Travelling in France by train - can anyone help with a booking/ticket query?

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We're visiting friend's in France this summer and planning to travel by train but I'm having a bit of a nightmare with ticket tickets: trainline.com is coming out at £300+ each but doing it separately Eurostar is £93 + + SNCF Euro66 (excludes metro but )

Is there a better/cheaper way of finding tickets? Also, do these major train lines get fully booked (Paris to Bordeaux) ? My eldest DC is joining us later but won't know dates until a week before and I'm concerned he won't get a ticket. We came a cropper in Spain last year when we turned up to buy a ticket travelling between major cities & had to wait 2 days before there were any available tickets.

Is flying out of the question, it might be better and cheaper all round. If you want to go by train, the separate prices you quoted sound good to me for Summer time travel.
Have a look at Ouigo trains too.

Yes sadly there's no airport that flies to Bordeaux that's even vaguely assessible to us. Thanks will look at Ouigo. I don't support you know about the need to book in advance do you? I know if for example I want to travel from London to Birmingham I wouldn't think twice about just turning up or leaving it to the last minute but it seems this isn't universal.

Sorry maybe I'm misunderstanding but doing it separately seems to be the answer?
£93 for eurostar is pretty decent, the cheap eurostar tickets are very hard to come by.
But if you can get to LondonKX you can also take a train to Stanstead where Ryanair I think fly to Bordeaux. If you didn't want the hassle of changing stations in Paris.

You always need to book for TGVs and they do get more expensive the closer they get and they do sell out.

It might be worth buying a Carte Avantage which gives good reductions and usually pays for itself in one long trip.

Ouigo is cheap but often goes to crappy stations like for Bordeaux it's miles away from the centre.

Just get the SNCF app and you can book everything in English.

I can't comment on the prices but I think it's better to book Eurostar and onwards TGV (or vice versa) as a single booking, to benefit from the guarantee that if one leg is delayed then the next leg will still honour your booking and put you on a later train. Happened to me with a Eurostar delay which meant I missed the connection with my TGV train. I think if you book them as separate tickets then you would have to book a new ticket at your own expense.

(And yes, TGV requires a seat booking and therefore capacity on each train is limited, unlike UK trains where you can cram on like sardines.)

See if it's explained on Eurostar's website. You might be able to book TGV portion on there too.

I've just looked on Eurostar and you can book through tickets, assuming you're doing both legs as a single journey.

Are you comparing the ticket prices correctly? £93 + €66 is roughly £150, so is that one way, not return (if Trainline is saying £300 return)?

The Man in Seat 61 is a good website for train advice.

Also allow plenty of time to get from Gare du Nord to Montparnasse.

You might think it sounds too complicated but a four day interrail pass (to be used on any four days in a month, doesn't need to be consecutive) is currently on sale for £152. You'd then need to pay reservation fees of 30 euros each way for Eurostar and about 17 euro each way for the TGV - it still works out cheaper than £300 and includes any UK trains to the Eurostar terminal too.

It still leaves your son at risk of not being able to get on a TGV though, and in fact Interrail reservations are more limited than general reservations so he would need to do it a different way.

https://www.seat61.com/european-train-travel.htm#if-things-go-wrong

Amazing thank you all will look into the suggestions

So long as you're not going first Saturday in August you can normally find tickets fairly last minute, so long as you're not fussy about timing. It won't necessarily be cheap though

Get the sncf app, much easier. I don't know if it's available in English.

Thanks will do - I can get by in french to make a booking so not a problem if not.

Ouïgo stops in Bordeaux St Jean station the same as any other TGV.
TGV do end up fully booked but in a worst case scénario (providing he has plenty of time) your son could catch an intercite train to Limoges and then a local TER train from Limoges to Bordeaux.
Ryanair no longer fly to Bordeaux airport. It would have to be British Airways from Gatwick or Easyjet from Gatwick, Luton, Bristol (and possibly others).

The Carte Advantage Adulte is great and gives your companion a discount (plus children under 12). It saved us money on first usage last year, so was worth it. The SNCF app is really good.

i absolutely loved how SNCF staff at Montparnasse went round giving children activity packs, and adults luggage labels!

Do beware (on the booking a TGV seat front) that unless you happen to be standing right next to that carriage when the train pulls in, you might never get to sit in it. Not so bad if you’re getting on in Paris or wherever the train starts from, but they get so full and have passengers standing in every available square inch of space (plus luggage and of course dogs. So many dogs) that often you simply can’t make it to your booked seat in any case. We put our daughter on the train from Bordeaux back up to Paris last year and she just gave up instantly and had to stand the whole way. Fortunately it is a very fast journey on SNCF!

Use the SNCF site.

On French platforms there’s usually a plan of the train telling you where to wait on the platform
for which bit of the train. That should help with making sure you get on the right bit of the train for your seat…