SAB

My friend's flight leaves Heathrow at 11am on a Tuesday, so she will need to get from Gordes to London the night before. We have been looking at different ways to do this using BA (this is a given) drive her to Avignon, train to CDG, flight to London; drive her to Nice, flight to London.

DalaiLlama

The use the ba website for flights and www.voyages-sncf.fr for trains and http://maps.google.com for roads, that ought to do it.

TimS

Fly Marseilles-Gatwick on either easyJet or Ryanair. Fly Marseilles-Stansted on Ryanair.

Take the TGV from Avignon to Paris and the Eurostar from Paris to London.

StuDudley

It's about a 2 hr easy drive to the Nice airport, and there are 8 non-stop flights to London.

It's about a 30-40 min drive to the Avignon TGV station for trains to CDG. There is a 9:18 train which arrives at 12:30, and a 2:16 train that arrives at 5:20. I would allow about 2 1/2 hrs to get from the TGV station to the BA flight. This kinda rules out the later train, unless you want to get to London late in the night. There are 9 flights daily to London from CDG.

Your best bet would be to drive to Nice. Visit Aix en Provence on the way to or from Nice - or you could spend the time in Nice and/or visit some of it's surrounding cute villages (of which there are many).

Stu Dudley

StuDudley

There are 2 BA flights from Marseille to London - but they both arrive at Gatwick. Take the LHR flight from Nice.

Stu Dudley

StuDudley

I believe that the TGV/Eurostar/LHR would require a station change in Paris, and a taxi (or some other means of transportation) to get to LHR from London. I assumed that your friend would want to get to LHR the evening before, and stay there for the night at a hotel. If he/she wants to stay in London, then the Eurostar would make sense - you would be doing a station change from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord in Paris instead of a LHR to London downtown - then a very early trip to LHR then next morning.

I suspect the flight from Nice & staying at an airport near LHR would be the least expensive (quick check yielded a $111 flight on BA).

Stu Dudley

SAB

Thanks Stu for reading what I actually posted--i.e. getting to London via BA. She is just going to stay at a Heathrow airport so has no problem getting in late. As I suspected Nice to Heathrow makes the most sense.

SAB

Stu, do you know of a car service that we can use? We now have to juggle picking up someone in Marseille, with the drop off in Nice (yes it would make more sense if they could all arrive and depart from the same place, but that's not going to happen) Someone will have to use a car service.

StuDudley

Nope. There is train service between Cavaillon, Avignon, and the Marseille St Charles train station, but I assume you want pick up at the Marseille airport.

Will a taxi do?? If not, contact the tourist office in Marseille and ask them.

Stu Dudley

TimS

With the need to pick someone up in Marseille, maybe my original suggestion of having your friend fly to London from there makes sense after all. Granted, if she flies on a budget airline, she would have to get to Heathrow from either Gatwick or Stansted; but National Express coaches (highway buses) offer direct service to Heathrow from either airport. She still would be able to spend the night in a Heathrow hotel.

SAB

Thanks everyone-it's always a pain when one has to coordinate the travel plans of 5 different people coming from 5 different places and 2 different countries. Someone is always going to be more inconvenienced.