THE GREAT SCHENGEN CHALLENGE Part 2: Against the clock on Europe’s longest public transport journey

THE GREAT SCHENGEN CHALLENGE Part 2: Against the clock on Europe’s longest public transport journey

Previously on Schengen 200: “This is the starting point of the longest
point-to-point journey you can make by public transport on the surface
entirely within the Schengen Zone.” “As of two days ago,
every railway line linking southern Scandinavia
and northern Scandinavia has been cut.” “This is basically our only option if we
want to try and get to where we need to be by the end of today.” “Well, I could hardly not come to Schengen,
given it’s sort of on the way.” Ninety-three hours into our attempt to cross
the Schengen Zone in 200, and we’re standing in Schengen,
next to the mid-Moselle tripoint, where Luxembourg, France, and Germany meet. On the 14th of June, 1985, a boat –
specifically that boat over there, now owned by the town council,
the Prinzessin Marie-Astrid, moored at the tripoint,
and the representatives of five governments signed the agreement,
at this point just covering Benelux, France and West Germany. Given the boat’s positioning,
we could just as easily be talking about the Perl or Apach area,
as much as the Schengen one – the neighbouring villages
in Germany and France. Germany has currently temporarily
reintroduced border controls, and in the early hours of this morning,
my passport was checked entering the nation at Flensburg,
but there appear to be no checks here. Clearly, the Bundesrepublik thinks
that checking passports on the bridge at Schengen would
be just a little on the nose. We’ve walked across the Moselle
into our fifth country, Luxembourg. I need to end today in France,
but while la République is barely metres away, the simplest way to get towards
the capital from here is to cut westwards across the diminutive Grand Duchy. Luxembourg, famously, made all its
internal public transport free in 2020. I’m in two minds about the concept of free
public transport, and part of me would rather they took
a small fare from me and used it to pay for some information provision
at Schengen’s main bus stop. But it does feel like an absolute bargain
to be on this comfortable bus, speeding along a motorway and through
tunnels under the vineyards, for nothing. This is an express bus from Schengen
and some German towns on the other side of the Moselle to Luxembourg City itself,
but the capital is the wrong side of some rail engineering works for us,
so I’m getting off at the only intermediate stop it makes after
Schengen, in a town called Aspelt. I don’t really have much to tell you about
Aspelt, other than it’s a handy interchange point from bus 402 to bus 550; it has very substantial bus shelters;
and that Luxembourgers smoke a lot more at bus stops than I’m used to. Here’s the 550,
which is electric, but late. Most buses in Luxembourg seem to run a bit
late, which may be related to the country having more cars per head than
anywhere else on the planet. As we head along the bright green southern
borderlands of the Grand Duchy (it’s all borderlands, really, isn’t it?) I’m enjoying learning Luxembourgish
pronunciation from the automated stop announcements.
Sort of a lilting version of Dutch. Very soon we’re at Bettembourg station,
where I also made a bus rail interchange last year when on the trail
of Sherlock Holmes. Just as then, the line from the capital
to here was closed for lengthy summer engineering works. That short bit of line must be
practically plated with gold by now. Our France-bound train is starting here as
a result of those engineering works, and within a few minutes,
my TER Grand Est double-deck unit is sailing over the border. This journey is very quiet,
but at peak times the train would be packed
with transfrontalier workers, seeking the sweet spot of earning
Luxembourg wages with French cost of living. Big car parks at the stations just over
the border cater for park and riding border-hoppers. Just like the Øresund yesterday,
you’ve got a single international commuter zone made possible by Schengen. We’ve followed the Moselle through three
countries today, and this is our final crossing of it at Thionville. We’ve got a reasonable amount of time
before we need to be in Paris this evening, so while I could make a straight
shot for the city of light, we’ll opt for a slightly eccentric routing to get there. There’s only so many straightforward
journeys along the Ligne à Grande Vitesse Est européenne that a man and his turtle can take. And it’s not a proper rail journey through
France without a connection between regional trains at a slightly overgrown,
over-large junction station. This is Hagondange, which,
like many slightly-lost-their-way French towns, brands itself as a ville fleuri. There’s my diesel train west,
waiting amid its own fleuri, though one of our first stops,
Moyeuvre-Grande, is still more fleuri than Hagondange. I was in the process of remarking
to myself about just how smart and comfortable these regional diesel
trains are when we came to a halt for a suspiciously long time
at a station called Homécourt. The driver, in traditional SNCF uniform
of jeans and T-shirt, emerges from the cab with his fault-finding
ringbinder, looking worried. Much restarting of the engine,
little reversing moves, and lights being turned on and off ensues. But eventually, the ringbinder of power
does its job, and we’re off en route to another weird middle-of-nowhere
junction at Conflans-Jarny. Beyond here, we’re rocking along what used
to be quite a major mainline to Paris, but is now a single track, under-served
dead-end branch line across the Meuse. We climb into these strategic wooded
heights east of the town of Verdun, a point of such advantage on the road
to Paris that both French and German World War I commanders were
prepared to spend vast quantities of blood and treasure when seeking
to defend or gain them. At the summit, we enter
the Tunnel de Tavannes. You catch a glimpse of a parallel tunnel
entrance beside the one our train is using. In 1916, 500 French troops,
using it as a bunker, died in that tunnel, killed when grenades stored at the western
end accidentally exploded, causing great rushes of air and fire through the bore. Verdun was once a major through station
with buildings designed by Gustave Eiffel. It’s now the end of the line
