Destination (not achieved) Marseille
My plan was to sleep near the geographical center of France (admit it, you've dreamed of that too, haven't you?) and then drive south to arrive for the evening in Marseille.
 |
| My drive through the night from Orleans until I got close to the center of France |
Not too bad a plan, as long as you don't keep stopping and don't go the slowest, most tortuous route. As my family members will tell you, my stops on tours like this don't take long. "Ooh look - a bridge. Sorry, got to stop and take a pic" I can feel the eyes rolling as no-one else wants to get out of the car to look. But it's quick. Find a good spot to get the sight in. Get the camera on selfie mode. Choose a typically gormless facial expression. Orientate gormless face next to site. Click. Back in the car.
Without the inhibition of wife and kids' rolling eyes, though, I do tend to stop a lot more and I do tend to spend longer than just a quick selfie. Multiply this by 20 and you are starting to seriously impact on your timescale.
For the record, there is apparently no really agreed consensus for the geographical centre of France but the village of Bruère-Allichamps has a good claim. Anyway, I slept in a service station near there, so that is an exciting tale to tell my grand children, isn't it?
 |
| Close to the centre of France |
The car's pretty good to sleep in actually. All you need to do is put the seat fully back and stretch your legs and it's quite comfy. I locked the doors from the inside and put my coat on to keep warm. Luxury!
One nice thing about sleeping in the car is that you tend to witness some amazing sunrises. As I drove south there was a magical mistiness that I drove through.
 |
| Sun-a-rise early in da morning |
The journey from Beauvais had already been long and frustrating but, looking at the positives, I was able at least to catch up with a huge podcast backlog and listen to some fascinating stuff and the Euro 2016 Five Live previews.
 |
| Melvyn Bragg's in depth discussions with experts are always interesting |
So, from there, I headed to Vichy, another French town rich in history with lots of potential selfie opportunities. I decided not to go the easy, quicker, route but one across the countryside and I'm glad I did because I drove through (and of course stopped at) the typically lovely French town of Pourçain sur le Mioule. I tried to get some cash but bizarrely all three that I tried were out of order. I did get some sun cream before getting back on the route to Vichy, through a lovely little place called Billy.
 |
| Au revoir, Billy! |
Vichy was a little disappointing, to be honest. Professor Google had told me that the Vichy government had been based at Le Hotel du Parc, although it turns out that they used several. The choice of Vichy, as opposed to any other big town, was apparently due to it's large number of big hotels that were all close to each other (and, of course, that it wasn't run by the Nazis!). Google maps found me a hotel in Vichy with that name and I found it. But only a fool would think it might have been it. It's closed down now and looks more like the place where a football club might have started. A pub, really. I had to check though, so I asked the owner of the appropriately names "Restuarant Hotel du Parc" next door and he did manage to keep the smile of his face as he told me, no the real one used to be in the city centre.
 |
| The Vichy Government was based HERE? |
 |
| No - In fact it was across many of these hotels in the center |
 |
| Vichy is hosting Slovakia and their shirts, flag and colours are evrywhere |
So, off I went to find that. I parked in the centre and strolled along the promisingly named Rue du Parc but all I was directed to was the local tourist office on that street. Apparently the hotel is no longer a hotel but a block of apartments, I was reassured that all the hotels on the street had been used by government in that 1940-42 (I think) period.
Then it was off into town to finally get my SIM. Again there was a queue. I was stood behind an irate man giving the reception woman a hard time over something. Eventually it was my turn and I was directed to a delightfully attractive assistant who told me she plays rugby. Next, I needed to get the credit topped up at a local "tabac" which proved a little challenging as you have to phone a number and navigate through a nested layer of menu options, all in (very fast) French of course. The guy in the shop made it look easy.
Then I had a nice burger (Ok, you can't have French cuisine every day) and I was off. My plan was, again, not to go the easy quick route to Marseille but via the highlands which I think are called the Massif Central - or maybe my memory of Longman's Audio-Visual French Stage One is not as good as I think.
In some ways, this was a stupid idea. As soon as you get into the region it gets very hilly and the roads get very windy. Google's forecasting engine to estimate journey times seemed to get further and further out with every turn of the road. Or maybe I'm just a pansy driver. It's true that I almost permanently seem to have a French driver "up my arse" (figuratively, you understand). You can call me a coward or a bad driver but I refuse to go round mountainous roads any faster than I feel comfortable with. Anyway, the end result was that as my ETA in Marseille changed from 4pm to 6pm to 9pm and then I decided to knock the idea on the head. One mistake, where I'd taken the wrong turning that Google had recommended, resulted in me having to go back up a mountain and back down the other side, adding another half an hour to the journey and prompting me to think it might be midnight by this rate. I was getting very tired too and the prospect of an accident on the edge of a windy road with a shear drop below decided my mind for me. The final straw was when I had got out to take another pic of spectacular scenery when I was overwhelmed by a wonderful and quite familiar smell. It evoked thoughts of a favourite spice but one that I ccouldn't place. It was such a peaceful, wonderful scene, I resolved to stay there, or at least somewhere close, rather than risk my neck. I managed to get in touch with Sabrina to tell her not to keep waiting, apologising, but assuring her she'd still be paid for the stay. (Turns out AirBnB would enforce that anyway). As I slept another night in the car, I wasn't out of pocket overall.
So it was yet another mini adventure and I had quite a nice time in the tiny, beautiful, village of Les Nonieres. It has no pub, or brasserie, or restaurant, but it was visited by a Pizza van. When I saw that this was probably my only dining option I went straight to it just after they'd parked and were setting up. Ran by a young couple that were clearly in love - I caught them snogging! The exceeded expectation not only with the delicious pizza but also in that they had beers. So it was very pleasant indeed.
After a stroll around I retired early for a good night's sleep, at least the part of the night on Thursday 9th.
Aljice
Thursday 8th June
but written in Marseille
No comments:
Post a Comment