Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

It's Friday the 26th of July and I am at London St. Pancras International Railway Station

where trains leave for Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.

I have been here since 6 in the morning and I was expecting

to report on people leaving happily to go to the Paris Olympics on 18 trains which I believe is a

record number for Eurostar. Very sadly, as you probably know, unfortunately, there was overnight

vandalism which has destroyed lots of important signaling equipment, and I understand also overhead wires,

on the North TGV line.

That's the high speed line from Leal to Paris.

Similar attacks on the lines to the east,

to Metz, to Nancy, to Strasbourg,

and to the west to places including Bordeaux and it's causing absolute misery. The good news if you like is

that actually most of the passengers on those 18 trains are going to get to Paris. They might be

four hours late which is what the delay is at the moment,

but at least they will get there. There are a couple of fallers so far, trains which were due to be

travelling out but which now have been cancelled. Those are at 331 and 701pm and they will have been very heavily booked with close to 900

travellers on each of them. We are talking about 15,000 passengers being booked just to get from

London to Paris today. Eurostar says that, we advise you to postpone your trip.

You can exchange your booking for free to travel in the same travel class at a different

time or date or cancel your booking and get a refund.

But the problem is people want to get there.

Many of them will be travelling because they are going to the Olympics.

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