Lets face it, one motorway is much like all the others, the signs might be different, the Belgians like their street lights, the French their tolls but essentially they’re all the same, long, straight and boring. By the time we reached the A4/A31 junction at Metz the radio was on, Lor was reading her book, I was half watching the French countryside beyond the glass and Kat was happily humming along to the music. Maybe I was a bit glib with Kris suggesting the journey would be boring, maybe its less so in the minibus but here in the car, well its like watching paint dry – slowly.

I guess I should explain exactly why, when we’re going down to Spain that we’re heading west for Reims. Indeed if you look at a map of France you’d pick a more direct route across the Massif Central but therein lies the problem. Unlike Germany, France is poorly served with motorways and a more direct route would involve either extra miles or significant amounts of minor roads, there’s not even much in the way of useful N roads.

And so our route takes us across to Paris then down the A10 to our overnight stop at Poitiers. Then tomorrow we go down past Bordeaux and Biarritz before crossing over into Spain and our base for a couple of days at San Sebastian. The race is all centred around Pamplona about an hour from the coast, we change hotels on Tuesday.
 

“Wee stop coming up,” Kat advised much sooner than I’d been expecting.
“That’s quick.”
Our driver gave a shrug, “its where your dad said to stop.”

Who am I to argue? Of course even if we’re not going at silly kph we lost the others before we got to Metz. We turned into the Aire de Champagne, Reims and pulled straight around to the car park this time.

“So where are we?” Lor queried as we walked across the windswept apron towards the facilities.
“Aire de Champagne,” I supplied, “not far from Reims.”
“As in the drink?”
“Guess so.”

To be honest I hadn’t given it a thought, there’s a Bakewell for Bakewell tart, a Yorkshire for Yorkshire pudding so I guess its not too much of a stretch for fizzy wine to actually come from somewhere called Champagne. We did the toilet thing and hit the shop for in car supplies, we were still perusing the ‘regional’ goods when the rest of Apollinaris / Schauff arrived.
 

“Where are we gonna eat?” I asked Dad.
“I’d like for us to get past Paris, there’s some fruit in the bus if you can’t last that long.”
“How long is long?”
“Maybe three hours.”
“Three hours? that’s like two o’clock!” I exclaimed.
“Sorry kiddo.”

I’m not exactly a big fruit fan but a bag of Gummi bears, a packet of biscuits and a bottle of Liptons™ is gonna be stretched to keep three of us fed for three hours.

“Lor, fruit!” I called out before setting off back towards the services.
“Where you going Gab?” Dad called after me.
“Food!”
 

By the time I returned there was only the BMW left in the car park with Kat and Laura leaning against it.

“You bought the place up?” Kat suggested.
“Hardly, the others gone?”
“Well spotted detective, five minutes ago.”
“But we have food,” I mentioned shaking the bag of comestibles in the air.
“Come on then, don’t want to get too far behind,” Kat opined.
“So what did you get?” Lor enquired as we rejoined the L’Autoroute de L’Est going, er, west.

I reached into the bag and withdrew a baguette, “sandwiches, crisps,” I announced “and more wet.”
 

Reims was behind us before Kat looked over, “so what’s in the sandwiches?”
“Dunno, I just grabbed them off the shelf.”
“Well look then,” she suggested.
I dug into the bag, “Fromage et Jambon, er Poulet Cruditès and Oeuf Mayonnaise.”
“At least there’s no snails or frog legs,” Kat advised.
“What do you want Lor, cheese and ham, chicken salad or egg mayo?”
“Chicken?” she proposed.
I passed the sandwich back, “Kat?”
“Split?”
“Whatever,” I agreed, “you want this opening?” I went on, brandishing a bottle of water.

And so the three of us tucked into our impromptu picnic in the outside lane of the Paris bound motorway.
 

“TGV!” I enthused a bit further towards the capital.
“Where?” Lor asked from behind.
I pointed out across the fields, “its just going past those trees.”
“Think the line follows the motorway most of the way to Paris,” Kat suggested.
“We could’ve come by train,” Lor opined.
“Probably costs more than flying on those things,” I offered as we watched the train speeding through the French countryside towards gay Parree.
“Like the ICE,” Kat added.
“Yeah, one day,” I sighed.
 

The motorway got busier with each kilometre closer to Paris, we caught the van, bus, camper convoy much further along than I had expected but I think Kat was past the whole ‘big fast car’ thing now so we were travelling at a lower velocity ourselves. One hour passed, but as the second hour approached we were moving much slower in a sea of city bound traffic.

