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Train to Carcassone in winter?

Visiting France in January and hoping to take two days to visit Marseille and Carcassone from Paris. I'm not seeing any train options to get to and from Carcassone from Paris or Marseille in January. Am I just trying to book too early, or are trains not running at that time? We mainly want to see Chateau D'If and Cite de Carcassone. If any of you have experience with traveling to these destinations in winter, I'd really appreciate some advice.

Posted by
6783 posts

Maybe not all train times are loaded, since times for next year were only published last week. I would check again from time to time. Do you have specific dates? We could check for works on the line to Carcasonne, too.

Posted by
10120 posts

There are trains from Marseille to Carcassonne, intercités, meaning they have limited stops, go longer distances than local trains, have reserved seats, but don’t travel at the highest speeds. Their tines will be loaded into SNCF Connect soon. Holiday tickets were just put on the market last week.

Posted by
10178 posts

We took the train from Marseille to Carcassonne in April. Beware of the cobbled streets in Carcassonne if it’s wet or icy. They could be treacherous.

Posted by
1016 posts

From Paris, I think you would have to connect at either Bordeaux (leaving from Paris Gare Montparnasse), or Lyon or perhaps Valence (departing from Gare de Lyon), but you can definitely get there.

Posted by
427 posts

We live in France and were checking out the area around Toulouse and Albi in the days before the Covid lockdowns began in late winter 2020. When we visited Carcassone, not much was open within the medieval walls at that time, but most of the normal businesses in the proper town were open.

It was a bit odd: we were in Gaillac for a while, and it was having its Festival des Lanternes, a joint France/China festival. We had been reading about an epidemic in China, and thought perhaps it might not be a good idea to mingle with Chinese performers and workers who had been traveling back and forth to China.

A few weeks later, France was in lockdown.