with the tracks westward rusting away, the rail connection to the capital gone,
and the sole rush is of schoolchildren awaiting their afternoon train home. While Verdun is a very smart,
gently touristic but lived-in feeling sous-prefecture
on the River Meuse, it’s also a town that is lived in by its history. The Chapel of St Nicholas in the town centre still
bears its scarring from the Great War. Monuments and tributes to those lost
defending the strategic heights and the town’s citadel are everywhere. The sombre eyes of gigantic stone soldiers
bore into the town, the gently flapping tricolours are calls
to remember the glory of, and sacrifice for, France. The concept of Verdun,
for many French people, is not an out-of-the-way town of 16,000
people on the Meuse, but the name of a miraculous delivery. It’s a large part of how Philippe Pétain,
wearing the prestige of saviour of Verdun, was able to convince so many to follow him
into the senility and shame of Vichy two decades later. With no trains having run west
of Verdun since 2013, the key rail access route to the town is
now via the wonderfully named Gare Meuse TGV-Voie Sacré,
one of the beetroot field middle-of-nowhere stations serving whole
départements that pepper the French high-speed lines. There is, at least, a bus from Verdun’s
vast Gare routière to connect with each TGV. As the TGV station’s name suggests,
it sits on the Voie Sacré, the name given to the sole supply route
available to relieve Verdun after all of the roads and railways had been cut
by the Germans – and down which our bus now speeds. Run with, literally, military precision,
by 1916, trucks were running along this road every 16 seconds. Making its only stop between Verdun
and the TGV station, our bus pauses outside the town
hall of the village of Souilly. This was Pétain’s headquarters,
facing right onto the Voie Sacré during the Battle of Verdun. We pull up in front of the striking Gare
de Meuse, sitting amid cow pastures and rolling hills. Opened in 2007,
along with the rest of this high-speed line to the east, it’s allegedly the first
wooden station building to open in France since 1856. And from here, one of the handful of TGVs
that loop off the fast through lines each day can speed us in just one
hour to the heart of Paris. At over 300 kilometres per hour, by far the fastest speed on this journey so far, our TGV flings itself across
the open prairies of Champagne and Marne, 10 carriages of snoozing
travellers in its train. I’ve been anxiously monitoring French news
throughout this journey to see if yesterday’s informal strike action
by the Bloquons tout movement would spread into today. Wind slightly taken out of its sails
by the resignation of the government – probably the last French government,
but three by the time you watch this – it became less Bloquons tout and more
Bloquns quelques choses, and France is circulating pretty normally today. Arriving at the Gare de l’Est, and my heart sinks when it’s announced the TGV will be coupling
to another already in the platform. Being in the rear coach of my train,
that means I might have practically walked from Meuse by the time I
get to the distant buffer stops. There’s also a large part of me
that hasn’t yet forgiven them for painting the Paris Métro trains blue. The old turquoise green was horrible,
but it somehow screamed ‘Paris’. With an hour or so to spare, I am,
however, very happy that one of my favourite Paris hangout spots,
the Cave la Bourgogne in the 5th arrondisement,
is reasonably handy for my onward terminus station, so I can wolf something
down and then keep moving on. It is a bit of a landmark moment. Well, as of this moment,
we are 100 hours in of the 200 hours. We’re in Paris. We’re halfway there time-wise. Both of those things are
something to celebrate. Cheers. It may be the wine,
but I’m getting a little soppy seeing an elderly man come to pick up his wife
from the bar – in her seventies, several glasses of burgundy in –
in a battered Renault Clio, and I think it’s the cutest thing ever. Mayor Hidalgo, that man,
and that man alone, can continue to drive in central Paris. It feels like there should be
a Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary about the near endless march of suitcase
wheeling night train passengers around the equally never-ending works
to refurbish Paris Austerlitz station. Though at least there are signs
that the fine original Austerlitz roof is beginning to re-emerge after
many years of ignominy. After two failed attempts in Scandinavia,
we’re catching our first night train of the journey. And there it is, hauled into the station
by one of the timeless Nez Cassé (broken nose) locomotives.
We’re in the front section for Latour de-Carol, high in the Pyrenees, just three coaches on the front of a very
large number of carriages only going as far as Toulouse. Like I say, a lot of Toulouse coaches. Still going. At last, there we are. The French government has,
over the last few years, started to regrow their domestic night
train network, though only with more basic couchettes, not sleepers. But this train to remote Latour,
far from the high-speed networks, with lots of winter sports and summer
hiking market, never quite died out. It’s also, ever since the 2013 death
of the Trenhotels, the closest there is to a night train
to Spain, which is why we’re on it. Now I just need to make
my bed and lie in it. We’re a full first-class compartment
tonight, four of us, all silently agreeing we’re glad we aren’t in with the very
boisterous scouts further up the corridor. Time to do what the travel influencers do. Let’s explore the Free Goodie Bag! Okay, well, that didn’t take long. It’s twenty past eight on a grey morning,
and there really aren’t as many mountains as there should be out of the window. A glance at the app tells me we’ve picked
up a 30-minute delay overnight due to disruptive passengers at Orléans. Well, they weren’t in my compartment. I had a very good night’s sleep,
undisturbed by any snoring, which by a process of elimination means I
must have been the compartment’s snorer. Sorry, guys. The 30 minute delay is worrying, though,
as our ‘connection’ at the border (I’m putting connection in inverted commas
because it’s not officially acknowledged as such anywhere), is just 20 minutes. Will the French manage
to regain some time? Will the Catalans wait?
