Alpe d Huez, France - Day Eighteen

I left my hostel at 6.30am and walked the dark streets to the train station, empty at this hour apart from the dregs of revellers from the night before. The first stage of the train track out of town was closed for maintenance, so I had to take a bus to a station further down the line. Took me a while to get on the bus, however, as three drunken guys and one squealing girlfriend were shouting at the driver and kicking the bus doors. After a police car turned up, and the guys started shouting at the cops instead of the bus, I was able to get aboard. Good start. As the bus pulled out of town, the sun began to rise.

14 hours of rail travel lay ahead of me, involving four connecting trains. Until now my experience of the French rail network has been based only on the TGV - the high speed service that runs across the country's main routes. As it turns out, Hendaye to Grenoble is a route that not many people travel. Therefore there aren't any shiny TGV trains, and things are far from high speed.

Every one of the three stations I changed at saw my crappy, uncomfortable old trains rattle their way in with no more than a two minute window to change platforms. I sprinted at Hendaye, I barged my way through Bordeaux, and when I had to get across 6 platforms at Lyon I was shoulderbarging grannies and hurdling small children. Somehow, against all the odds, I made it onto my last train. I still couldn't relax though, because on the previous train I had talked a friendly Belgian girl into letting me make a call on her mobile, and in the brief conversation I had with Oli he casually mentioned there was a chance they would be snowed in and unable to meet me. At this stage in the game, this was not what I wanted to hear. The Belgian girl smiled encouragingly. I smiled not.

Somehow (mainly due to her kindness and patience) I convinced a French girl on the train to Grenoble to let me make another call. We were ten minutes from the station. I was not my usual icy-cool self. The call was answered. I spake unto James, who told me they were waiting at the station. Sheesh.

After many hugs and hellos, we all piled into Bruce's van and headed for the mountains.