Off to Paris

Prices have come down a little today on internet auction and ticket re-sale sites, with some going briefly at around £750. According to the CEO of one of these sites, Get Me In, this is because fans are now worried there will be no accommodation for them. They expect a further drop tomorrow and on Friday. On eBay, some sellers are addressing the accommodation need too and attempting to flog the rooms they have booked.

Meanwhile in Paris there are discouraging reports that touts are taking over, hoovering up the best tickets from French and antipodean fans for resale. Time to get to Paris and take my chances.

This in itself is no mean feat. You expect the best Eurostar trains to be booked up along with flights from London Airports, but even the all-night coach rides, possibly the most gruelling and uncomfortable means of getting to Paris, are all fully booked. National Express have been continuously laying on extra coaches through the week, but these seven hour journeys have been selling out like Led Zeppelin concerts. 

"We've laid on ten buses for each departure time and they're all full," said one of their sales agents. "It's like D Day." Seats on a flight tomorrow from Norwich to Paris Charles de Gaulle were still available for £90, and there were a few spaces for drivers on the Eurotunnel Shuttle and on the ferries, but anyone hoping to make it across the channel and down by public transport has their work cut out. SNCF go on their suspiciously-timed strike tomorrow: people travelling via Eurostar have been generally looked after but those English fans who arrive in Calais hoping to make their way onwards may find themselves stuck. I may be among them: I hope to find a ride with some of the English fans who disembark onto French soil tomorrow morning, the first wave of the great invasion.