Time will tell. We finally quit the flatlands south
of Toulouse and pause in the Pyrenean foothill town of Foix under its dramatic
castle, which guards the entrance to the Ariège gorges. Foix resisted sieges from Simon de
Montfort and the Albigensians, and its Count went on to become
King Henri IV of France. Clearly not a bad place to control. Rocky cliff faces begin to appear
above the placid waters of the river as the ascent proper towards
the mountains begins. Ax-les-Thermes station is
a special place for me. For much of my early childhood,
my family would holiday in a gîte in the mountains above here,
arriving on this very train. My parents’ bikes, sent registered luggage
from Victoria a week before, would be waiting with the stationmaster
before we cycled up – with me on the front of the bike – a very steep hairpinning
road, which I’ve subsequently seen featured as a difficult climb in several
editions of the Tour de France. Beyond Ax, it starts to get really steep, our train clickety-clacking over jointed
track that probably hasn’t been renewed since I came this way aged five. Higher and higher,
we climb into the mountains, once the final retreat of the Cathars, dropping off
a few hikers at each little station. It’s hard to capture on film
the engineering genius of a spiral tunnel, but you can just about glimpse, far below
in the valley, the railway we were running on a few minutes ago before we
cork-screwed up through the mountainside. L’Hospitalet-près-l’Andorre is so-called
because, well, it’s as près to that micronation as you can get by rail. One passenger from our delayed train
rushes for the sporadic international bus connection to the Andorran capital,
waiting in the forecourt. And then we clatter and roar our way
through a long, narrow, ascending tunnel, which is murder on ears already fragile
thanks to the altitude, to emerge on the Cerdagne plateau at Porté-Puymorens,
which at 1,562 metres above sea level, is the highest place you can reach
in Europe on a standard gauge, adhesion-worked train. Having broken through into the hazy
mountain sunshine, we squeal our way slowly through the stunning highland scenery
towards the terminus and frontier station at Latour de-Carol, from where I expect
the Barcelona train has already left. And yes, that’s a very empty Iberian
broad gauge platform over there. Not a huge surprise as the Intercity
from Paris was almost 45 minutes late in the end, and the Spanish train
from here has to thread into the Barcelona suburban network way down the line. But with a three-hour interval service, it
is still annoying, if not yet disastrous. Latour is the only current cross-border
rail route across the Pyrenees. The other France-Spain connections go
around the mountain wall via the coast. And because of the differing gauges –
standard gauge in France, broad gauge in Spain – trains can’t run through. Thanks to insular bloody-mindedness,
they can barely even connect. The Bistrot de la Gare is doing a roaring
trade with international travellers stranded here for the best
part of three hours. I’m sure Madame la patronne didn’t quietly
stuff a €10 note into the pocket of the Barcelona train driver and whisper,
‘Away you go’ on the dot of 10:30. I’ll join the feasting throng later,
but first I’m going to hop on the €1 bus to Latour de-Carol proper,
a little over a kilometre away. The station is actually called Latour de-Carol-Enveitg because it’s really in Enveitg. In Latour, I’m seeking out the local water
course, unsurprisingly called the Carol, where I can give my feet a much-needed
bath in its super-clear racing mountain waters, and Mrs Turtle can
consider doing likewise. The Cerdagne has a bit of a split
personality, as demonstrated by the presence
of the weird Spanish enclave of Llivia just down the road,
and the fact that the hilarious ‘picking up after your dog is just like doing
yoga’ signs are in French and Catalan. Walking back to the station,
a roadside sign alerts me to the fact that in 1939, the meadow above was filled
with refugees from Francoism who camped in the open air in their thousands
at border locations like this before they were transferred to lowland camps. It’s only really when arriving by foot
that you are hit by the full scale of the station building,
which serves a pair of villages whose joint population barely tops 1,000. Border-stationing was a human-intensive
business back in the day. Today, there’s no border guards,
and the handful of train staff and permanent way teams fit happily
into the Bistrot de la Gare. And who can blame them when
this lot cost just €13? Remarkably, Latour has a third gauge
of railway alongside the standard and Iberian, making it one of only a handful
of stations to have three gauges, alongside Hendaye in Euskadi, where I started my ‘Narrow
Way’ adventure earlier this year. These are the narrow tracks of the metre
gauge, third rail electrified and stupidly scenic Petit Train Jaune, which winds east
through the mountains to Villefranche. The service is pretty sparse,
but one of the line’s Catalan canary yellow trains dating from 1909
rolls in while I’m having lunch, compressors pounding. Despite the very fun open carriages
and jaunty livery, this is technically a normal regional
train run by SNCF and charging standard bargain fares. And with the train from Barcelona now
arriving on the right, you have the rare sight of trains on three
different gauges next to each other. Despite a three-hour journey ahead
to Barcelona, our train south is a suburban unit,
running as part of the Rodalies de Catalunya network,
Line 5 on its far-reaching Barcelonan spider’s web of railways. Happily, the Rodalies suburban seating
is a little more comfy than it looks. Within a minute or so of leaving Latour,
we’ve crossed the border into Catalunya and Spain in a featureless field,
marked only by a sign noting the change in rail infrastructure owners. It’s underwhelming for our final border
crossing of the journey, even if appropriately understated
for a Schengen adventure. We almost immediately come to mountain-ringed Puigcerdà, a place so hilly it needs a funicular to link the town centre
and the station, and which was the only place, during the Spanish Civil War,
to elect an anarchist-led town council. In many ways,
the Catalan line from Latour is a mirror image of the French line,
climbing steeply out of the Cerdagne up the valley of the Alp,
then equally steeply down the other side towards the plains,
with its own spiral tunnel, twin to that on the French side,
enabling lots of height to be lost very quickly, or really quite slowly,
given the ubiquitous temporary speed restrictions bedevilling Spanish railways. Ripoll is the first decent-sized town
on the line, and from where a much more frequent service starts for Barcelona. A vast, dark, brooding,
abandoned Romanesque building overshadows the platforms. This was the so-called ‘New Station
Building’, constructed in 1925, never used for its intended purpose as a)
the line never gained its expected importance as an international route,
and b) it was built on the wrong side of the line from the town. After two hours of winding slowly
and picturesquely out of the mountains, our train picks up a sense of purpose as
it reaches the tobacco green plain of Vic, racing along under threatening
skies and pre-storm sunshine. The young lady sitting across the aisle
