This French high-speed train is cramped, but the savings are glorious

France’s budget OUIGO train service uses the same mechanics as the original TGV and travels at incredible speeds of up to 320km/h.

The train: OUIGO, France

• The route Paris to Agen
• Distance 533 kilometres
• Operator SNCF, France’s national state-owned railway company
• Class Standard
• Frequency Twice daily

Travelling across France on the high-speed OUIGO service.

The journey

Paris Gare Montparnasse to Agen on SNCF’s OUIGO service with a scheduled time of three hours, 45 minutes, aboard a 16-car Grande Vitesse high-speed train.

The class

“One single class” has got to be a synonym for “We pack you in like sardines”.Credit: Alamy

It’s one-class-fits-all on the OUIGO, SNCF’s budget high-speed train product that can transport up to 1260 passengers at a time. Taking a leaf out of the low-cost airline business, you can choose between the base fare, OUIGO Essentiel, or the “all-inclusive” fare, OUIGO Plus, or cherry-pick the extras that are relevant to you, such as seat reservation, Wi-Fi access or even taking a bike on board. Children’s fares are advertised as between €5 and €8 ($8 and $13) no matter the destination (we are travelling as a family of four and pay €8 per child). OUIGO trains are classic TGVs refitted, so they still have the same pointy nose and split-level, or “duplex” carriage arrangement, yet are distinguished by their bright blue and pink livery and are stripped back, so every space can be used for seating. Meanwhile, the original TGV service is sold as TGV InOui, with higher fares, first- and second-class options and fewer passengers.

Carbon emissions

Five kilograms a passenger, compared with 113.9 kilograms if flying from Paris Orly to Agen.

Boarding

Gare Montparnasse train station in Paris.Credit: Bloomberg

There’s nothing like waking up on the morning of your departure to an email from SNCF titled “urgent”. Our carriage has been removed from service and we have been allocated four new seats, but nowhere near each other, which is hardly ideal when two of our party are under 10.

When I call SNCF customer service I’m told that this is the best configuration available. My other option, I am advised, is to “ask people to swap seats with us when we board”. We find a better solution when we arrive at the platform and make a beeline for the inspector, who lets us in on a secret. Carriage 14 is the old bar wagon, and the seats aren’t put on general sale. It’s also the only one that doesn’t have a door, but we enter from car 15 and nab the last free quad seats.

The seat

SNCF says the secret to OUIGO’s optimised space is one single class, but that’s got to be a synonym for “we pack you in like sardines”. It’s worth paying the extra €7 ($11.50) to reserve your seat (or booking the OUIGO Plus fare) if you’re travelling alone to ensure you don’t end up in the middle seat of a cosy triplet row, a configuration never used on a classic TGV. The seats in our carriage are all quads and are comfortable enough. The onboard Wi-Fi is rather cutely called OUIFI — but it cuts in and out across our journey.

Baggage

Although one backpack and one small piece of under-seat luggage is all that’s included in the base fare, for the moment OUIGO staff remain blissfully ignorant of the inquisition-like baggage checks Europe’s budget airlines carry out before anyone is allowed to board their aircraft. No one at the station seems to blink an eye at what anyone is bringing on board.

Food and drink

The bar on the TGV is one of my great transport pleasures and it took my daughter and I walking through every carriage on the inbound leg from Agen to Paris a few days earlier to realise that there’s no food and beverage service on the OUIGO, not even a snack trolley. For this return journey, we stock up on snacks, probably a bit too enthusiastically, at a Monoprix supermarket in Montparnasse before our departure.

One more thing …

It may be the budget version, but the mechanics work the same and this is still a train that travels at incredible speeds of up to 320km/h.

The verdict

We leave on time and arrive 10 minutes late into Agen, owing to an unexplained stop on the track outside Paris. It’s not the most comfortable or relaxing train journey I’ve ever had, but we make it to our destination having saved €200 ($325) on the more expensive TGV InOui fare. Plus, I end up with €12 ($20) in travel vouchers as compensation for the seating changes. If you don’t mind frill-free travel – and can cope with last-minute surprises – OUIGO can be a great deal for crisscrossing France by high-speed rail for less.

Our rating out of five

★★½

The writer travelled at her own expense.