Iain from The Ski Podcast travelled out to Courchevel by train in January 2026.
Brighton to London
My journey started in Brighton on the 06:00, arriving into London St Pancras at 07:20. This is significantly later than the recommended arrival time from Eurostar, but in my experience there is no need to arrive so early and spend extra time in the expensive and generally overcrowded Eurostar departures hall.
Maybe I’ll be caught out one day, but again on this occasion it took less than five minutes from passing the check in gate, going via security and going through both British and French passport control.
London to Paris
My experience on Eurostar is that it typically leaves on time. However, on this occasion the train left over an hour late, which had my wife and I fairly nervous as I had allowed just over an hour to cross Paris from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon.
Knowing we were going to be arriving late, we walked through to the front of the train to minimise the amount of walking time on the platform at Gare du Nord, stopping in the final Premier Plus carriage.
At this point a ‘jobsworth’ Eurostar employee told us that we were not allowed to sit down and needed to go and stand in the corridor. I pointed out that the only reason were there at all was that the train was so late (and also noted that I had a broken arm in a sling), but she was insistent and I left the carriage. There were 10 minutes of the journey to go. It was pretty poor service by Eurostar, considering the situation, turning what could have been an easy win into an unpleasant situation.
Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon
I’m pleased to report that even without running (not feasible with an arm in a sling), we made it across Paris in just 19 minutes, leaving us a full six minutes up our sleeve to settle in our seats before leaving Paris.
This isn’t actually a record for me, as I’ve previously managed it in 16 minutes, but it does prove that it’s not as difficult as most people imagine to cross Paris. My video below shows how you do it, via Line D on the RER. However, it is also possible to take Line B to Chatelet-des-Halles and change to Line A for Gare de Lyon. We actually did this as there was a B train on the platform already, but a five-minute wait for the D and probably saved a couple of minutes.
Paris to Moutiers via Chambéry
Slightly sweaty, but grateful to have caught our scheduled train, we left Gare de Lyon on time on our TGV Inoui service. After a change at Chambéry onto the stopping service, we arrived to a snowy Moutiers, bang on time at 17:10.
If you’d like to know more about Moutiers, please read our guide to the station here.
Moutiers to Courchevel
From Moutiers, we had booked a coach transfer via Altibus for just under €30 return. It took slightly longer than predicted due to the heavy snowfall that greeted our arrival, but we arrived in Courchevel at shortly after 18:30 – a door-to-door journey from Brighton of just under 12 hours.
Total Travel Time
Dep Brighton – 06:00 GMT/Arr Courchevel – 18:25 CET
Total travel time – 8h25m (from actual departure time in London)
Total travel time – 9h25m (from scheduled departure time in London)
Total travel time – 11h25m (from actual departure time in Brighton)
Total Cost: £143 (London-Courchevel)
Eurostar London to Paris – £55
Paris Metro – EUR2.50
Paris-Moutiers – EUR78
Moutiers-Courchevel – EUR21 (return)
