Hitting the road in a test of the bonds that tie us
Add tents, hammocks, gas stoves, camping chairs, fairy lights, folding tables, lilos, rucksacks and a satnav that speaks French in an middle-class English accent, and hit the road, hoping the 14-year-old Fiat will hack the 2000km round trip without adding to the potential explosiveness of an already volatile cargo.
Since our last visit, France, like pizza dough, seems to have been stretched even longer and wider. Never mind. We will stick to the peage because those lovely wide smooth French motorways are always empty and worth the wads of cash they demand every few dozen kilometres. Plus we have lots of in-flight entertainment to keep us engaged on our monster drive, and more importantly, to keep the sole driver — moi — from falling asleep during endless stretches of Brittany, Normandy and the Atlantic Coast.
Except I chose the wrong audio book. In the back, the three kids — his and mine — are rammed into headphones listening to varyingly offensive genres of rap at high volume and shouting for more sugar-based snacks. I have brought Anna Karenina in the hope that a bit of Tolstoy will cancel out the beach trash I will be reading.
The traffic grinds to a halt long before Bordeaux and several million lights years from our destination, just as Anna and Vronsky finally get it together. Why is she still married to that other loser, shouts a voice from the back, but I am too busy trying to prevent the car from overheating on a motorway blocked to a solid crawl with camper vans, motor-homes, four-wheel drives pulling trailers balancing jet skis, and lines of grim-faced lorry drivers. It seems everyone else is heading to the Côte d’Azur too.
By evening I have started to hallucinate cats. At least I assume they were hallucinations. There was no other explanation for the sightings of several well-kept felines at various service stations, on leads like dogs, or perched uneasily on their owners’ shoulders, exuding immense displeasure at such uncatlike carry on. Is this a French thing, or have I lost my mind from 15 hours of motorway driving?
The Ibis Budget in Arles looms like a mirage of the Taj Mahal in the hot Provence night. We are in Arles to see the light in which Van Gogh painted, but all I see is the budget pillow of my budget bed at midnight. Whoever said travel broadens the mind had not factored in French motorway traffic, but our drive has revealed a new equation — heat exhaustion induces docility in teenagers, even those fired up on Skittles and Wu Tang Clan.
