Bikes on Eurostar

[birkhead]

I find the info provided both by CTC and by Eurostar re bikes on trains does not hit the relevant spot for us.
I guess that neither party considers the situation that is relevant to those coming from north of Watford.
As last year, after travelling down from the North-East [of Scotland] on Virgin East Coast, we will leave our fully assembled bikes with Eurodespatch in London KingsCross for overnight delivery to Paris. We will continue on an afternoon train to Paris, stay overnight and collect our bikes from the Gare du Nord the following morning, before continuing our journey. This works well for us, and we don't have to worry about squeezing bikes into a hotel room overnight. Last year we did this to Brussels, and actually collected our bikes from Eurodespatch 36 hrs later since we wanted to spend a day visiting Brussels.

I have suggested to Eurodespatch that they amend the Eurostar website as below, tho that may be too difficult for them to implement:
2. Fully assembled
If you’d prefer to keep your bike in one piece, EuroDespatch has a limited number of spaces per train.
If you leave your bike with Eurodespatch, it will be delivered to London, Paris or Brussels overnight for collection the following morning.

Then there are the strikes....

[hamster]

I used EuroDispatch for Lille the other day.
My positive remarks here (page 2). viewtopic.php?f=16&t=121713
Whole bikes have to be transported in one of the older trains - it's boxed on the new ones as far as I understand. As said, if you aren;t bothereed about a specifi train, then no need to dismantle and it will arrive in due course.

[stuartlloyd2000]

Just a bit crappy. My latest (of many) eurostar trip involved 4 peeps 4 bikes out London Paris return Brussels London.
Top tip - photograph all your paperwork. Euro despatch are very casual with returning it or keeping it.
Outbound was OK once we linked 2 missing bikes to my passport for id.
Having ridden Paris - roubaix we the had to ride to Brussels to guarantee our bikes could travel with us - except they didn't!
Checked in 1.5 hours before departure but they still came on the following train.
Thankfully virgin wasn't too busy and accommodated my brother in law on the next train to Chester. But what if they hadn't? What is the point of pre booking if they are so casual?
Oh and they "stole" all our gas (empty and full) despite us having clarified on London that it was ok.
Hope this was helpful.

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my Swift 2 using hovercraft full of eels.

[kevin Hooper]

This is the Eurostar case I had to fit my 26" tourer into 3 weeks ago