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as published in the Surrey Advertiser.

From November Eurostar left from St Pancras instead of Waterloo, cutting the journey time to Paris by half an hour from London.

Q:  What would you advise Surrey business people who will now have to cross London to catch the train to Paris?

A:    Given the traffic in London, the price of taxis and also the dire prospect of dragging your luggage around a horribly over-heated underground, you would immediately lose that half an hour advantage, so we’d advise the business traveller from Surrey to drive to Kent to the new terminal, Ebbsfleet International. 

Q:  Sorry, what’s that?

A:  It’s a brand new terminal coming on stream from 19^th November – 3 miles from Junction 2 of the M25 – about 45 minutes from Guildford. It’s not far from the Bluewater shopping centre in North Kent. It’s largely taking over from Ashford.

Q:  How many trains a day will be leaving from Ebbsfleet?

A:  Seven and the journey time will be just over 2 hours – 2 hours and 12 minutes mostly. 

Q:  What about parking?

A:  There are 2,500 spaces five minutes walk from the terminal and the daily charge will be £11.50. And, of course, you will save a lot of time anyhow as you can check in just an hour before departure instead of two hours minimum at airports.

Q:  How much will a return ticket be from Ebbsfleet?   

A:  A midweek return could be as low as £159.00.

Q: So would you recommend business travellers from Surrey to continue using Eurostar even though we’ve lost the fantastic convenience of Waterloo?

A:  Yes, as even driving, you’ll save the half hour to Waterloo train time, a further half hour at least to cross London and nearly 20 minutes off the travel time from St Pancras to Ebbsfleet. So you’d already be well over an hour to the good without touching London.  Convention Travel is one of Surrey’s leading Business Travel Specialists with 25 years experience.