PAG 26, page 22
as well as the car so we never got away from each other, and I don’t think I’d been at my most positive all summer (our beloved dog had died rather suddenly earlier in the year). I confided to Sally that I wasn’t looking forward to the return journey much; in due course it emerged that Ian had confessed to a third party that the only reason he wasn’t going to get an aeroplane home was that he didn’t want to let me down! So that turned out OK and Ian took the ‘plane back from Marseilles (on good terms) a few days before I started back alone, as I’d expected to do in the first place.
My friend Captain Cutout turned up. He’d been on a 6 month sabbatical cataloguing the ancient monuments of France, (he edits ‘The Megalithic Portal’ should you ever need a guide to the ancient monuments of Britain, and now France) arrived nearby at the right time and joined us for a couple of days. He suggested I might like to go prehistoric-stone-hunting in the Hornet so the two of us headed north through a spectacular gorge, over a pass through the Luberon and tracked down an ancient burial chamber on the north west end, apparently with rather less difficulty than the Captain usually expects. Now, I and the rest of the party had been up the pass the day before but in the people carrier, so I was very happy to get a chance to see the spectacular cliffs and mountains properly (ie without a roof in the way!), and they were impressive. Leaves Cheddar Gorge standing is all I can say. I was also able to do a detour to show CC a Roman bridge crossing a stream in an idyllic side valley. The old killjoy inspected the keystone of the bridge and found 1722 carved on it…Anyway we returned after a delightful expedition and he looked at the Hornet and said ‘This is great. I must get something like this’ So that’s another convert.
Time moves on and the return trip is upon me. Loads of room in the car now with only one-and-a-half people’s luggage – I have some of Sally’s – and of course the bench seat to myself. Well this time I’d planned a direct route North, so, for the third time in the same number of days, I climbed over the Luberon gorge and pass, none the worse for seeing it again. I have 3 days allowed for the trip. Left to my own devices now, I have it in the back of my mind that, as it’s about 750 miles, I must do 250 but it would be brilliant to do half the trip today. However I haven’t rushed to get away fast, leaving at 11 am on the Saturday. So I tour along at about 60ish trundling steadily north. The Luberon recedes for the last time and the road passes some spectacular fortresses that look as though they guarded the approaches to Provence once upon a time. Further north I cross the Rhone winemaking areas, resisting the lure of the ‘farm shops’. Indeed at one point I am within 17 km of Beaume de Venise, and I’m particularly fond of dessert wines but nothing was going to sway me from my driving!
Then it’s into the Ardeche, just a name until now. It’s a spectacular alpine region , deeply cut by mountain torrents, steep sided valleys clothed in conifers and the road seems to climb and climb, looping gradually up and down, and then yet further up, with ever more impressive views as I travelled. Then, quite suddenly, I’m up. At least that’s my perception, that I’d climbed the Ardeche to reach the high plateau of the Drome district, and I’m not going to get out the relief map to check. Here the scenery changed; wide open undulating grassland with spikes of ancient volcanoes dotting the horizon. Not as straight impressive as the Ardeche but more ‘mystical’, a bit ‘Lord Of The Rings’ and still very grand, especially with a slight evening haze. Passing Puy-de Dome in the distance I see the huge figure of the Virgin Mary on the hill, cast from cannons captured at Sevastopol, I’d been told previously, but I didn’t stop…
The traffic thins as the sun sinks. All the time I’m watching the miles tick on and telling myself that I can keep going for a bit yet. It gets to about 6 o’clock and I fill up with petrol a bit before the half way mark; the insoluble equation that will worry me for most of the rest of the journey home is fully formed by now and crawling around, tickling the recesses of my brain, like an errant cockroach. It goes as follows:
I worked out my mpg at 56 on the way down. I didn’t do it carefully, just out of curiosity. Do I believe it? (it seems awfully high when, driving like a maniac at home I only get mid-40’s)
If my tank holds 5 galls. As I think, and I believe the 56mpg, I should get to Le Havre without needing another garage.
French petrol stations go automatic, card sales only, after dark. I’ve been told that, amazingly, they only take specifically French cards and will not accept mine, so in effect they may be closed to me. (This later turns out to be true. Ridiculous but true. Only the French, eh?). But maybe I don’t need them?
So will I need petrol and will I be able to find it? One open petrol station will, I am sure, be enough to be certain of getting all the way.
But do I fancy stopping dead in the middle of the night in the middle of a foreign nowhere?
And if it does happen am I willing to leave all my kit in the car while I look for help? Not really!
And anyway there wouldn’t be any help, would there?
Tomorrow is Sunday. Everyone says NOTHING will be open tomorrow, so will it be any better if I do stop over night?
Now go back to (1) above and work through it all again…
I get out the map, find a services on the motorway to the north and work out where I can join and leave the peage to access it It’s comfortably past the half way mark, and so far I’ve been driving continuously, snacking in the car on rolls and the like bought in garages as I drive. So I make a first decision. I will drive to the services (paying a toll for one section of the motorway, contravening the prime directive for good reason) and have a break. A good solid meal eaten at a table and, if I’m still feeling perky, I’ll go for broke and try and catch the 9 o’clock tomorrow morning ferry.
So that’s what I did. It was probably 9.30-ish when Iresumed for home after a truly execrable Up-To-British-Motorway-Services-Standard meal (which did the job, mind you), and already dark. But I did feel fit as a flea, the car was buzzing along nicely, the sky was clear and it wasn’t too cold. I wrapped up well before I really needed to and headed north.