A question of Schleswig-Holstein

Strandkorb at Travemünde, soft pastel on A4

For a long time, the plan for a spring escape had involved a jaunt to Stratford for a dose of The Bard. But with nothing booked and tempus fugiting, realisation dawned that the Warwickshire town, no matter how delightful, is always absolutely rammed with coach loads of camera-toting tourists.

And crowds are not what the doctor would order, were the doctor peering over the top of spectacles and penning a prescription.

With the question being one of where one could get away from, if not all, but a fair bit of it, the solution arrived with the sort of inspirational flash worthy of a cartoon lightbulb overhead: why not head to Travemünde?

Planning has been minimal, and bookings were only completed last weekend, but the hours are ticking down to departure. 

And so we head to Schleswig-Holstein. The Other Half has been getting excited about this on the grounds that he knows of its place in history.

I’m not going to get into the matter of whether he is only the fourth person to understand it after a Prince Consort who’d died, a German professor who’d gone mad and twice-prime minister of Britain, Lord Palmerston, who famously claimed to have understood it but then forgotten.

Having reached a point of climbing up metaphorical walls, the central requirements have become peace and quiet – and clean air. And the promise is good.

Schleswig-Holstein is the most northern of Germany’s 16 Länder or states, with a population (including the city of Kiel)  of 2,806,531, giving a density of 460 per square mile.

The old port town of Travemünde is included in the borough of Lübeck, thus being part of an overall population figure of 211,713 – or 2,600 per square mile.

Compare that with London’s 13,690 per square mile, and it’s entirely reasonable to expect that it will be a great deal quieter – even to the point of being able to hear oneself think!

I visited just over a year ago during my brief sojourn to Lübeck itself. On what was, in effect, the first truly good day of the year after that dismally long winter, I stepped out of sandals and onto gloriously soft and clean sand.

It was quiet that day – just a few people around – and since it’s not much later in the season, I hope it will be very little busier. Certainly, we had no trouble booking, even at such a late stage.

So, with a few hours remaining before we board the train for Paris and then the sleeper to Hamburg, it’s worth mulling the area a little.

Travemünde itself sits at the mouth of the Trave, overlooking Lübeck Bay.

Originally built as a fortress by Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, in the 12th century, it was later strengthened by the Danes, became a town in 1317 and passed into possession of the free city of Lübeck itself in 1329.

None of the old fortifications remain, having been demolished in 1807, juts a few years after it started to become known as a seaside resort.

Sand model of the Holstentor, one of the gates of old Lübeck

It remains a resort, but not to quite the fashionable extent of the beginning of the 20th century, when even the likes of the Kaiser visited. It is, however, Germany’s largest Baltic ferry port, boasts the oldest lighthouse on the German Baltic coast, dating from 1539, and hosts the annual Travemünder Woche of sailing races plus Sand World, with displays of sand sculpture.

Oh yes, there will be history involved in this little jaunt.

On a possibly historical but certainly amusing note, the Schleswig-Holstein coat of arms features two lions looking at a thistle.

The story goes that it was originally designed to have the lions facing the other way, but Otto von Bismarck suggested it be changed because the thistles would make those leonine bums rather uncomfortable.

It’s the sort of story that you deeply wish is true.

But setting that aside, walks along the Baltic sea shore are calling, while there is a fairly sizable-looking park not far from the hotel too.

And then there’s the food: if it’s anything like the simple but squeakily fresh sole, topped with the shrimp garnish so beloved of the region, that I enjoyed on that fleeting visit to Travemünde last year – the first al fresco dining experience of the year – it will be very welcome indeed.

Mind, since we booked, I’ve been thinking of German breakfasts and, most particularly, nearly dreaming of the herring.

The books are backed – a Thames Hudson volume on Matisse, Joanne Harris’s Blackberry Wine and The Rat, by Günter Grass, which I have already started.

And for the first time on such a trip, there’s also a a box of soft pastels, an A4 pad, an A5 sketch book, a pack of pens and another pencils, sharpener and rubbers.

So, Schleswig-Holstein wir kommen!

The journey back to Collioure

Etangs between Narbonne and Perpignan

It was just before 8am when the train pulled into Collioure. The journey from London had taken around 16 hours, but you hardly notice it when most of that is overnight.

We Brits might have almost forgotten about sleeper trains, but they’re a boon. In this case, it means that we don’t lose the first day of our holiday traveling.

We left work in the afternoon, walked the short distance to St Pancras, and after relaxing in the lounge for a while, boarded the Eurostar to Paris.

