It’s a comfortable train and it’s fast. It has pretty good food – sandwiches, snacks, drinks. I would have expected a little more ceremony when we entered the big tunnel but there was no ceremony at all. After we had been riding in the dark for several minutes, I concluded that this must be it.
And it was dark going through the tunnel – not in the train, of course, but outside our windows. I think I expected it to be lighted and maybe there would be some kind of occasional distraction although I don’t know what it would be.
When we came out of the tunnel, we were near Calais in France. We had been watching the news over the previous weeks and we knew that the refugee crisis had reached the shores of the Channel as many people were trying to get into England. There had been incidents of people blocking the railway and trying to storm the tunnel, just to get through.
The response to this had been to erect fences, very serious fences, high with coiled barbed wire on top.
The fences themselves gave us a bad feeling and then we passed a small signal building and saw a few guys looking as if they had nowhere to go, just watching time pass by. They looked tired. They were wearing winter jackets although for us, it didn’t seem like winter clothing weather.
We felt really sad when we saw them and we knew they were just a small handful of the many thousands of desperate people throughout Europe, just looking for a safe harbour and a new life.
It was a part of our trip that will remain with us, not as a highlight but as history ongoing and living.
The series of photos, taken from the train, show the fences and there are two that show the men who probably live at the tent city which was nearby.
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