Eurostar passengers depart UK for Paris as travel resume

LONDON: Passengers supplied with negative virus tests on Wednesday boarded the first Eurostar trains from London to France since border closures, wanting to spend Christmas with their families.

Shortly earlier than the departure of the first train to Paris from St Pancras Station at 0906 GMT, the terminal remained noticeably quieter than would usually be expected two days earlier than Christmas.
Just a few passengers gathered across the station’s ticket offices for boarding, dragging their suitcases and brandishing their all-important negative test results.

A Eurostar spokesman mentioned that only 60 of the 900 seats available on the first train had been taken.
French authorities relaxed the journey restrictions on Tuesday evening, 48 hours after banning arrivals from the UK to curb the spread of a new coronavirus strain found in the nation.
Under the new guidelines set to be reviewed on December 31, French residents as well as foreigners residing in France or within the European Union, and people making essential journeys, can now cross the border again. To do so, they need to show a negative Covid test report that is less than 72 hours old.

At St Pancras, Sara Wood, a 57-year-old catering manager, was able to show a recent negative result because she is tested each week at her workplace and mentioned she was “very happy” to be going home to Creuse in central France.

“I usually travel back and forth each week, however, I have not been able to due to Covid. So that is the first time I am going home in eight months,” she mentioned.
Different passengers waited nervously to see if results from tests they had taken in anticipation of the journey would come in time.
Sheila Finnan, who was initially supposed to return residence to Paris on Tuesday, described the situation over testing as a “whole mess”, with no alternative for screening at the station itself.
She was stopped from boarding the morning’s first train out of London because she didn’t have a negative test result and was going to attend the 1900 GMT service after taking a new check earlier within the day.
“Hopefully the result can be negative, and I’ll wait here for another eight hours,” she mentioned.

Workers at St Pancras had been telling travelers where to go to get tested, however many were still leaving without being able to catch their trains.
The first vehicles with passengers disembarked in Calais from Dover overnight, after the English port reopened to outgoing visitors, an AFP correspondent noticed.
The first passenger passed through the Channel Tunnel at around 0200 GMT, and the first trucks were due to cross the Pas-de-Calais on Wednesday, according to a spokeswoman for Getlink, which operates the Eurotunnel.
Clement Beaune, French minister for European Affairs, informed BFM TV the number of trains and planes linking the UK to France might be adapted to meet a possible rise in demand.
However, Eurostar mentioned there had not been a big surge in reservations.

“There is no reason to add more trains,” a spokesman for the subsidiary of France’s state-owned railway company mentioned.
Air France restarted its usual flight schedule on Wednesday, running 4 return flights between Paris and London, two between Paris and Manchester, and one between Paris and Edinburgh.
During the 48-hour suspension of flights from the UK, Air France kept operating two return flights to London and one to Manchester however the planes carried only cargo.