Arles; Sunday, 10 November, 2024

Originally, I had planned to have most of the day in Arles with an evening flight back to London, but a couple of months earlier BA had decided that the Sunday evening flight from Marseille back to London for just this one Sunday should be cancelled and instead I was shifted to the morning flight.

If I’d been staying in Marseille, it would have been annoying but manageable, but being out in Arles meant that I had to be up early as I needed to be able to dash out for the 08:10 train if the 09:10 train was cancelled. Thankfully when I woke up at 07:15 my train had already set off on it’s journey so I was pretty confident that I could get away with having a shower and breakfast before checking out of the hotel.

After checking out I walked back over to the railway station, opting to head down to the river and along the waterfront rather than up through the centre of the old town, mostly because that way it was flat the whole way, rather than the route up and over the noticeable hill that the arena sits on top off – fine when you’re just wandering around, annoying when you’re dragging a suitcase behind you.

I made it to the station with about a quarter of an hour to spare for the train back towards Marseille, which arrived on time about half full, meaning I was able to get a seat for the comfortable ride back to the catchily named Gare de Vitrolles-Aéroport-Marseille-Provence, or VAMP as it’s even less conveniently referred to on the local bus timetable when trying to work out the connection to the airport.

Thankfully the airport shuttle bus runs every 12-15 minutes even on a Sunday morning, but even with a quick connection I still had less than 90 minutes before my scheduled departure time when I entered the terminal building.

I had a smooth journey through the airport as far as passport control at which point I had to join the back of a slow moving queue for the single open desk for non-EU passengers exiting Schengen, and by the time I was through the flight had already started boarding, so there was only time to very quickly pop to the WC to make the flight comfortable and then over to the gate and straight onto the plane.

Thankfully the journey back to the UK was considerably smoother than the journey out with no helicopters getting in the way at Heathrow and even with a couple of laps of the Biggin Hill stack we were at the gate 20 minutes ahead of schedule.