Are We Nearly There Yet?

Another early start in the breakfast canteen, but this time there would be no cider afterwards as there was driving to be done. I did feel remarkably good after two days of over-indulgence, but I still needed a fair few fluids to ease the transition back into the full health, and breakfast was quite rushed because we were set to disembark at 7AM. The handful of cars that were present were all joined by their owners in time, and thankfully no-one needed an emergency jump start, so within little more than an hour or so of getting out of bed, I was turning the key and rolling forward. Computer Kate had been told to take me to Toulouse.

It was dark, and I had only driven on the RHS of the road on one previous occasion, and then in a car designed for the purpose. Being in a RHD car on the RHS was going to feel very strange indeed. The first 100 yards threw up a roundabout, which I navigated simply by following the car in front, as Kate had said. Same again at the next corner, a right hander (the easy ones). The next right hander I was on my own, and then...well as it turns out, no more turns at all until Toulouse. Just miles of straight road, the majority of which was motorway/dual carriageway. Easy peasy. And it really was. There were perhaps 3 things of interest: (1) toll booths are not cut out for RHD cars, and there were about 8 or 9. Nope; they're a right royal pain in the arse, and I quickly learned to peel over to the end ones, so that I wouldn't hold people up. At one I had to get out like a muppet to see if the machine was broken, only to be helpfully told "automatique" (cue laughter), ie your car needs a transponder and you cruise through without stopping. Put it down to experience and move on, blushing. (2) Passport control between Spain & France looks like a toll booth plazza, but there are no other obvious defining features that I noticed (gun placements, soldiers, asylum seekers sneaking aound in the undergrowth), and the main difference is that no one stopped as you would at a toll booth - unless you had a transponder. (3) I can't remember now, maybe it'll come back to me.

So I crossed the boarder without really noticing it. In fact the penny really only dropped when I noticed the change in language on the road signs, and I think the first sign I noticed this on was for Lourdes (Catholic education needed for that one perhaps). I stopped twice between the border and Toulouse, once to get some fuel, and once to take some piccies of the Pyrenees. I did this at a motorway services type place, and there were a lot of French families there who looked like they were having picnics. Odd I thought, but then I wondered if they had any way of telling I was English without me opening my mouth. Maybe they could see my invisible tail wagging or something. I eased myself in gently by just getting some water, which involved no more than "thank you and goodbye". The route to Toulouse was around the northern tip of the Pyrenees, so there wasn't much climbing to do and the mountains proper were quite a distance away. Still, they were unmistakable as proper mountains, and they will be visited properly.

Several hours later, and a few reminders from Computer Kate about fixed speed cameras (totally ignored with reckless abandon because I had English plates), and I was approaching Toulouse. Now my accomodation plans had gone awry because the people I was expecting to temporarily move in with, were still on vacation. A problem? Not likely - in steps the French agent who placed me. This guy deserves a page on his own, and could teach the English agents a lot about what looking after your clients is all about. Eric said they would put me up in a hotel, or, he and his fiancee would be pleased if I would come and stay with them for a few days, until the vacation was over and the world returned to normality. Wow. I'd met Eric when I'd come over the previous month for the interview, and I had been very impressed with him then, and we got on very well. Computer Kate had been given Eric's address, and she now had to get me from the city limits, through a French suburb (Tournefeuille), in mid afternoon. Roundabouts. Bloody loads of them. Toulouse is being re-designed a la Milton Keynes apparently. They were very strange at first, but the horror stories about right of way being given to those entering the roundabout, as opposed to those being on it, are thankfully a thing of the past. The French have adopted the rational method, and now the only difference is the direction thing. To be fair, on most occasions the road coaxes you into the right approach to slip naturally onto the roundabout, making it nigh on impossible to go the wrong way. The only remaining obstacle is to ensure you look left and not right to avoid crashing. I felt very pleased with myself as I approached chez Eric, as I hadn't had a single horn honked at me after what felt like zillions of the darn things. Eric came out to meet me and once again repeated his offer of the spare room rather than a hotel, and I gratefully unpacked a few of my bags. The dog greeted me as if I was the last human on Earth in the way that dogs do, while the cat looked at me out of a corner of one eye in the way that cats do, before tucking her head back under her tail. I was already glad I hadn't chosen the hotel before I'd got to my room. I spent an hour or so unpacking and re-configuring my mail settings after connecting to Eric's WiFi, grabbed a shower, and joined Eric and Carine, Eric's fiancee, who had been out when I had arrived, for dinner. We ate Italian pasta, and drank red wine, and I finally felt like I was in France. We spent an hour or so chatting, mainly about my journey over, before I retired for an early night, my first en France.

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