puts away her knitting, perhaps sensing this is a bit too rural a
pastime for our rapidly urbanising train. We’re even getting to skip some stations
now, leaving serving them to suburban trains that haven’t come all the way
from France as we slice down a narrow valley in the Catalan
Precoastal Range of mountains. Though even here we’re having to negotiate
our way along a single track line, making an unscheduled pause
at the dramatically sited town of Figaró in the Congost gorge to let
a northbound train race past. Maybe because I’ve been travelling
practically nonstop for five days, but the ride into Barcelona
came quite close to breaking me. The final few hours into the Catalan
capital are a little dull, and for only the second time in my life,
I missed my stop because the stations in the tunnels under Barcelona’s centre
are poorly signed and terribly lit, and the train’s information
system wasn’t working. On top of which,
the missed connection at Latour means I’m now facing another night on a coach,
which is a bit meh. I haven’t had a shower since Umeå; my phone was playing up; and RailEurope
was refusing to take my money to buy a reservation on a later train to Madrid
so I could have time to beg a shower in Barcelona. But you know what? I came out of the horrid hole that is
Plaça de Catalunya station, and suddenly the air was refreshingly cool. There were fountains playing, and just up
the street is some uplifting architecture. There’s not much some Gaudí can’t solve. So I am going to head to the mainline
station at Barcelona Sants, stick on my last clean shirt,
settle into my backup first class seat for the 3 hours to Madrid with some
beer and a PG Wodehouse book. Time to accept I’m on the home straight. No one’s going to describe Barcelona Sants
as a beautiful station. But it is bright and efficient today. Unless that is you are one of the poor souls
queuing for the sole open ticket desk. But the theatre of security queue to get
through to the train side was basically nonexistent this evening,
so nothing for me to complain about. Except, obviously, that once through,
heaven forfend we be allowed down to the platform before the train arrives. Someone at RENFE clearly read about
the people panicking at the first public film screening when it depicted a train
arriving at a station and they’re taking no chances. We’re finally let down to the Stygian
depths once the train has arrived, stopped panting and been given a sugar
lump, meaning we were inevitably slightly late leaving. But time to stop complaining. It’s always a pleasure to be on one
of RENFE’s comfortable German-derived AVEs,
and my mood is definitely lifted as we run out of the Barcelona suburbs and alongside
the green hills of Garaff. And also by the fact
that the Barcelona Sants station buffet sells, amongst other things,
little bottles of very garlicky gazpacho. We call at the rather out-of-the-way
high-speed station of Camp de Tarragona. Judging by the surroundings,
I’m guessing ‘camp’ is a suggestion for what you might come here to do. We pass the town of Montblanc at
296 kilometres per hour as the sun sets over the mountains behind. Half-ensconced in the comforting world
of Wodehouse, I’m considering how much Bertie Wooster would
have hated high-speed rail. It would enable a whole host of aunts
to descend upon the metrop before a chap has had a chance to down a morning
stiffener at the Drones. Then we’re into the vast, empty dust-dry
plains of the Spanish central plateau, a little cocoon of light and comfort in this
often forbiddingly bleak landscape, which clearly demonstrates that the rain
in Spain does not, in fact, stay on the plain. The Spanish plain, of course,
lies in the rain shadow of mountain ranges on almost all sides,
and it’s therefore remarkably dry. It may seem a little odd that we’re
heading for Madrid, bang in the centre of Spain,
when the destination of our longest journey must surely lie to the south. You can blame the highly radial nature
of Spain’s public transport for that. Even if I’d made that connection at Latour
this morning and got to Barcelona in time for the last direct train to Seville,
it would have taken me there via a reversal in Madrid. Through Zaragoza and, with darkness now
complete, into Madrid’s vast high-speed Atocha station, fourth
capital of the journey. There’s just time to grab a Martini
at a little bar across the road from the Ministry of Agriculture,
where at the table next to me, a friendship group is either breaking up
over how to split the bill or just creating a good story to laugh about at
the end of the still young Iberian night. Then it’s time to leap on what may
be the final train of this adventure for a very short second
Cercanías hop around to the huge Estación Sur de Autobuses, even at nearly midnight,
the beating heart of Spain’s vast coach network. According to the vast departure board,
my bus to Cádiz is ‘in dock’, hopefully for minor offences, though
frankly, the technological wizardry of the touch screen help point doesn’t
help me much in locating where said dock is in this confusing complex. I still went down
the wrong moving walkway. Contrary to the screen, the bus is not,
in fact, ‘in dock’, but the smart coach does roll in with just enough time
for the driver to explain his complex plans for how the luggage will be loaded
for the numerous stops and to still make a broadly timely midnight departure. Once everyone has got the hang
of the concept of assigned seating, we’re on the Autovía del Sur,
off towards Cádiz, a place that I will forever associate
from childhood history book tales of Francis Drake singeing
the King of Spain’s beard there. I’m on this overnight bus as I absolutely
have to be in Cádiz by midday, ideally a bit earlier. The first train in the morning
from Madrid cuts it just too fine. So here we are, riding with Socibus,
a smallish company who nevertheless seem to have a monopoly on overnight
routes to Andalucia. And you know what? It wasn’t that terrible an experience. Socibus’s coaches are brand-spanking new
and very comfortable, as they should be, as their fares aren’t exactly low. My fellow passengers,
once accepting of their assigned seats, were pleasant and the driver solicitous. I got a surprising amount of sleep,
though I do feel I’d have got more if there were slightly fewer corners. Even the motorways seem
to have a lot of corners. For some reason, despite a limited cheese
intake yesterday, I had quite a substantive,
if sporadic dream that the bus had a letter box in which you could post
denunciations of other passengers. Any TV producers watching? Is there anything there? Any Freudian psychoanalysts watching? Keep your thoughts to yourselves. With just a few minutes’ delay,
we’re soaring over the dockyards in the Bahía de Cádiz on the Bridge
of the Constitution of 1812. This Constitution,
promulgated here by the Cortés of Cádiz, was one of the world’s first codified
constitutions, establishing a constitutional monarchy
and served as a model for liberal constitutions as far afield
as Norway and Mexico. We’re dropped into Cádiz bus station
for a much-needed café con leche at the rather pleasant café. In fact, weirdly, the whole bus station is
rather pleasant, kept absolutely sparkling by three white-tunicked,
bleached-blonde ladies wielding step ladders for the tricky bits. This guy’s a bit of a menacing presence
about the place, though, with his henchman lurking behind him. The last time we saw the sea,
