THERE is still time to enter the Gazette competition to win a pair of tickets to France or Belgium on the Eurostar from St Pancras.

Gazette editor Catherine Turnbull took a trip on the faster-than-ever new track to Lille - just a 80-minute ride from London.

MY train was due to depart from the Eurostar International terminal at 10am with check-in time 30 minutes earlier, so it seemed a good idea to stay in London the night before.

This was partly because I wanted time to look round the revamped St Pancras Station with its £800m make-over, partly so I could check out Europe's longest champagne bar but mainly so I wouldn't worry about making my connection from Gloucestershire.

A quick search on the web told me the Novotel St Pancras is just five minutes walk from the international check-in desk and rooms start at £99.

This proved to be an excellent choice - I had a large room complete with entertainment systems through the TV and internet access on the 16th floor with views down to St Paul's Cathedral and Big Ben. In the lobby outside my room a panoramic window overlooked the British Library and the crazy gothic spires of St Pancras and the former Midland Hotel. For a provincial girl like me it was exciting to lie on a comfortable bed and look out on that famous city skyline. One of the lifts had a panoramic view too as I descended to check out what had been done to Sir George Gilbert Scott's gothic station.

It seems rather thoughless given the budget spent on the new terminal that you have to lug your heavy suitcase up some steps from the street level rather than be provided with an escalator, but that is soon forgotten as you admire the single span arch of the train shed while you have a glass of champagne (£7.50 for the house variety) alongside the Eurostar track. I am not convinced of the choice of powder blue for the ironwork, contrasting with Gilbert's salmon pink brickwork, but this is a gothic fairytale building after all.

The Eurostar terminal is down in the former undercroft and littered with Victorian iron pillars. Stores are being built including a Foyles bookshop to stock 20,000 titles and a Neal's Yard Remedies outlet. A farmers' market is also planned.

If you have some time on your hands in the area you could visit the Wellcome Trust's exhibits ten minutes walk away, which are open to the public until 6pm Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and until 10pm on Thursdays, in Euston Road opposite Euston Square tube station. The collection belonging to the medical research charity includes items collected by Sir Henry Wellcome in the late 19th century. I saw Napoleon's toothbrush, a guillotine blade and period photographs.

Back at the hotel I dined in its Mirrors Restaurant, which has two AA rosettes, on a delicious light starter of salt cod salad with citron overtones and a perfectly cooked aged rump steak with fat chips.

I could go to bed for a comfortable sleep knowing it was a five-minute stroll to the Eurostar check-in. Once there you go through passport control and airport style baggage checks but with none of the waiting around. You are straight on the train being served airline style breakfast before you know it. It was impossible to believe we were hurtling through the tunnel at 186mph - it felt like we were still parked up in the station, but 80 minutes later were snaking smoothly in to Lille station - trains also go to Brussels and Paris.

We were heading for Picardy, a region which offers 72 gardens open to the public, six cathedrals, many chateaux and the Sommes First World War battlefields, which lies south of Lille and north of Paris.

We hired a car and headed south to the town of St Quentin to visit an art gallery which houses pastels by a Louis XV court artist, Maurice-Quentin de la Tour.

Our rooms for the night were in St Felix in an art deco villa guest house. Here we sampled great hospitality with home-cooked food by the owner Jacqueline Mariani and slept in comfortable ensuite rooms. It was a complete coincidence after seeing Napoleon's toothbrush, that we were told the first toothbrush had been invented in the small village of St Felix and there is a museum dedicated to this, open in the summer.

Next morning we were off to the Musee Nacre in Meru, the Mother of Pearl Museum, where you can discover the art of making pearl buttons, marquetry, dominoes from ebony and bone and other fancy goods made for the Paris market in the 19th century from natural materials.

The highlight of our trip to the region came next at Chantilly, an affluent village just 30 minutes north of Paris by car or train. Here the ancient hunting forests sweep along the river Oise, past a racecourse frequented like Ascot by the rich to the Chateau Chantilly, a grandiose former fortress which houses the Musée Condé with a fine collection of paintings, jewels, manuscripts and miniatures. In the former kitchens you can enjoy a delicious buffet. But it is the stone stables built to house 240 horses and 500 hounds which are stunning. Much larger than the chateau, the stables have the proportions of a massive cathedral and were built to worship the horse. A theatre show featuring 22 horses and riders showing off dressage, leaping and rearing while telling a fairy story was visually stunning and charming, all performed under a Baroque dome.

Ninety minutes drive later we were in Amiens, a city famous for its gothic cathedral. Here we saw Amiens Cathedral in Colour. Very cleverly the plain stone sculptures were repainted in their original bright medieval colours by light projection. This free show is staged around Christmas and in the summer months.

Much of Amiens was destroyed during the last war, but the Saint Leu quarter is picturesque with colourful houses lining a canal network. You can visit author Jules Verne's' House where he wrote most of his famous works and the Picardy Museum which has an extensive collection of archaeological finds from Roman Amiens and a fine art and sculpture collection. The building itself is a fine example of architecture from the time of Napoleon III, similar to the Louvre in Paris. Our stay in the Hotel Mercure was central and comfortable.

There was plenty we didn't get time to see in Picardy, including chateaux, abbeys, the battlefields and the bay of the Somme.

It was a relief to travel back on the Eurostar, rather than by plane or ferry as gales set in. We took the high speed TGV train from near Amiens to Lille. It took 80 minutes back to London but three hours to travel from St Pancras to Kemble due to delays.

See the December 6 edition of the Gazette which is still available for details of the Eurostar competition to win tickets or get this Thursday's Gazette.

Links www.picardietourisme.com www.eurostar.com www.wellcomecollection.org www.novotellondoneuston.hotel-details.com