And so it began at London’s St Pancras station. I boarded the first of eighty trains around the world, the 14:31 to Paris.

For most of the evening I lurked in Gare du Nord station just watching people come and go. Stations aren’t really somewhere that a passer-by can fully absorb while bolting for a train. But if you stop and look around, you realise what an incredible hive of activity stations really are. I loved watching people charging their phones by cycling and then a lovely man playing the piano in the evening sunshine. Almost all stations in France seem to have pianos for anyone to sit down and play at and I loved how he was unbothered by the crowd watching him play.