Paris, then taking an overnight sleeper train. You wouldn’t get much change out of 20 hours. Driving takes about 24 hours, and is truly grim — believe me — after you’ve done it about 50 times.

Rail is now mounting an increasing challenge to road and air. In Spain and France, for some years now and at vast expense, they’ve been building a very high-speed track between Barcelona and Perpignan, which (like the motorway) punches through the coastal range. The first section, from Perpignan in France to Figueres in Spain, has just opened. You can travel in a single journey from Paris direct to Figueres, in the same TGV train. You’re on TGV-speed tracks for the whole route except for a short, slow bit in the middle between Montpelier and Perpignan.