it was the grey Øresund. This morning, it’s the sparkling
blue Atlantic behind Cádiz cathedral. Cádiz is gorgeous. Other people clearly think so, too,
as there are three huge cruise ships moored up in port. Happily, it’s still buffet breakfast
o’clock, so their passengers have not yet penetrated the old town, leaving its
alleyways quiet for me to wander in. Coming across the glowing cathedral
façade from a narrow calle is quite something. I am wandering with some purpose, though, stocking up for my lengthy sea voyage,
which feels appropriate in this strategic maritime isthmus-based town. By my count, the English
have attacked it four times. On one of those occasions,
inevitably the most successful, we did it jointly with the Dutch. I hear terrible tales of scurvy
on the high seas, and I don’t really know how much to trust my forthcoming
vessel’s catering. So I’ve purchased some solid supplies
of pickles, and I’m having a second breakfast of tostadas con tomate,
and the most sublime orange juice I’ve ever had. Somehow, the entire lot, in a touristy bit
of the old town with table service, cost just €3. The lady at the till seemed
quite amused by my double take. It’s good timing to be moving along. The groups with numbered flags have
cleared out the buffets and disembarked from their ships into town. On that distant horizon is our first
glimpse of home for the next 42-and-a-half hours. It looks like a long walk,
and I’m not sure the shade is going to hold out that long. Indeed, it doesn’t. But finally, after about a kilometre
and a half of narrow lorry-encroached pavements, is the first acknowledgement
of the existence of this ferry for foot passengers, other than a grudging general
wave of a hand in this general direction from a Guardia Civil
officer at the port gate. We’re a rare breed around here,
the foot passenger. Indeed, there aren’t enough of us for it
to be worth having a bus to drive us onto the ferry, so instead a taxi is provided. Obviously,
taxis are barred from this challenge, but this is an internal working
for a public transport undertaking, I tell myself, so it’s fine. After an awful lot of waiting around
in and around the taxi and a surprising amount of document checking for a domestic
journey, we at last get to be taxied into the labyrinthine bowels
of the Volcán de Tinamar, flagship of the long
basically bankrupt Naviera Armas company, just announced as having been
sold to arch-rival Balearia. In thirty minutes’ time,
the Volcán is due to cast off for the 800-mile distant Canary Islands,
far closer to Africa than to Europe, in which archipelago lies the endpoint
of the Schengen 200 adventure. Departure time comes and goes,
and loading continues. The main business of the ferry seems to be
transporting refrigerated containers and German or Dutch motor
homes to the Canaries. In the case of my fellow foot passengers,
it’s people with tiny dogs. Prices for a private cabin on this ferry
are remarkably far higher than on the Norwegian coastal route – or to be
more accurate, the subsidy is much more tightly targeted at island residents. Home for me is going to be
the so-called Butaca VIP. It has reclining seats, some apples,
and one basic but very welcome shower. Quite why a VIP wouldn’t be in a cabin,
I’m not sure, but actually the seats are very plush and come closer to lie flat
than my nearest comparison, British Airways Transatlantic business class. My fellow VIPs are a very
quiet lot, happily. About an hour after scheduled departure
time, we’re starting to get some serious engine rumble, and the fish around the
stern of the ship aren’t happy about it. I am, however, as this is by no means
my last connection, and I could use a modicum of punctuality. Speed of boarding is not helped
by the fact that for some of our destinations, they need vehicles to be
reversed aboard, and some drivers of motorhomes are not hugely good at this. Seventy minutes late, El Volcán casts off,
which is basically on time if you have already changed your watch to Canary Island time. It’s confusing that the only clock change
on this entire journey is one within a country, which I take as a tacit
admission that Madrid is actually in the wrong time zone. As we cast off, the pre-recorded English
announcement includes the unimproveable phrase, “You are reminded that there is no
eating or drinking allowed in the eating areas of the ship.” It’s too hot out on deck for a susceptible
turtle, so we are supervising departure from the bar. Those looking at a map may be wondering
why we’re on a ferry to the Canaries. Surely the Azores, also firmly within
the Schengen zone, are further from Vardø. Well, yes, they are. But of the three Macaronesian archipelagos,
Canaries, Azores, and Madeira, only the Canary Islands have retained
a scheduled ferry link to the European mainland. Our entire journey has been timed around
this twice-a-week sailing from Cádiz to three Canarian ports. There are other ships to the Canaries
from Huelva, a bit further west along the coast, but the ferry port there has no
public transport link at all, barring a seven-kilometre walk through
an oil refinery from the nearest bus stop. So they were out. The 2011-built Volcán is very
much a ship of two halves. The forward part, reception, VIP lounge,
etc, doesn’t seem to have been touched since it was launched. The rear half has been
beautifully refurbished. I’m just looking at the empty swimming
pool at the stern as we plough out into the deep blue Atlantic and thinking
there will be no midnight dips as there were on the Castor unless someone
comes along with a hose pipe, when suddenly there’s a gurgling and the pool
starts filling itself. No hose pipe required, and very soon it’s full of paddling
toddlers and flirting teenagers. In all likelihood,
this is the closest I’ll ever come to making an Atlantic sea crossing. While a telepizza and a €1.80 draught lager by the pool
with Wodehouse probably isn’t the traditional image, it’s really quite fun. The ocean continues to roll benignly. Sometimes the Volcán rolls a little
with it, mostly her 30,000 tonnes just plough through. The colours of the Atlantic change
infinitessimally, but they have a seriousness which lets
you know this is no Channel crossing. At sunset, we pass a northbound
freighter, and earlier, a warship on the distant horizon,
but mainly it feels like we have the immense expanses to ourselves. By the morning,
we’ve passed the longitudes of not-hugely-distant Casablanca and Marrakech. Despite how long it took us to load,
we’re not a particularly busy ship. This is the last week of summer
before the route frequency reduces. There’s a quiet rhythm on board
that everyone rapidly adopts. People doze, drink cheap
beers or read. Indeed, the joys of no phone reception and barely
functioning WiFi is that it’s a long time since I’ve seen so many
people with so few mobiles. A surprise has been how lovely
the home baking is on board. Indeed, that it exists at all. I wasn’t expecting such a monster wedge
of delectably moist carrot and walnut cake for my €2.50 portion from the bar. I do hope this sort of personality and the almost
consistently charming staff survives the sale of Naviera Armas. We’re now well into our second day
on board the Volcán de Tinamar. We’re steaming along at about 20,
22 knots southwestwards, paralleling the coast of Morocco, though out of sight of it. And late this afternoon,
