Trains, Potatoes and the M25

04-Dec-08 - [Anorak alert - there's rather a lot about trains in this post] The day did not start well. I left the house at 05:15 in driving rain and a force-8 gale coming in from the north east, and the taxi dropped me at Worthing station ten minutes later. The doors to the station were locked. A member of staff appeared with a bunch of keys and attempted to unlock them, but without success. He disappeared, and came back with another bunch of keys, but this, too, proved to be of no avail. "You'll have to go round by the gate" he shouted to me... And I trudged off in the pouring rain, half the length of platform three, through the disabled-access gate and all the way back down the platform to the ticket machine (the booking office isn't open at this time of the morning), and then through the underpass to platform 2. The London train was on time, and I'd checked the timetable before I left: change at Three Bridges for Redhill. I was surprised at how busy the train was at this time of the morning - by the time we reached Hove it was full, and from Haywards Heath standing room only. I looked around the carriage and wondered if these people had to do this every day to get to jobs in London: I count myself lucky that I mainly work from home.

Got off at Three Bridges which has one of the most windswept platforms I've ever visited. There is cover from the rain, except that the wind was blowing it sideways and it was absolutely freezing - I even saw some sleet. There is a small, unheated waiting room and the door is on the wrong side for the up platform, but I took refuge anyway, and watched a Victoria train come and go from the platform opposite. This was to be my undoing. I returned to the platform on which I had arrived to find that the Thameslink train did not stop at Redhill, and I was advised to change at Gatwick. I did manage to squeeze myself into a seat, wondering the while why the timetable had told me this train stopped at Redhill. I checked 24 hours later and realised that the Victoria train I'd seen had been the one which stopped at Redhill: the station has two up platforms, and I had been on the wrong one. At Gatwick I was directed from platform 4 to platform 1, but at least they have working escalators there, and I caught the next Redhill train with a few minutes to spare, arriving about 20 minutes late.

From then on, however, it was to be plain sailing, wasn't it? Peter Marshall, the publisher of YES CHEF! Magazine was waiting for me and we set of for the Channel Tunnel. The wind, rain and spray on the M25 would have done justice to a deep-sea fishing expedition, but we got to Folkestone in just over an hour for the 09:05 shuttle (they're only running them every 90 minutes on weekdays at the moment). Interestingly, there were almost no formalities on the way and, significantly, there was no-one at passport control. This was to have repercussions later.

We were on our way to a potato tasting at the Château de Montreuil in Montreuil-sur-Mer, an excellent place and somewhere I've visited a number of times before, most recently in the autumn of 2006 on a day-trip from Shoreham to Le Touquet with James and Claire. This, by the way, is an excellent jaunt, or at least it is if you live only three miles from Shoreham airport. Ten minutes in a cab to the airport, half an hour's check-in, a 45-minute flight and a 25-minute cab ride to Montreuil - less than two hours door-to-door. By car via the tunnel it's about three hours door-to-door from The Eversley on a good day (assuming you haven't just missed a shuttle) which, when you consider that LHR is a good hour-and-a-half's drive and the ridiculous two-hour check-in regulations means that you've arrived before you'd even have got on the 'plane to fly to France.

The Château was built by the Wooster family (no relation) in 1933 as a holiday home and has a lovely, relaxed feel, from its architecture to the gardens and the interiors. Chef-patron is Christian Germain who, with his English wife Lindsay, runs a very genial, comfortable and delightful establishment. Christian is an alumnus of The Waterside Inn and regularly entertains Michel Roux and other members of the Roux 'club'. Today was no different: he was cooking alongside Pierre Koffman, late of La Tante Claire, who was the first head chef at The Waterside Inn under Michel, and the subject was potatoes. We were also joined by Claire Harrison, the 'Potato Princess' who seems to know more about the vegetable than anyone else in the world, except perhaps Alexis Dequidt of Touqet Savour, a company which grows and sells only potatoes, all over France. The fully detailed article will appear in the January, 2009 issue of YES CHEF! Magazine, so for the moment let's just say that we tasted more than a dozen varieties, roast, baked, mashed and chipped and as crisps, in salads, with herring, oysters (not for me), snails and the most magnificent rib of beef, washed down with a very decent bourgeois claret. I have to say that the humble potato is my 'desert island' food: so versatile that you can make anything with it (I've even heard of a potato bread-and-butter pudding) and absolutely delicious. Indeed, the night before Jill had found some Shetland Black potatoes at Waitrose and baked them. They're small but they bake beautifully. The lunch was a splendid exercise, in excellent company.

Anyway, we had to dash before 14:30 to get the 16:07 shuttle, and got there in good time, which was just as well. I mentioned that there was no-one at passport control on the way out - well, on the way back I realised that my passport had disappeared. Couldn't find it anywhere. Fortunately I keep a scan of the main page on my laptop, and I also have a photocard driving licence, so I cast myself on the mercy of the man in the booth, and was able to give him the passport number and other details from the scan. It was obvious from his questions that, once the number was typed in on the computer, all my details came up on the screen. Indeed, I suspect that the government has huge databases on all of us, probably including how we voted at the last election and the size of our most recent drinks bill. We had to hang around a bit as the time crept on, but eventually they came up with a couple of forms to fill in and sign. If I do find the passport (and this could mean ringing around everywhere we went that day) it will now have been cancelled anyway so it's going to cost me £72 for a new one, but at least we got through... We were the very last car on the shuttle, and we arrived back at Folkestone at about 15:50.

So far, so good. On the way back we decided to go to Gatwick rather then Redhill: it's (theoretically) easier for me because I can get a direct train to Worthing, and although the detour off the M25 is about 4 miles longer than that for Redhill, it's all motorway rather than suburban streets. I got to the station (it's a long walk into and out of the South Terminal first) about 17:15 and realised I was in the 'black hole' in the railway timetable. Normally trains run half-hourly, but the next direct train wasn't until 17:58, and I didn't fancy freezing to death on the platform (surely Gatwick is the most inhospitable of stations, presumably because if you go upstairs to the airport terminal it's full of shops and bars, so they don't feel that they need to have anything on the platforms. There was a southbound train due and, owing to a fault in the system, it was posted as calling first at Eastbourne. This was patently wrong, so I got on with a view to changing at Haywards Heath, one stop down the line. Needless to say the train was packed so I had to sit in first class. There was a guard on board, but he didn't venture between the people-crushed aisles. At Haywards Heath I crossed platforms to find that the direct train from London Bridge was due in a few minutes, and wondered how I could have missed it at Gatwick if it was following so close behind. Could I have been on the wrong platform? Again? Twice in one day? I checked afterwards and realised that the London Bridge train doesn't stop at Gatwick - and I thought I knew my way around the railway timetables. It was packed, of course, and I sat in first class, quite willing to pay the extra in return for the luxury of actually having a seat on the train but, again, no-one came. So I was home before 18:30 and getting stuck into a large one moments later, having covered about 380 miles in just over 13 hours.

I did rather better than Peter. He rang me at 19:30, two and a half hours after he'd dropped me at Gatwick, to say that he had progressed just ten miles since then. Apparently a lorry had spilled some gas canisters on the road and the Police had closed it. When things finally got moving again they were slowed down by an unrelated car fire on the opposite carriageway with traffic slowing down to look at it, of course. I think even a sardine-tin train is better than trying to use the M25 after 5 o'clock.