I have been having a dabble on the, spectacularly awful*, SNCF site and it's giving me fares of around £100 return which seems an awful lot.

Am I doing something wrong? Are there tricks I could use to get the fare down?

*What is it with French websites - they are universally pants.

When are you planning to go? Usually the PREM fare comes up automatically if it is still available.

That's weird. Even on the US Raileurope site, I find return fares as low as $108.00 and Raileurope is always being dissed for being high priced!

I'm going second week in May.

What site are you using, and when are you travelling?

sncf.co.uk throws up about £55 return for weekends in April. And, deeply though it pains me to admit it, the site's slicker than nationalrail.co.uk

If you're looking at midweeks in the near future - when that tiny minority of Frenchpeople who have a job are busy dashing round the country - prices are a lot higher. You really shouldn't believe all the tabloid wingeing that compares walk-up London-Manchester fares on a working day with Paris-Lyons weekend fares booked years in advance.

I found a 19€ fare for Tuesday of the second week. I do not know if this URL will still be valid for you:

http://tinyurl.com/39cymc

That doesn't seem that high to me at all, for a regular fare. That's a long trip, and for a TGV, those tickets are expensive. Regular fare is probably around 110 euro one-way for first class, so 100 GBP RT isn't so bad--that's only 134 euro roundtrip or less than 70 euro one-way.

Sure you can get discounts for special fares for the right dates and times, but that isn't an extraordinary fare. Even discounted, the first class fare is often around 50 euro one-way.

I was using rail europe.com. The tickets for that time haven't come out yet so i just stuck some dates in to get some idea of prices.

Fifty of Her Majesty's Sterling pounds each way is what was coming up.