we should be in amongst the Canary Islands, really pushing
the limits of the Schengen zone. Despite the bright weather,
it took a surprisingly long time for the stark volcanic peaks of Lanzarote,
most northerly of the Canary Islands, to emerge from the haze. In a very biblical touch,
the first sign of us being near land were two grey doves circling the ship. Oh, and a data signal. I bet Noah was glad to see that, too. A little over 28 hours
since leaving Cádiz and just over a week into the challenge,
and the Volcán is swinging round in Arrecife harbour alongside
a somewhat larger fellow guest. I suspect her swimming pool is bigger,
but I bet the cake isn’t as good, and the Tostada beer costs more. This is the first of the Volcán’s calls at
three of the four largest Canary Islands. Between our mooring and the island’s oil
tanks, sit the gently rusting remains of half of the Dundee-built freighter
‘Telemon;, grounded here in 1981 after springing a leak. There have long been plans to scrap her,
but she’s now sat there as long as I’ve been alive. Despite the busy efforts of a cast
of at least tens, both from the port and the ship,
the loading and unloading of goods, people and their wheeled effects
at Arrecife seems to take forever. We finally leave about 100 minutes late,
and at some point, I’ll need to decide if that places my plans in enough jeopardy
to change what I do at the next stop. Lanzarote has had some particularly
turbulent periods of history. In particular, residents must have been
confused when, after being captured by an Ottoman admiral in 1586,
this was followed by English pirates landing in 1608,
who destroyed the Spanish Cathedral. Though that would have had nothing
to the geological upheaval of the next century, when in six years after 1730,
no fewer than 32 new volcanoes emerged on the island, which must surely beat
their five-year plan volcano targets. It It really is an absolute beauty parade
of volcanoes as we thrum along Lanzarote’s eastern littoral in the evening light. As we turn into the Bocayna Strait
that separates Lanzarote from Fuerteventura,
the large island that the Volcán doesn’t serve, the Spanish flag flutters proudly
over one of its much less populous outposts, the island of Lobos, named for
its wolf seals, human population: four. As we tick into the final 24 hours
of the challenge, the lights of Las Palmas on the full stop-shaped island
of Gran Canaria begin to stain the dark horizon with gold. After Las Palmas,
the Volcán is due to continue to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, taking me with her. But the 100-minute delay
is giving me pause. There’s no space left for slip-ups. If on time,
the Volcán is due into Tenerife at 7am. I need to be on a bus from the other
side of town at 10am. It ought to be fine,
but what if there are more delays loading or unloading at Las Palmas? What if they are very slow getting foot
passengers off at Santa Cruz as they were at Arrecife? As the Las Palmas pilot comes aboard,
I make a rather counterintuitive decision out of an excess of caution. We’re going to forego our second night
in a now sweltering VIP lounge, leap off here in Gran Canaria,
and first thing in the morning, take a fast ferry across to Tenerife that
is timetabled to arrive after the Volcán. I have more confidence in it
to get us there when we need to be. At last, there’s a gap in the unloading
traffic for us lowly foot passengers for Gran Canaria to disembark. Farewell then to the Volcán de Tinamar. It’s been a pleasure, until for some reason
you got really sticky and humid in the interior after Lanzarote. Because I’ll be coming back to the port
first thing in the morning to continue the journey, I decided it was fine
to share a taxi into town with a lovely Lanzarote-dwelling Irish couple
and to pass a few early morning hours in Las Palmas, Spain’s fifth largest urban
area, and unsurprisingly, dead at 3am. The only sounds on the promenade are
the waves breaking on the volcanic reef that protects the beach,
meaning it always sounds stormy, and the sand being zambonied
by municipal tractors. I also get to watch, virtually,
as the Volcán de Tinamar disproves all my doubts, unloads and loads with dispatch and
heads out towards Tenerife, spot on time. Still, I’d have been on tenterhooks
until 3am if I’d stayed on board, and there’d have been no way to disembark
if the delay grew, I tell myself, so as not to feel too silly. The promised shuttle bus for the 6am fast
ferry never shows up, so I have to grab a taxi back to the port
in order to restart the journey from the gleaming new Armas passenger terminal. Not bad for a company
on the brink of bankruptcy. Our vessel for the hour and a half
hop to Tenerife is also smart and new. A Tasmanian-built catamaran
named Volcán de Taida. Basically, Armas names all the vessels
it owns – rather than leases – after made-up volcanoes, which seems odd when you’re
operating in a part of the world full of real ones. There’s just a small load of sleepy
commuters as we slip away from the Las Palmas berth seven minutes early, the business of breakfast rapidly underway
in the cafe, past the sparkling oil rigs that are much prettier
by night than by day. Ironically, just as the automatic
announcement encourages us to ‘enjoy the voyage’, the catamaran begins to lurch
wildly and most of the lights go out. It’s good, I suppose,
to be reminded that we’re still on the Atlantic and that she’s a little
less forgiving of a relatively lightweight craft like this. I’m impressed I manage to get
my breakfast to a table unspilled. The cafe lady makes clear that while she’s
happy to engage with the scalding steam and milk of the coffee machine in these
sea conditions, the blades of the fresh orange juice machine
would be a step too far. Possibly to distract us from the wallowing,
the TV screen switched to showing a presentation of very unamazing facts. I learned, for example,
that Banksy is an anonymous artist and that the Gutenberg press
revolutionised printing. Amazing stuff. Things have calmed down a lot by the time
we reach the shelter of the mountains that climb dramatically up immediately
behind Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The swell cut our cruising speed from 35
knots to 31, meaning we are slightly late despite the early departure. But that’s still fast. The Volcán de Tinamar cruised at 22
knots, the Castor back in Norway, just 14. We slide in, of course,
next to the happily docked-up-for-an-hour-now Tinamar, in whose crew,
and particularly its punctiliously polite and well-mustachioed vehicle deck manager,
I should have had more faith in. Still, we’ve been to two islands already
today, and it’s not yet 8am, and those won’t be the last. Santa Cruz is an immediately likeable
city, seat of the Parliament of the Canaries,
which is confusing because I thought it was owls that had parliaments. I like how the city’s architects decided
that their skyline needs to compete with, but not score points off the rugged
mountain backdrop to the north. It did, however, take some expensive Swiss
architects to come up with this slam dunk idea for a reflecting pool
in the Plaza de España. A second small breakfast is permitted when
the first was consumed on a heaving catamaran, and I’m now on firm enough
ground for the orange juice machine to be operated safely. That is not, I assure you, a doughnut.