It’s approximately 30 minutes to the coast – whipped out of central London in no time, through tunnels, then past Rochester and on into Kent – before a further 30 minutes, at a somewhat slower pace, takes you under the Channel and lands you firmly on the Continent.

From there, it’s little more than an hour to the French capital.

There was blue above, and green and burnished gold below; trees and grass, bushes and scrub; hedgerows and harvested fields.

And occasionally, girded by a copse, the immaculate stone teeth of a war cemetery; some tiny, some larger, and serried ranks of clouds, grey shadow below pure white, marching into the distance, as far as the eye can see.

Rows of poplars started in the middle of nowhere and finished as abruptly as they’d begun. Small villages rushed past, arranged neatly around stocky, simple church towers topped with simple, stocky spires.

Modernity and industry have broken through in places, but these are the characteristics that dominate this landscape as you pass through northern France.

Once we’d disembarked at Gare du Nord, the main question was what to do with the time before our sleeper departed, just before 10, from Gare d’sAusterlitz.

We got a cab across the city and decided to wander into a nearby park that we hadn’t spotted when making the same trip last year.

It turned out to be le Jardin des Plantes, which is France’s main botanical garden, with four science museums – entomology, paleontology, mineralogy and evolution.

We strolled along one of the main walks – well, as much as one can ‘stroll’ when dragging bags behind through the sandy gravel.

The restaurant, though, was closed. So we sat down for a few minutes, only to find a park warden making his way to everyone still in the gardens to warn them that it would be shutting within four minutes.

Up again and out of one gate, we spotted a potager alongside one of the buildings, between the main gate.

A potager – not a bit of a flower bed in a carpark, but a real, live French potager, tightly packed with a vast array of fruits and vegetables.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to examine it in detail. That will have to wait for another day.

Determined to take things easy, we then found ourselves slogging up inclined streets before we found our way back to the main road to the station.

Still with two hours to go, we spotted a small Italian restaurant – a trattoria, in effect – and decided that, since locals seemed to be dining there, it was a far better option than the row of brasseries opposite the station itself, which, as we discovered last year, are not providers of the finest Parisian cuisine.

Il Vero turned out to be very nice indeed, although it was a good thing that we had plenty of time, because they really, really do believe in taking everything slowly – even getting your bill.

I opted for a puttanesca, never having had one actually cooked for me before.

Colloquially known as ‘tart’s spaghetti’ – possibly because it’s hearty and simple – it was an absolute delight.

It’s a tomato sauce with anchovies melted in to it, and olives and capers added. Gutsy, big flavours. Mine came with finely chopped parsley as a garnish, and I added a sprinkling of grated Parmesan.

The waiter/patron/maître d’ was a character who was happily joking with all his diners. In our case, he was deeply suspicious of The Other Half for requesting a mushroom risotto – and then asking that there be no cheese near it. I understand this sentiment entirely.

Later, he was equally suspicious when neither of us could finish the huge portions placed on the table – and I really do mean huge. In my case, it won’t have been less than 300g of pasta. The Other Half estimated that there was half a pound of rice on his plate.

Both dishes were fabulous to taste, and we enjoyed a small jug of a sparkling rosé that was recommended by a fellow diner and which was light and refreshing.

It left us enough time to comfortably make the train and get our bags up and onto the racks. We’d been given the top bunks in a cabin for four. At this time of year, you don’t get to have a cabin to yourself, even for a supplement – it’s too busy.

Not that that was a problem last year. A very quiet couple boarded just after us (we were on the lower bunks) and left at Narbonne.

Yesterday, we set off from Paris, with dark having just descended and with nobody else in the cabin.

About an hour later, we pulled into a station – my guess is that we were at Orléans. What sounded like a veritable hoard of small children came aboard and then spent the next half hour or so being bedded down by adults dealing with the excitement of a late night and a bed – on a train!

Your berth comes with a packet containing earplugs – kept for home, where they’re of far more use when some nearby residents decide to party late – and a very valuable bottle of water.

A knock on our door alerted us to the fact that we were not going to be alone for the entire journey. A man crept in quietly and went to bed with barely a sound.

He left at Narbonne in the dark, but the stop was long enough for dawn to brush past.

An apricot glow blossomed behind lilac clouds as we passed the first etangs. Hills in the background showed purple. The water was like metallic mirrors. It is a magical landscape that leaves me breathless every time in see it.

Morning over the Mediterranean, Roussillon

A couple of stops and we were in Perpignan. Just 20 minutes left. Elne first, then Argelès-sur-Mer. And five minutes later, you pass through a tunnel bored into the foothills of the Pyrénées and pull to a halt at Collioure itself.

We piled out of the train, almost mad with delight.

Down the hill and into the centre of the village, with a first stop for coffee while Aux Délice Catalans opened for business.

