Motorail with small children?

[Thirdtimelucky]

Anyone got experience of taking small children on the French Motorail? (overnight train Calais - Narbonne, you take your car with you)

We are considering it to speed us to the South of France to go camping this June. In theory it sounds like a good plan - we get our own sleeping compartment and the train leaves at 8pm, arriving at 10am the next morning. But with a nearly-4 nearly-2 and a nearly-1 year old in tow nothing is straightforward!

Any thoughts very much appreciated!

hello.

we did this last year and it was not an unqualified success. this year we are driving.

reasons for the change:

• huge amount of hanging about to get your car on/off. that is before you get to your compartment, and then once you are on-board there seems to be yet more hanging about.
• we all slept very, very badly and consequently it took us at least 24hrs to get over the journey.
• cost was only slightly less than the plane - around £1200 - very expensive for what you get. even with two nights accommodation built in, it is still costing us £1000 pounds less this year.
• you still have to allow two days for the journey.
• carriages/compartments/washrooms clean enough but rather down at heel.

hth.

the children were 6 and 3 when we travelled, btw. tbh the issue was not managing them, it was that i found the whole set-up rather less convenient than expected! no doubt driving will not be a picnic either.

We used to take the motorail when I was litttle. I remember there was a lot of waiting around and sitting in confined spaces. Might be different nowadays though. I always fly now as an adult as can't believe how quick and easy it is in comparison so have to say the experience put me off for life. That said, I am a very impatient person and hate travelling/sitting still so am perhaps not best to judge.

3rdtime we have always driven tbh, although not done south of france. Savour the journey, stop in nice places on teh way down. We stayed at a lovely 'logis' hotel in Bourges year before last - it was so pretty. Arrived late afternoon to a lovely swimming pool, had a swim, shower and went into the main town square to a pretty creperie, live music in the square and a beautiful catherdral. Hone again, slept really well, nice breakfast, quick swim and enroute by 10.30. hotels enroute will still be cheaper than teh motorail

We used it last summer. Ds was 3.6 and it was OK for him. The compartments come in 4s or 6s and are bunks that pull down from the sides. You need to take your own food/drink as there are only very limited facilities on board.

Ds slept OK, once he got over the excitement of everything, but we had to turn the lights off and pretend to go to sleep ourselves so that he would. I didn't sleep there or back. I found the motion of the train really strange, and it was sometimes quite noisy at stations it stopped at - Dijon at one in the morning, for example.

As someone else said, the facilities aren't fab - basic and clean - two toilets per carriage of about ten compartments, but they are quite tired. And there's nowhere for a shower. This was fine on the way out as we could get into our holiday place and have a shower just an hour or so after arriving, but on the way back, we then had the sea crossing and drive home before we could really properly freshen up, and I felt really grubby for hours.

Thanks so much for the info.

A couple more questions - are there guard rails to stop the children falling out of bed? And do you think we could squeeze a travel cot in the compartment? (if not full size then one of those smaller Little Life ones or similar?)

Is there still Motorail? Wow! Must read rest of thread...

Assuming it hasn't changed over the past few years there is no way on earth you'd fit a travel cot in. Even before you put the beds out there is just a tiny bit of floor space.

Thanks Branflake.

I can't see how we can make this work for us with two little ones. Closer inspection of Motorail website suggests that children under 18 months sleep in their car seat! And that children 18 months - 4 years share a bunk with a parent. Which all spells zero sleep to me.

Maybe we'll come back to this when they are all a bit bigger! Hey ho, back to the drawing board.

thirdtimelucky that is the conclusion we came to too, I went on motorail as a teenager and that was bad enough - but at least I could pretty much entertain myself. We would like to do it, but will wait til DTs are older. I don't find the drive too bad relaly, so long as you make it part of the holiday