Travels

It’s a shame one so often sleeps badly before a long drive, but at the time of writing we’re installed in a Campanile at Issoire in the Auvergne, and the car is fuelled up for the next leg of the journey tomorrow.  This time we've had no trouble persuading pumps to accept the Gaga card, and it was interesting to note that they read the card and drop into English, though it was a little startling to be instructed to ‘grab the nozzle’.  The fact that it was ‘fueling’ suggests a transatlantic influence at work.  The anglophone tendency are nevertheless expected to understand retirez votre carte.  The fuel, however delivered, is a fair bit cheaper here in France than in the UK.  As I have mentioned before, this is a bit of a conundrum, since the old annual vignette (price varied by département and the curious gallic horse-steam coefficient of the car concerned) was long since abolished as a vehicle excise and factored, as is right and proper, into fuel tax.  Is it just that Gideon and his predecessors have been too rapacious when it comes to both flavours of tax?  We’re being bled from both arms.

The approaches to Paris were packed, as ever, with suicidal lunatics, but we survived them: it’s a matter of learning to expect anything and leave room to deal with it.  More alarming was the behaviour of a Brit-registered left-hand drive Tranny van soon after we joined the A16.  It was wandering all over the motorway, but at least we got the chance to zip past it when it had wandered on to the shoulder.  Yes, you got it: the driver was looking fixedly at the screen of his mobile phone, iPad or some such.  It’s enough to turn one into a vigilante.

The weather has been kind to us.  As we drove across Kent, the mist was still hanging in the valleys, lit by the low morning sun – quite magical.  As we have driven down through France, it has stayed fine and warm, and we could stand out in the sunshine for our sandwich breaks.  We’re used to the heckling of a chaffinch at the aire near the toll gate just north of Paris, and there he was, true to form.  What we hadn’t encountered there before were flowers on a couple of (I think) jacaranda trees.  OK, with the amount one pays in tolls, it’s fair to expect a nice environment at rest stops.  We again used the faintly surreal duplex tunnel under the western outskirts of Paris.  It seems to be free for télépéage users, though whether that’s just on Sundays, I know not. 

The fine weather stands in sharp contrast to the glacial reception at the hotel.  Don’t know what this dame’s problem is, but she should know better than bring it to work with her.  She was at least civil, if uncommunicative, in the restaurant, where we had the best meal we’ve had in a Campanile.  This is not saying much, I know, but it was fit to eat, if a shade on the copious side. I’ve only myself to blame.

Later:  Lovely views of snowy mountains as we drove south: the Auvergne was beautiful as always, and as we battled our way along a manic A9 (I’d left that bit to Martyn…) the views of the Pyrenees were amazing. 

Back here in Another Place, the building work is moving along very well, and with luck, it’ll be done and dusted before we head back north.  With the end wall not quite finished (it has been gratefully swallowing lime wash at a rate greater than anticipated) it’s looking pretty good.  The fresh paint is rather strikingly yellow/orange, but it will mellow fast, and is a vast improvement on the scabby old rendering.