hello bonjour and bonjour it is a chilly
january morning and it is
far too early for me to be awake and
we're back in
bezier for the final video from my trip
to the southwest
of france and today we're going on an
adventure into the deep
countryside because i don't know if
you're like me but when you've been
locked down for two months in your own
inner city neighborhood
all i want to do now that we're allowed
to travel again is spend a day
out in the middle of nowhere surrounded
only by trees
and nature and fresh air and all that
stuff i am traveling by public transport
though so what i'm really looking for
is somewhere in the middle of nowhere
that has a railway station
so i thought well where would be the
best place to go that has a railway
station
but the fewest possible people and
that's why today
we're gonna try and get to le cabrillo
the least used railway station in the
whole of france
what the well look this guy
he's totally stolen my format the least
used station in front
that's probably just a coincidence no
that's what i do
i make lease use videos is that simon
pig
right it is 9 25 in the morning
and this is the train to
actually not lake happily there's only
two trains to lay capital in the day
there's one at six in the morning one at
six in the evening
six in the morning was a little bit too
early six in the evening's too late so
i'm catching the train at 9
35 in the morning to go one stop further
and then i'm going to walk back the line
that we're traveling on today is called
la lino de los the obrach line i guess
it's a very rural and very scenic
railway that crosses the highlands of
the massive central
and eventually connects bezier to
clermont 330 kilometers due north
the full journey takes six hours and
includes the stunning garbi viaduct
designed by the same bloke who built
that big radio mast back in paris
but i'm not going quite that far i'll be
getting off after one hour
at a station called well this
i think i'm gonna wait until we hear the
train announce to say that one before i
try and pronounce it myself
anyway from there it'll be an eight
kilometer hike
through the middle of nowhere back to
lake cabrillo
which should give me enough time to get
there before 2 23 in the afternoon
and the one and only train back to
bezier
let's hope it doesn't get cancelled
one
yep i'm very much the only person
getting off here
welcome to celebration
i think the station gets its name from
two separate places
sale is a village of 300 people and
hours walk west of here
and rockhold is a village of 200 people
and hours walk
east so it really does feel like i'm the
only human
around guess i can probably take this
off now
anyway i've now got a hike to be getting
on with because of course
we're going to a place which is even
less busy a station that gets
14 passengers a year and we need to get
there before 2 23.
but while we're doing that well this is
the internet and i know some of you are
already asking
how do we know it's the least used
station in france where do they come up
with that figure of 14 people a year
does this mean we've all been
microchipped already and what's bill
gates going to do with station usage
figures
and that means it's time for a trip to
pedentry corner
okay just to let you know we are going
to get properly pedantic here so if
you're not a pedant
feel free to turn the volume down for
the next two minutes and enjoy the
hiking montage
but for the 99 of us who are still here
this is how it works
without actually microchipping everyone
it is basically impossible to know the
true number of people
who use every station so instead what
they do
is the next best thing which is to track
the exact number of tickets sold
to and from each destination and yes
that means you're gonna miss all the
people who didn't buy a ticket the
people who got off at the wrong stop
and the people who are traveling on some
kind of explorer ticket but
realistically
it's the closest we can get now in the
uk the government publishes these
figures every year
so if your name is i don't know what's a
typical british name
jeffrey marshall if your name is jeffrey
marshall you can go on the website
and there's a handy pdf file telling you
what is the least used station in
britain
but if your name is je huala marcel you
can't do that
the sncf does not publish ticket sales
publicly
they do publish this table of station
usage figures on their website but it's
a bit of a mess
first of all the numbers are based
partly on ticket sales but also
extrapolations calculations and surveys
so the data is pretty muddy and secondly
it includes several stations that aren't
even open
if you sort the table by the least used
the first 50 rows have got zero
passengers
so honestly my research was beginning to
feel a bit like this hike
in the end i got the friendly people of
french railway twitter on the case but
still
no one had access to the exact figures
and the best thing we could find
was a couple of old articles saying that
le cabrillo with its 14 passengers a
year
is the least used station in france now
that number doesn't match up with what's
on the sncf website so i'm assuming that
the journalists got access to more
accurate data
but i don't know that le cabrillo
at the end of the day i realized the
only way we'll ever find the one person
who knows the true answer
is if i go to la caprara post a video on
the internet calling it the least use
station in france
and then wait five minutes for them to
post an angry comment telling me where i
should have gone instead
anyway never mind that because we're now
approaching our destination
and if this video achieves nothing else
then i am quite possibly the first
travel youtuber ever to make a hiking
montage and then
soundtrack it entirely with pedantry
next question how do we get to it
and here it is the least used station
in france officially it's a puandah
non-gere a non-staffed stopping point
also known as a pong
uh i've had to put this back on because
legally i'm now
in an sncf station which means you have
to wear a mask
someone might find me
i don't know e5 euros you can't mess
around with these people
it's just the one platform it looks like
i reckon that used to be another track
there there used to be a passing loop
here
and that's obviously gone some time ago
you got the old station building behind
me
which seems to be i think
it's not it's not abandoned it looks
like someone's living there
and then someone lives in the farmhouse
down there
so what facilities are there at le
cabrillo
well there's a shelter there's
a there's onward travel information
there is no dot matrix there is no
ticket machine there is no bike rack
that i can see
there is a help point which i haven't
tried yet
and there's a dog
one train 6 49 in the morning one at 2
23 in the afternoon
one at 10 past 10 in the evenings on
sundays
and festivals that's a bit mad
and then going in the other direction
7 37 in the morning
or 10 past seven at night
so basically two trains in each
direction
every day which actually feels like
quite a lot for a least used station but
one of them is an insanely early time in
the morning
presumably for all the people who want
to get to their jobs in
civil rights
that sounds like fun milo they have a
bit of a viaduct going on there i think
for anyone who's a fan of cheese so this
section of the line
is subsidized by the regional government
and must be hugely subsidized uh because
i've paid one euro for my trip back from
here
so uh yeah if you want a really cheap
trip on a train and some nice scenery
why not come to li cabrillo
[Music]
right i'm having to film this on my
phone now because my camera battery ran
out
um but trains should be here in about
five minutes i hope
uh i really hope so that's about it
from le cabrillo the least used station
in the whole of france
let me know if you enjoyed this video
and join me next week
when i will be starting my new series
tuttle
where i will be trying to visit all 3029
stations
in france
if you'd like to visit le cabrillo or
ride further on the beautiful albright
line
try and get here as soon as you can when
international travel is safe again
because the whole route is currently
under serious threat of closure to
passengers
there is a campaign to try and save it
and there's a petition you can sign it's
all in french i'm afraid but basically
it sounds like it's a classic example of
a rural line
where the service has been gradually run
down with trains running at weird times
of the day
and if it doesn't get investment soon
then the towns and villages around here
will lose their connection completely
and it could spell the end for trains
running over the garage viaduct
i'll put a link to the petition in the
description below
meanwhile thank you very much to jeff
and vicky from all the stations for
being the inspiration behind this video
and frankly one of the inspirations
behind me making videos in the first
place
check out the all the stations channel
for their epic adventures visiting every
station in the uk and ireland
while jeff has a separate series of
videos where he goes around the uk
visiting the least used station in every
county
i'll put the playlists on screen in a
moment all that remains is for me to say
thank you very much for watching
and i will see you soon