Motorail to Nice - any advice ?

cuffie

Sorry to add to this particular thread, but wanted to ask the same question, until I notice on the Motorail website, and I quote..."The French Motorail service from Calais to the South of France will sadly not be running in Summer 2010. The impact of the current economic climate and significant increases in train running costs, partly due to unfavourable exchange rates, means the service would not be financially viable"
We are gutted - wanted to do the same thing, after driving to the South of France last year, we just wanted to save on a day of driving. So, my question is, has anyone used AutoTrain? You drive to Paris, put your car on a train from Paris to Nice. Then you get a different train and meet your car at the other end. Not really sure why they are suspending Motorail when they are in effect using 2 trains to get you to your end destination rather than 1!!! Anyway....I'm sure there is a perfectly good explanation, but has anyone used AutoTrain to do this? We are looking at the option of flying and hiring a car too, but for return flights for 5 of us, and hiring the car for 2 weeks the other end would not make it better cost wise (but it would time-wise) so we need to weigh it all up really. I have noted the links above - Just printing off above articles to do some bedtime reading! Thanks