“Chips?” I enquired offering the bag of potato crisps to my fellow travellers.
“Cheers,” Kat allowed taking a handful, “this’ll put a dent in the schedule.”
“Yeah, bet Dad wasn’t expecting this lot.”
 

We shuffled along, the fields replaced by increasing numbers of industrial buildings and apartment blocks.

“There’s a lot of junctions,” Lor mentioned.
“No kidding,” I agreed, “we have to turn anywhere?”
“Your dad said we go past Orly, we want the A10?” Kat suggested.
“Orly airport?” Laura put in.
“Yeah I think so,” I replied, “why?”
“I think we should’ve taken that last junction.”
“Bugger!” Kat stated with a frustrated slap on the steering wheel.
“Can’t we just turn around at the next junction?”
“Possibly,” Pinger allowed.

Which would’ve been fine if the next junction hadn’t been shut.
 

“Right here, turn, turn!” I implored as we came to the next interchange.
“Here?” Kat asked.
“Yeah,” I replied in a panic.

If you’ve been to Paris you’ll know how everyone drives in Paris, if you haven’t been, use public transport when you do! The end of the L’Autoroute de L’Est at Bercy has roads going every which way, if you know where you want to go its actually quite simple, if you don’t like us its a harrowing series of late turns, near misses and blue language from the driver.

“I thought we were going back?” Lor queried.
“This one’s signed for the airport,” I called back.
“I hope the right one,” Kat added.
“There’s more than one?”
“Is that the Seine?” Lor put in.
I looked out of the window, “guess so.”

Not that you could actually see very much but I guess the city centre must be up that way somewhere.
 

We followed the airport signs and a couple of turns and tunnels then much to our relief there was a sign suggesting we were on the Bordeaux road. Amazingly we’d got ourselves onto the L’Autoroute du Soleile which we swapped for L’Aquitaine shortly after the airport turn which I guess we should’ve come along. I reckon our excursion into Paris cost us a good thirty minutes not that the others did much better as we found ourselves a few cars behind them as the fields started to return alongside the autoroute.

Kat held station, we don’t want to get lost again, and true to Dad’s prediction we pulled into the services just turned two.
 

“How did you get behind us?” Mand asked when we joined the camper crew to follow the rest towards the restaurant.
“Thought we’d have a look at Paris.”
“You went into Paris?”
“It wasn’t exactly planned,” Lor told her.
“We missed a turn,” I admitted.
 

“So how much further today?” I asked picking at my miserable Croque-Monsieur.
Dad ran the calculation through his head, “about three fifty I think, we’ll have a comfort stop at Tours then push through to Poitiers.”
“Its not as far tomorrow is it?”
“No and we don’t have to get around Paris either.”
“That was a nightmare,” I stated.
“Kat said you did a good job navigating.”
“More by luck than judgement!”
“We might’ve been better going that way, there was an accident on the Périphérique just as it crosses the river.”
“Is there another way we can go on the way back?”
“I’ll look during the week, it’ll be chronic on a Monday morning that's for sure.”
“Ready Dave?” Caro queried returning from the ablutions.
 

Back out on the A10 Kat returned to her lead foot ways and we covered the hundred twenty or so kilometres to Orleans in under an hour and much the same to the Tours services.

“We need fuel,” Kat advised as we slowed on the off ramp.
“’kay, anyone want anything in the shop?”
“I’ll come,” Lor stated, “I need a wee anyhow.”
“You could get me a coffee?” Kat suggested.
“Sure,” I agreed releasing my seatbelt.
 

This time though we weren’t waiting for the others, we were driving point so that we can get us all checked in before they get to Poitiers. So after doing the necessaries then topping up with coffee we headed back out onto the motorway without seeing the others. It was only another hour’s drive down to our destination and once we’d negotiated a couple of convoluted junctions we found our accommodation, not a Formule 1 but a step up, well sort of, its an Express in the middle of an industrial estate.

So okay, we’ve got here, fine, we’ve got all the room keys but Kat’s the only one with any luggage. Oh well, I decided to get a shower anyhow, at least I won’t be fighting with Mand when they get here.
 

‘Brrrrnnnng, bring, Brrrrnnnng, bring.’

I found my Handy and took the call.

“Where are you kiddo?”
“Hi Dad, in my room, why? Where are you?”
“Outside, I’ve been trying to get through to Kat, she with you?”
“She muttered something about a lie down, I’ve got the key cards though.”
“That’s my girl,” Dad sighed.
“Let me get some clothes on and I’ll meet you in reception in like...”
“Five minutes, I know,” he chuckled.
 

Maddy Bell © 20.03.2018