The demolition this week of “the Jungle”, the migrants’ camp near Calais, reminded me of a piece I’ve included in Last Call for the Dining Car: The Telegraph Book of Great Railway Journeys, which is due out from Aurum on October 22.

Trawling the archives and making a choice has consumed all my free time over the past six months, which is why postings on this blog have become even less frequent than they used to be.

As you’d expect, the book has outstanding narrative travel articles on the likes of the Trans-Siberian and the Orient Express. But I’ve interpreted the phrase “great railway journey” liberally, and so I also have a report, by my late colleague David Graves, on asylum-seekers trying to steal a ride on freight trains entering the Channel Tunnel. Here’s a taster:

In the darkness, they creep like ghosts towards Britain
As nightfall descends over Sangatte, the first groups of asylum-seekers emerge from the gates of a cavernous blue warehouse. Some groups are only three or four, others 50 strong. They shuffle off towards Coquelles, past the cornfields rippling in the wind, and prepare for their nightly battle with Eurotunnel to get to Britain.
Caught in the headlights of passing cars, they tread a well-worn route. Past the neat houses on the outskirts of Coquelles, where most of the local people are preparing for bed, and onward past the village post office towards the Calais-Boulogne motorway. Under a fence, across the motorway and towards the Cité Europe shopping centre.
Beside the lights of the shopping centre, where tens of thousands of Britons shop for cheap wine, the asylum-seekers start to fan out across rutted fields and through deep culverts towards a clump of small pine trees, in which they take cover. There is an odd shout or whistle, but otherwise silence, apart from the rustling wind.
It is here that the final dash to the Eurotunnel terminal, half a mile away, is planned. Kamal, an Iraqi Kurd, tells his friends of a breach in the 22 miles of razor wire around the 1,250-acre compound. It is a small hole under the perimeter fence, just big enough to wriggle under. There is a shout in the distance. Kamal, 24, who has been travelling through Europe to the Channel for three months, whispers: “It’s the police.” Everyone stays quiet for half an hour until it is time to move again. By now it is pitch-black.
Moving as silently as possible towards the perimeter fence, the asylum-seekers ghost through the night towards the hole. It has not been discovered by Eurotunnel’s security guards patrolling the compound. One by one, the refugees slip under the coils of razor wire. Ahead of them are the railway lines and trains they hope will take them to Britain.
Kamal is travelling with three friends. They are all Kurds from Kirkuk in northern Iraq. They have suffered years of persecution from Saddam Hussein and Turkish forces. Their desperate families have raised thousands of pounds to enable their sons to start a better life in Britain. First, though, they have to get to Folkestone to claim asylum.
The plan is to wait for a slow-moving European freight train. As it approaches the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, Kamal and his friends will attempt to jump on one of the wagons. They fan out towards the tracks, trying to avoid the floodlighting Eurotunnel has installed. . .