SCOTS are expected to snap up the first ever Eurostar tickets from Glasgow to Paris, with some return tickets costing just £89 each.

Claiming to have slashed the journey time to nine hours, the high-speed operator will launch the service on November 14, when its new High Speed 1 railway also goes live.

Scots will be able to use the tickets to travel on the Virgin service from Glasgow to London Euston, where they will change stations to join the St Pancras link to Paris.

Edinburgh travellers will also board the service there, via GNER's train to King's Cross.

There is expected to be massive interest in the Eurostar tickets - but it's not clear how many of the £89 tickets will be available.

Today Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown vowed to deliver "attractive fares, better connections and faster journey times" from Glasgow.

Hoping to tempt people away from cheap flights, Mr Brown is also keen to promote Eurostar as a greener' option for Scotland's short-break market.

Mr Brown said: "Our new stations, combined with High Speed 1, will unlock the power of Eurostar for people living in Glasgow."

Although widely welcomed, the new service is nothing like the direct trains to the continent which Scots were promised in the 1980s.

Eurostar scrapped these plans due to "commercial reasons" and today it said it was "highly unlikely" it would resurrect them, unless a high-speed London- Scotland railway link was built.

Eurostar wants to take on the cheap flight operators, offering better prices and service on the busy routes from Scotland to France and Belgium.

It is pledging to offer connections to Brussels of just seven hours and 45 minutes - and eight hours to Paris - including transfers and check-in time.

Glasgow MSP Charlie Gordon, Labour's transport spokesman, had accused Eurostar of asking Scots "to pay twice" for their service, first for the Channel Tunnel itself and then for a new high-speed rail link north.