motorail

[d_ean]

Hi all,

I am thinking about taking motorail from calais to nice sometime next summer ( 1 week trip in between may to july, havent decided date yet) . For those of you that might not know (including me!) motorail appear to offer travel for man & bike to various destinations throughout europe. I have a HM so riding through france is not an option.

Its an expensive choice for one so does anybody know how i can connect with other riders who might be planning a trip down south in order to split carriage costs?

Is there a forum dedicated to this or are any of the members on here as badly organised as me!?

For that matter, if anybody has experience of using mototrail, good or bad, i would be keen to hear it.

Thanks for any tips

Dean

[legs748]

Some people i met when i went to the Somme a couple of weeks ago had used it to get down to Dijon. They said pretty much the same as you it was expensive but worth it not to have to ride all the way. One gripe they had was the headroom in the bike area of the train was really low and it's a real DIY effort to get the bikes onboard, they had a GS so it was a struggle. So check the headroom when you book and work out if the hyper will fit, i compared the GS to my multi and it should go in, but any higher and it would be screwdriver time.

[drazz]

A solo bike takes up the same space as a small car so you get charged the car rate. Two bikes go on side by side and still only take up the space of the car so two bikes pretty much cost the same as one bike.

Regarding headroom, bikes go on the same transporters as cars do, so if your bike is lower than most cars (and most bikes are) then you shouldn't have any problem. I've used Calais to Avignon and Calais to Toulouse on a few occasions. Each time you rode your own bike onto and off the transporters, and the bike was secured/unsecured by the train operators whilst you're astride it. Yes, you have to keep your head down!

You can't beat getting on the train in Calais of an evening when its six degrees and raining, then waking up the next morning in Avignon where its already twenty two degrees at seven in the morning, the sun is out and the roads of southern France await...

[Keninsussex]

I just had a look at the Rail Europe book Eurostar to Paris, TGV, SNCF France, European train travel with Thalys, Elipsos, Artesia, ICE overnight train tickets online website but it doesn't seem to give any prices as the motorail is closed for the winter.

Any idea on cost to the south of France?

I know it's probably twice the price in August so if you could say approx when the price refers to that'd be handy.

Cheers