Another adventure begins in late September 2025 as we head off from Paris early one morning for Malaga, via Barcelona. The Paris region has turned grey and cold in the last week and we’re likely to gain 20 degrees over the course of this long train journey.
It’s a chilly and wet 8 degrees when we leave home to take the 5:55 train to Paris (the first one of the day from our local station). After a speedy breakfast near the Gare de Lyon and an even speedier rendezvous with one of our daughters to give her the car keys that her sister will need while we’re away, we board the 7:41 to Barcelona that leaves bang on time.
The first hour or so is spent catching up on sleep after our early start. It’s a grey day outside and the journey across the Paris suburbs is as uninspiring as ever.
But as the train crosses Burgundy, the sky begins to clear and the scenery becomes much more attractive (there’s a fine view of Cluny and its huge abbey which we visited in August). However, heading south through the French countryside to the first stop at Valence, the sky clouds over again and, shortly after, the low-lying clouds obscure the views of the Mont Pilat, the eastern edge of the Massif Central when I learned cross-country skiing during my year as an English assistant in a middle school in the Rhône valley back in 1980.
The clouds also mean no views of the Vercors and the Alps on the left-hand side and, at the first stop in Valence, light rain is falling.
But 20 minutes later, there’s a great view of Mont Ventoux in bright sunlight and just a few wisps of cloud left in the sky.
At this point, a notification on my phone makes me realize I’ve screwed up on the booking of our bus from Malaga to the start of our trail. I’ve booked it for midday today rather than tomorrow. Unfortunately, the train’s patchy wifi doesn’t allow me to alter the booking. Luckily, at the brief stop in Nîmes, I get a good enough 5G connection to buy two tickets for midday tomorrow.
After a 17-minute stop in Montpellier to divide our TGV (only the front part continues to Barcelona), the journey continued via Béziers, Narbonne and Perpignan. The section after Sète along a narrow strip of land with the Étang de Thau on one side and the Mediterranean on the other is one of my favourite sections of the journey. There are quite a few flamingos around today, but they’re impossible to photograph from the moving train.
There are more flocks of flamingos feeding on the Étang de Sigean after Narbonne, much to the delight of an Australian family in our carriage. The train seems so close to the water on this section that flooding during high spring tides must surely be a risk.
After Perpignan, we entered Spain, stopping at Figueras and Girona before arriving in Barcelona bang on time at 2:19 pm.
After a quick refreshment stop in the first-class lounge (a haven of peace in the confusion of Barcelona Sants), we go to board our train to Malaga, waiting in the usual lengthy queue until just five minutes before departure when they finally allow passengers down onto the platform, meaning that it’s a bit of a rush to reach our carriage at the far end of the train. Despite the late boarding, the train pulls out just five minutes after its scheduled departure, five minutes that it will hopefully catch up over the next 6 hours (yes, it’s a long way to Malaga).
At speeds of around 300 kmph, our very comfortable train speeds through the Spanish countryside, down to Tarragona, then across to Zaragoza before skirting Madrid to head south, via Ciudad Real, to Cordoba where the train divides, one half going to Sevilla and ours to Malaga.
Crossing the country like this, we see just how empty Spain is. We catch occasional glimpses of villages with castles perched above them, but most of the landscape is made up of what seems to be farmland (wheat?) and olive groves. There are also some spectacularly beautiful spots from time to time – wooded gorges, towering, mesa-like cliffs – but the general impression confirms what I felt on my last hike here in May: the rural exodus has left whole swathes of the country totally empty.
On the final section after Cordoba, we can’t see anything as it’s already dark outside. Over dinner, we get chatting to the two guys sitting opposite us who look like two computer technicians but who turn out to be two total geeks on their way to Malaga for the Comic-Con, a huge event imported from San Diego with Arnold Schwarzenegger as guest of honour. It suddenly becomes clear why the hotel prices in the city are so high for tonight (and the next three days).
When we arrive at 9:45 pm, just two minutes behind schedule, Malaga is a hive of noisy activity. Fortunately, our hotel is right opposite the station, so we’re checked in and in our room 10 minutes later. We consider taking a stroll around Malaga, but after the long day we decide it can wait until the next morning as our bus to Periana isn’t until midday. To be continued…
Footsteps 