Then more coffee – and the butteriest, lightest croissants you can dream of, after we’d been welcomed by the man of the house, who shook our hands and welcomed us.

Tiny, delicate clouds scudded out to sea, and simply disappeared. Whitecaps were visible out beyond the harbour. The sky was as blue as could be and the light reminded you why Matisse loved the place so much.

After breakfast, it was on around past the chateau and to Port D’Avall beach, where Cyril and Vincent host the Bora Bora Beach Club – café, sun loungers (transats), pedalos and kayaks (give it a few days and I’ll be out in one).

Kisses and handshakes abounded: Cyril, quite wonderfully, lets us stash our bags at the back of the café until we can get into our rented home, while we get to start lounging around in the sun – by just 9am.

And so it is: Collioure – we’re back.

Back to Collioure

The only time that I'd ever travelled on a sleeper before, it was the Orient Express. They might still exist in the UK - London to Fort William and London to Cornwall - but I haven't had cause to contemplate such routes for many a year.

The last time I did, we were travelling back from Inverness to London, after a holiday on Skye with friends. It was during our time at The Morning Star, and the (frequently erratic) low pay meant that most staffers depended on goodwill from friends to be able to venture much beyond the capital.

It had been an intriguing break: my first ride on a horse had ended prematurely.

I had been doing rather well and was feeling a tad self-satisfied as we walked along, that I was managing to get to grips with the rise and fall of the animal's gait.

The The Other Half's mount, jogging behind, decided to bit the bum of mine. Somehow, I managed something like an elegant fall as I was thrown, clinging to the reins and breaking my fall - although I was still left nursing a spectacularly large bruise all down my left hip and thigh.

The woman who was leading our party was horrified. Complimenting me on my unplanned descent, she asked if I smoked - obviously a cure for such falls - and passed me a packet.

I was most certainly not getting back on. My head was spinning, although I wasn't seeing stars, but the 1991-'93 Arsenal away kit - an infamous, psychedelic abomination of yellow, with blue zig zags all over it.

The horse was tied to a gate post and I plumped myself down on a tuft of grass, fag packet grasped firmly, as the other trotted off for a canter around the Fairy Glen.

The holiday was also memorable because, quite amazingly, we saw the aurora borealis, a quite astonishing and beautiful sight.

And even though this was years before my foodie period started, I have two food memories too: of the discovery of haggis in the cafe/bar on the quay in Uig where we were staying - a dish I ate relentlessly, served by the buxom landlady who, rumour had it, also provided a different sort of service out of hours.

There were Staffin Bay prawns too, relished after a dreadful few hours clambering around in the Quiraing, which nearly defeated me as I struggled to get a foothold on the damned pea gravel.

And then there was the long, long train journey home. It was overnight. Our friends, god love them, told us, rather shamefacedly, that they'd managed to get a sleeper cabin. They left us with a tray of beer and fled to their cabin.

It was a pretty dismal night, the discomfort and the tiredness hardly assuaged by the beer. And it put us off lengthy train journeys for some time.

But in more recent years, we have enjoyed travelling through France by train and, after that Venice trip, we'd discovered that a number of sleeper services exist across the Continent.

So we came to this year and an idea started to take shape. Much as the journey from London to Collioure by train is one we enjoy, it eats up the first day of any holiday. Air travel doesn't shorten things much, if you take into account getting to airport, and doing so to face a two-hour check in.

The plan was simple: leave the office on Euston Road on our final Friday at work, walk the few hundred metres to St Pancras with our bags and get the Eurostar to Paris.

From there, we'd have a couple of hours to get across the French capital to Gare d'Austerlitz. From there, we'd board an overnight service to Portbou, the first stop in Spain  on the Mediterranean route. Collioure is just four stops before. And after Narbonne, the service stops everywhere, so we wouldn't even have to change.

The first leg of the journey went entirely as normal.

The second leg, across a quiet Paris marked by the traditional August desertion of its residents, was, as always, a pleasure.

Gare d'Austerlitz is undergoing serious renovation and is hardly the best of the city's stations at present, but taking a cab across town gave us the time to find a café just outside and sit down for a much-needed meal.

For the record, I chicken and chips. With gravy. We expected little more than fuel - and it served its purpose.

Boarding was easy enough, and we eventually found our carriage on the vast train. The compartment we were in had four bunks. In the height of the holiday season, you can't pay the extra to have a compartment to yourself, so having settled ourselves on our allotted lower bunks, we waited to see if we'd have company.

It's very simple. You have a pillow, a light sleeping bag, a bottle of water, earplugs, a wet wipe and a rubbish bag. That's it. Since it's communal, you do not undress fully.

