The long awaited direct service from London to Rotterdam & Amsterdam is soon to be operational, but you will have to wait a tiny bit longer to book.

Yesterday saw a promotional run of the route for invited journos and the like (my invite was clearly lost in the post, haha).

The route takes a tad over 3 hours to get to Rotterdam, 40 minutes longer to get to Netherland’s premier city.

Departures from St Pancras are twice daily leaving at 8.31 & 17.31.

Tickets for generals and the public were due to go on sale yesterday at 16.00 to much fanfare and said to be starting at £35 one way.

Like many others my fingers were poised over my Eurostar app ready to book. Cue website meltdown with the booking system unable to cope with the ‘phenomenal’ demand.

The nice guys at the call centre were most apologetic, even though they undoubtedly needed to repeat the same information over & over again.

Eurostar have since announced that they hope to be back on track for sales at some stage on Thursday 22nd. Watch this space or more specifically this link : CLOGS

The direct service is only one way at this stage, with the return journey necessitating a stop and train change (from Thalys to Eurostar) in Brussels for passport control purposes.

Eurostar have said that there should be a direct return from late 2019 having reached agreement with the relevant authorities.

Until then the journey will take at least 4 ½, probably tempting many to fly back instead during the intervening period.

Still this is a vast improvement on my first visit to the Dam in 1987. It then took me about a day to get there from Devon via Harwich on a ferry to Hoek of Holland and finally a train to Amsterdam for my first ever overseas train journey. Read about it here.

Thursday promises to be akin to getting Led Zeppelin reunion tickets. Good luck and I hope to see you on the 8.31 on 4th April.