It’s a dot. A doughnut’s much smaller
and therefore healthier cousin. I probably don’t really need to take
a tram down towards the bus station at the southern end of town,
but as this journey has unaccountably avoided any trams so far,
it feels like I should. This is, I think, the EU’s most isolated
tram system, the nearest being in Casablanca,
nearly a thousand kilometres away. Santa Cruz’s trams have
an intriguing ticketing system. Buy your ticket on your phone,
activate it by scanning a QR code on the vehicle itself. On the edge of town is the very
striking Auditorium building. I probably barely need to tell you it’s
the work of Calatrava and is therefore a fantastic bit of form. Function – like being able to get to it
from the tram stop without walking three sides of a block and crossing three
major roads – perhaps a bit less so. Squatting beside the Auditorium is
the Castillo de San Juan Bautista, a clear product of the local black volcanic stone. Rather unsportingly,
the Canarians gather here annually to re-enact Nelson’s failure
to capture Santa Cruz in 1797. This channel has often made its opinions
of various bus stations clear, so I’m delighted to announce
that Santa Cruz’s interchange is God-tier. Indeed, it elevates the bus user
almost to the level of a god. It’s also here that I discovered
that the Canarian Spanish word for a bus is, for etymological reasons
no one knows, a ‘guagua’. In Chilean and Peruvian Spanish,
that means ‘baby’, for far more understandable reasons. Even at the best bus stations, though,
something gets relegated to the outside bays. Here, it is the ferry buses. The companies that operate ferries
from Los Cristianos in the far south of Tenerife provide free connecting buses
from Santa Cruz, though there’s only three of us taking advantage this morning. This is the second Autopista del Sur I’ve
been on during this journey, but being on an island, its southward
ambitions are a little curtailed. Less so its engineering ambitions as it
clings to the sharp coastal slopes, older villages spilling down towards it,
white villa resorts climbing up. It’s a strange road,
sometimes almost in a wilderness of rocks, scrubs, and dry despair. At other times, it’s the closest I’ve seen
in what is vaguely Europe to a US-style strip mall. We pass the foot of the volcanic cone
of La Montaña de Guaza, which dominates the south of the island. Then there is Los Cristianos,
a perfectly normal-looking Spanish seaside resort, if it wasn’t for the collapsed
volcanic cone in the middle of it. Down to Los Cristianos harbour,
where two competing catamarans stand ready to depart for our final island. I could have stuck with tried and tested
Naviera Armas, but because a) variety is the spice of life, and b)
they leave slightly earlier, I’ve opted for the Bentago Express,
run by Fred Olson Express. Fred Olson is better known as a cruise
line, but that’s a separate firm, albeit owned by the same family. Fred Olson Express has been running
inter-island ferries in the Canaries since the 1970s, and I like the circularity
that the first and last ships on this journey are owned
by Norwegian family firms. The Bentago is a lot older than
my Armas catamaran from this morning, and the colour schemes reflect
a somewhat millennial heritage. But she’s swish and clean with powerful
aircon and attendants dressed unaccountably as 1980s air stewardesses. We’re away from Los Cristianos
spot on time. When the Spanish government recognised
the establishment of this town in 1888, it consisted of 29 houses and one cave. We’re soon flying across
the Gomera channel at 33 knots. It’s a lively ride, but nothing like this
morning’s smash and wallow on the way to Tenerife, though we soon hit heavier
seas and the captain takes us closer into the lee of near-circular Gomera
Island than normal, for easier going. Gomera was Fred Olson’s
first destination in 1974. Previously, it was supplied
solely by the weekly banana boat. Before we reach the open ocean,
I’ve headed to the cafe to obtain some sort of grilled vegetable wrap, and importantly,
an excellent bit of apple cake. There seems to be a deep-set Spanish
belief in good cake on ships. I reckon the Armada must have
had at least 50 pastry chefs. As we speed across a smoother bit of sea,
Mrs. Turtle is keeping an eye out for land. As a salty sea dog myself, I keep
thinking we’re sounding our foghorn. Turns out it’s the hand dryer
in the toilets behind me. Hiding in them there clouds,
there’s an island, and a tall one at that. Soon we are approaching a deeply
inhospitable-looking shoreline and slowing to tuck ourselves behind the solid-looking
breakwater which protects the island’s port from the Atlantic swells. And so we set foot on El Hierro island,
most westerly outpost of the Canaries, almost 100% mountain,
a place so at the end of the world that both Ptolemy and Cardinal Richelieu
considered it to be the right place for the prime meridian. Everything should be measured eastwards
from here, as this is where the west ends. The good news is that everything has
fitted together and we should make the 200-hour deadline with ease. But we’re not quite home and dry yet. Puerto de la Estaca, where we have landed,
is only a few kilometres from the island’s capital of Valverde. But Valverde is the only Canarian
capital not on the coast. Indeed, it’s more than 600
metres above where we are now. Happily, there’s a little guagua,
the number 11, run by local transport co-op Transhiero, which pops down the hill
at ferry time to carry us, yak-like, up the hairpinning road. Port and catamaran get smaller as we
climb the dry hillside, but by the time we’re on the fringes
of Valverde, we’re into the cloudbank. We squeeze our way through this highland,
whitewashed town past the island council. Local politics are not without drama. In 2023, the Council voted to remove its
leader, Javier Armas-González, of the Herena Independent Group,
and replace him with Alpidio Armas, of the Spanish Socialist Party. Nothing too odd about that,
except those two men are brothers. We reach the bus station,
hub of the island’s surprisingly comprehensive and regular
network, but we have a short wait before we continue
onwards, so time to stroll around this atmospheric little town of 5,000 people. Despite the diminutive size,