Sure enough, shortly before departure, a French couple joined us. The most basic of polite pleasantries exchanged, they climbed up.

It was dark as we pulled out, a little before 10pm, French time. With nothing to see outside,  everyone seemed to agree, wordlessly, that it was time to get comfortable and turn out the main light.

There were little lights at the head of each bunk, but they didn't make reading easy. Within less than 30 minutes, we had all quietly bedded down.

If it was quiet in our cabin, it was less so elsewhere, as parents tried to calm down children delighted by the absolutely fantastic combination of bunks and a train.

It was warm - no, it was seriously sultry. The air conditioning only starts when the train does.

But it was still surprisingly restfully - even when the train banked and you felt yourself pulled, as though by a tide.

There are questions of etiquette to worry, though. After all, you're sleeping with complete strangers. What if you snore? What if they snore? What happens if you fart? Oh now come on - that wasn't me!

The cabin door opened, letting in light. Breaking from a half doze, I could see a large figure quietly tap the sleeper in the upper bunk opposite.

It was the guard with a wake-up call.

Our fellow travellers quickly and quietly disembarked, by which time The Other Half had stirred, and I'd flipped the light on to reveal that it was 6.15am.

Where were we?

Dawn was just about beginning. Straightening myself up a little, I stood in the corridor and tried to see a sign on the platform outside. Only as we drew out did I discover that, as I suspected, it was Narbonne.

With light coming up and less than two hours to go, we took advantage of the privacy and changed - me into a swimming costume, shorts and a t-shirt, ready for the beach. Frankly, even if we'd not been intending to hit the shore, the change would have been welcome: sleeping in a bra is not comfortable.

The route was familiar: past the lagoons and the salt marsh, with the sea tantalisingly in view on the horizon and then ducking away; a stretch I adore.

And this was seeing it differently, anew.

A red glowing dawn; mercury water, mirror still; a lone heron standing alert. Swifts on the first dart of the day; tufted grass and water; west Roussilon's garrigue, with clouds in perfect reflection.

My eyes were greedy, gobbling up everything I could set them on.

Port-la-Nouvelle gone; Leucate-la-Franqui a thing of the past; Rivesaltes behind us.

Outside, vineyards and olive trees and bougainvillea in purple majesty.

Then Perpignan - Dali's 'centre of the world'. Elne next, then Argeles sur Mer, the train gradually shedding more and more passengers, wiping sleep from their eyes as they stepped down into the Mediterranean light.

And then, mere moments and a tunnel later, Collioure.

We left the train and headed out, down the hill and into the village. I wanted to kiss the ground.

It was just 8am. First things first. Breakfast at Délices Catalans: coffee and croissants: flaky and buttery, light-as-a-feather and still-warm.

We were back.

Stage 7: Villefranche de Conflent to Collioure

The train to Perpignan was due to 2.26pm - or so we thought. But getting back to the station in good time - we had to buy tickets - there was a shock in store.

That departure was on weekdays only and this was a Saturday. We had, in checking the timetables, forgotten to verify such a tiny, but deeply important detail.

The next train, then, was for three hours hence, by which time we were supposed to have already met the agent for the cottage in Collioure and taken possession of the keys.

There was remarkably little swearing. We tried to see, via the internet on our phones, whether there were any buses that did the journey to Perpigan. Nothing appeared.

If we waited three hours, where would we wait and what would we do?

After a few minutes, The Other Half asked what the state of play was cash wise and, receiving a positive answer, rang a taxi firm whose number was displayed outside the station, asking what the fare would be to Perpignan.

It turned out to be acceptable, so he asked for a cab. 'Tout suite' turned out to be a little longer than we might have imagined, but that was probably, in part at least, because we were still at the edge of panic. Or perhaps it was simply that the driver had his lunch to finish.

But after the discomfort of Le Petit Train Jeune the day before, this was welcome luxury: a modern, air-conditioned car that did the journey smoothly - and in less time than the scheduled train, at any time of the week, would have managed.

And as if we were not already aware of just how near the heart of Pays Catalan we were, it also allowed a first glimpse of Canigou, the Catalans' sacred mountain, which soared above as we left the Têt Valley behind and bore across the plains that we're most familiar with, approaching the Corbiere hills in remarkably short order.

Perpignan station - the centre of the world, as Surrealist artist Salvador Dali described it when he managed to find his way out of Figueres in Spain - was crowded. But improvements in the last 12 months meant that we were able to get to our platform without having to carry the bags up or down stairs, as previously.

The train from Narbonne was on time and we joined the game of hustling on board with all the other people making for the coast.

