La Belle France

The Year of Travel Disasters, Part 6

I heard after we were back in the UK that many rental companies closed off the border car-swapping possibility not long after we did ours, presumably so they could charge the extortionate one-way drop-off fees that crossing a border otherwise incurred. Profiteering from customers’ misfortune is always such an attractive trait in a business.

DATE: 22.4.2010
TIME: 14:03:00
TYPE: stored/sent
STATUS: stored SMS
SENT TO: E.
New car from Biarritz took a while to arrange. Just past Bordeaux. Dull motorways, many trucks. Petrol 1.5 euro per l.

DATE: 22.4.2010
TIME: 18:35:00
TYPE: stored/sent
STATUS: stored SMS
SENT TO: E.
In Beaugency, village south of Orleans, about 175 km from Paris. Knackered! Tolls a killer today, about 45 euro total.

Subject: Last leg
From: Rory Ewins
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:47:17 +0100

Hi folks,

We’re in Beaugency, a small town south of Orleans, a good launching point for our drive to Paris this morning. Yesterday went fine, after a shaky start: raining, got stuck in the San Sebastián one-way street system while trying to pick up Jane and William, then got on a wrong street on the way to Biarritz and ended up winding through a French holiday town and along the Corniche. But got there. Picked up our Opel Meriva, a big clunky thing, and drove back to San Sebastián airport in convoy to drop off our Kia—45 mins late, but they didn’t charge us another day.

So then we were off, finally hitting the road about 11.20. A nerve-racking drive for the first couple of hours, wet conditions, 120 km/h, dodging big lorries and car transporters. So many trucks throughout the day! We were on the A10 motorway. I drove until about 2 p.m., then we changed over at a roadside services place just past Bordeaux. Fortunately it had stopped raining by then. Still a dull drive—the scenery was all just fields and motorway, with only a few glimpses of interesting old farm buildings towards the end. Petrol was expensive, €1.50 a litre (compared with diesel at €1.07 in Spain), and we racked up a lot of tolls—about 45 euros in total.

At about 6.45 we left the motorway and headed for Beaugency, just a random name on my Google maps printout but I could see it was on a river (the Loire). A great choice, as it turned out—free parking, hotel room no problem, streets nearly deserted as we walked around just before dusk, and then we found a great restaurant for dinner. Jane and William had some pizzas, I had tournedos de boeuf, we shared half a bottle of Chevency rose (and jus de pomme pour W) and had an elaborate dessert—all delicious. Our first restaurant dinner on the whole trip. (We had a bar/café lunch in San Sebastián yesterday—I had paella—but it wasn’t very good.)

So that’s our summer holiday, then. Off we go. Hope the Eurostar goes smoothly. We’re going to try and do the driving in shifts this evening and get all the way back home, rather than drag it out with another night in a hotel or B&B somewhere. Four hundred miles exactly from Kings Cross to Ed.

25 February 2012 · Travel