Question: My friends and I are in Paris for Euro 2016, but during our stay we are travelling to Lille and Lens to attend games.
We have already purchased our tickets for the TGV between Paris and the aforementioned destinations on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. My questions: how likely is it that the strikes might affect our travel plans, and secondly what would be our alternative forms of transport to reach Lens et al?
Sean Pantin
Answer: Over the weekend, strikes wrecked the travel plans of thousands of football fans, locals and tourists in France, both on Air France or the high-speed rail network.
While the Air France pilots' strike is due to finish on Wednesday, some workers on French railways are continuing an indefinite stoppage in protest against liberalised labour laws.
Most of the disruption has been on local services and the high-speed line between Paris, Lyon and the Mediterranean coast. At the weekend Paris-Lille trains continued normally. In addition, the French transport minister said that the government was prepared to requisition trains to get fans to their teams' matches if that were necessary.
So you should find the journeys to both venues go smoothly. However, if you want a belt-and braces approach, then you could pre-book seats for the Paris-Lille service on Megabus. Through megabus.com there are a range of departures with fares as low as £4 (about R80) each way (with a 50p booking fee regardless of how many tickets you buy). If the trains look troublesome, you can hop aboard; but if SNCF is running normally, at least to Lille, then you can discard the seat you booked.
The Independent