It's just a trio of stops, with the sea tantalisingly just over the near horizon and the foothills of the Pyrenees sloping down to the Mediterranean in front. Elne, Argeles sur Mer and then through the final tunnel that brings you to Collioure.

Standing and with bags ready by then; ready to be off; ready to walk past the tiny arena and down the hill into the town itself. Sights to welcome and to greet once more; a sense of the intervening year simply fading away; sangria waiting by the beach.

We'd made it. We were back.

Stage 6: La Tour de Carol to Villefranche de Conflet

Continuing our desire to get decent luggage space on small, local trains, we ambled along the platform with some time to go before departure. And it was high fives when we realised that the doors to Le Petit Train Jeune were unlocked.

Stashing bags, we took our pick of seats and settled down for three and a half hour trip through the mountains and down the Têt Valley.

It was bumpy. Very bumpy. But this isn't just a train for scenery-seekers; it's a vital service between towns and villages at the heart of French Catalan territory.

There are 22 stops - Bolquère-Eyne, at the midway point, is the highest railway station in France.

These are the sort of stations that Dr Beeching would have axed, with little thought for the impact on the communities that were affected.

Instead, tourism helps to maintain the 101-year old line, with many visitors taking a two-hour journey from Villefranche de Conflent and then returning.

Two hours, frankly, would have been more than enough.

After being jolted about as the train twisted and turned around the mountains, and after so many people joined it that it was rammed, upland pasture lost it's allure, the skies greyed and even the fleeting sightings we'd had of small birds of prey ceased.

If anyone fancies Le Petit Train Jeune, don't do more than two hours either way, unless, like us, you're using it less as a sightseeing trip and more as a method of transport from A to B.

I was utterly fazed out for the last 90 minutes or so; hungry (our picnic hadn't been anywhere near enough), uncomfortable and desperately needing to be able to stretch.

Fortunately, the B&B we were staying in was only around 100m from the station - and on seeing our weariness, our hostess instantly offered the most welcome beers of the entire week.

And with that, we settled in for the our brief stay.

Stage 5: Foix to La Tour de Carol

Perhaps surprisingly, given that we might fairly expect that the area we would be travelling through would be the least 'modern' of our trip, this turned out to be the easiest stage of the tour to date.

After spending an hour or two in Foix itself - including a raid for picnic fodder at a small supermarket - we headed for the station, concerned a little to make sure that we could get our bags into decent spaces and find ourselves the best seats possible, since this was to be a two-hour jaunt.

We had no such worries - although the French do seem to like taking as much space as possible on a train, and we had to settle for a pair of seats facing the way we'd come.

Within a few minutes, as we started a noticeable climb out of Foix, I was in danger of getting a crick in my neck. So we were quite relieved, just two short stops later, when enough people departed to leave us a pick of seats, with a big window and the chance to sit back and appreciate the scenery more fully.

And it was worth appreciating, as we moved higher and higher. The architecture was fascinating: a combination of the Alpine and the brightly coloured walls and shutters of Pays Catalan.

We ran alongside the still fast-flowing Ariege, moving nearer and nearer to it's source, marvelling at how clear it looked, musing on how it would be to scoop up a handful and drink.

More gravel industry was visible, together with what seemed to be regular power stations by the running water.

There was a semi-constant sense of 'ohhh' and 'ahhh' as we rounded bends to see spectacular new panoramas laid out before us. The heavily wooded mountains eventually showed signs of a tree line, but the charming upland meadow alongside the tracks remained.

Out of the corner of your eye, you'd glance butterflies fluttering away, while beehives lay dotted around; sometimes singly, sometimes in large groups.

The trip took us within a stone's throw of Andorra and left us, a short while later, at La Tour de Carol, a vast but almost deserted station that is effectively a border halt for France and Spain.

But with Schengen rendering passport checks between the countries a thing of the past, it is a very quiet place that has seen better days.

The platforms were low though, so as had no trouble getting out of the train, and even had the novel experience of having to walk across the tracks to the station building itself.

With mountains all around and the odd, lazy lizard sunning itself, there was something sleepy about the place, as vast old sheds and buildings decayed slowly in the languid atmosphere. 

Le Train Jaune, which travels by narrow gauge to Villefranche, pulled in soon after. But like everything about this part of the journey, it was going nowhere fast.

The solitary station shop was shut until the early evening and no sign existed of food and drink. We were glad for the little picnic.

We had a break of 90 minutes between trains. For me, a wander around the old station with the camera, unobstructed, had its fascinations, and that was followed by time spent writing, iPad propped up on my case.

And so, with a few other travellers and a couple of dogs, we waited.