3rd May 2000 Paris to Avignon
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2000
1
7
81
Trip End
Aug 09, 2000
Paris to Avignon,
France
Monday, February 17, 2003
And then came Wednesday morning!!!! Pick up the car and drive out of Paris!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Pugeot depot is on the NW outskirts of the city centre, and the A6, our motorway to the south of France is in the SE. Left hand drive manual-top of the line 306 diesel. I repeat, left-hand drive, manual. We literally drove out of the depot, with a map of Paris, marked in texta, manoeuvred to the Gas Station, filled up, and took the wrong turn at the first roundabout. Twenty minutes later, we returned to the scene of the crime, got back on track, and never took another wrong turn. Ches claims that it was at considerable cost. She had tense shoulders for the next forty-eight hours, as we exited Paris, and took to the Motorway, like ducks to water. That is until we witnessed a car on its roof in the middle of the motorway many hours later and south of Lyon. Travelled most of the way at 140-150kmph and encouraged Ches to enjoy the scenery, but she was too concerned with missing our way. Anyway, with several wayside stops to revive the driver, we made our way as far south as Avignon, where we decided to stop for the night, it now being about 7.00-not bad considering we didn't clear Paris till after mid-day. Great views of the mountains to our left and the odd castle perched on hill tops were the highlights of the trip-that and the sheer speed of travel-at 140kmph I was still passed by numerous Beamers and Mercs, not to mention tiny Renaults and Pugeots. Which reminds me, local cars must account for 90% of cars on the road. Only saw 2 Hondas in a week in France, few other Japanese cars at all, and not even a great many German or Scandinavian makes.
One of the traps in travelling without a detailed road map and/or a travel guide, is that you just don't have an understanding of the local areas. As an example, we took the Avignon off ramp, and immediately found ourselves in a semi-industrial area, which we took to be the outskirts of a small town-we searched but couldn't find it, and were later told, there wasn't one. There is Avignon itself, a medieval walled city, small and enclosed by its walls and the Rhone River, several old but small villages, and the whole lot surrounded by just a massive sprawl of industry and residential areas, and motorways dividing the whole lot. We found a very cheep and very basic room for the night, as opposed to the quoted 560ff for a room at the Novotel up the road. We foolishly accepted a hand drawn map of how to drive from the hotel into both Avignon and the closest little village, with no more than three turns shown on the map. No mention of two motorways between them, and us or that they were 2km and 5 km away. Panic set in when we realised we were on divided one way roads and no idea how to retrace our steps. Half an hour later, with absolutely no adrenalins left in our system, and me being my usual unforgiving self and making Cheryl's life a misery, we found ourselves back at the hotel. The worst of it was, while we were lost, with all our luggage at the hotel, we had no idea of the name of the hotel or address. Even without a language barrier, we would have been hard pressed to describe where it was. We took an oath, never again to venture away from our hotel without a detailed official map and/or a very long piece of string or a bag of breadcrumbs laced with strychnine. But is was worth it!!!!!