it has three banks, two supermarkets, at least four bars, a trade union
training centre, and a travel agent. I’m tempted to ask if they
can book me a trip to Norway. What everyone thinks is our bus on route
2 along the eastern backbone of the island is waiting at the bus
station with a solid group of potential passengers, school age and beyond,
including one person hot desking amid the succulents. The grind doesn’t stop. Much confusion ensues as the driver
takes the bus away and wanders off. The lady from the recycling depot,
who understandably wants to get home, goes off to remonstrate. It seems to have some effect as the same
bus is brought back, but with a different driver. The €1.35 flat fare on the island is doing
wonders for clearing out my store of almost worthless copper coins. It’s remarkable to be on a bus service
that starts off above the hilltop wind turbines and keeps on climbing. Soon we’re over 1,000 metres up amid
the lava fields, and boy, do my ears feel the altitude. It seems an odd place to suddenly
encounter a roundabout on these almost empty roads, but then
I’m no traffic engineer. From here, we descend the southern face
of the island and the landscape changes completely as we curve through sun-dappled
pine forests, the ground a cushion of soft, discarded needles. At El Hierro’s pretty second city
of El Pinar, the timetable says we need to change for the connecting
bus number 8. It turns out the number 2 just turns
seamlessly into the number 8. However, because the fares are
route-based, the through passengers all dutifully traipsed up to the driver
to hand over another €1.35. Ears finding something else to complain
about, we’re corkscrewing back towards the sea at 500 metres and dropping,
heading for the southern tip of this tricorn-shaped island. I believe large parts of the moon
landings were in fact filmed here. If you know where to look in the footage
behind Neil Armstrong, you can see the Francoist secret
police pretending to be craters. And there, below us,
is the first glimpse of another hard-scrabble fishing town at the end
of the world, 5,650 kilometres from its twin
at the other end of the Schengen zone. And so, after 192 hours and 27 minutes,
we come to La Laja bus stop in the village of La Restinga,
the end of the longest public transport journey you can make entirely in the zone. We’ve made it and with
plenty of time to spare. Until 1960, when some people from Gomera
settled here, La Restinga barely existed. Fishing and now recreational diving are
the only reasons for this unlikely settlement on the Atlantic
shore amid the lava fields. It’s unquestionably remote. Head due south from here,
the next landfall will be Antarctica. At the end of La Restinga’s long breakwater is a sculpture marking
Europe’s most southerly point. That’s a very questionable claim as this
isn’t geographical Europe, really, and political Europe extends to French Guiana. But you can’t reach the sculpture anymore
anyway, as the end of the pier is used by the Coastguard to process small boat
rescues, migrants plucked from fragile boats as they seek to cross the Atlantic
from West Africa to the Canaries. Right now on the pier,
Spanish officials are firmly, if courteously,
questioning six men in life jackets while across Restinga’s cove echo the jolly
beats of the over-60s aqua-aerobics class in the black sand bay. Open borders are great
until you’re on the wrong side of them. ¡Hola! from La Restinga here
on El Hierro island on the Canary Islands. I am exhausted and exhilarated to be here
on this black lava beach at the end of a incredible journey from Vardø
in High Arctic Norway. Five and a half, 5,600 kilometres,
simply as the crow flies, not taking into account the route
we actually took. It’s taken 193 hours, very nearly. Thirteen trains, two coaches,
eight buses, something like that. I’ll put the proper
numbers on the screen shortly. It’s been an incredible journey,
and I hope that you’ve enjoyed coming along with me just as much
as I’ve enjoyed doing it. I’ve had a huge amount of fun since
that time, four years ago, when we discovered that what
the post-pandemic world wanted for a national news story was something
about a bloke who got on 13 buses and went to Morecambe, which was as much of a
surprise to me as it was to everyone else. It’s been a journey. What you haven’t seen is that there’s been
a journey for my family as well at the same time. We’ve gone through a lot
of challenges and a lot of heartbreak at times, frankly. But I’m delighted to say
that if all goes well, in December, we will be adding a new
member to our family, which we are extraordinarily,
extraordinarily excited about. Mrs Turtle doesn’t know yet that she’s
going to be doing some babysitting. Which is great. But what it does mean, obviously,
is that I’m not going to be able to gallivant out across Europe, or on night
buses across London for the foreseeable future,
Which does mean, sadly, there is going to be a hiatus for this
channel, albeit for the best possible reasons. It’s not the end. Mrs. Turtle wouldn’t
let it be the end. We’ve got to keep her in cabbage leaves. But it will be a while.
It will be back. It may be in a slightly different format,
maybe a shorter format, who knows. For now, I just want to say, once again,
thank you so much for supporting this channel, for all the joy
and all the feedback. I will be back at some point. It won’t be imminent,
and it won’t be immediate, but I look forward to seeing you again and in the meantime, happy travelling. Thank you so much from me
and from Mrs. Turtle.

In Part 1 of the Great Schengen Challenge https://youtu.be/qSQapm0UyWU, we left the High Arctic to race against the clock to try to complete the longest journey you can make entirely within the Schengen Zone by train, bus and boat – in 200 hours.
Having beaten landslides and washouts, we’re 93 hours in and have reached the spiritual home of the challenge in Schengen, on the borders of Luxembourg, Germany and France.
Join us as we battle on across Europe (and beyond) on free buses, night trains, marathon ferries, storm-tossed catamarans and island-bound trams…

00:00 Introduction
00:46 Day 5 – Schengen
12:15 Day 6 – Foix
25:02 Day 7 – Madrid
33:13 Day 8 – Arrecife
36:46 Day 9 – Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
53:13 Summary and costs