When Life Throws you a Curve Ball

Our departure date from home to St Jean Pied de Port (start of the Camino) arrived; the last Friday in April. We had contemplated leaving home early Saturday morning and driving all 1,000km in one day, but at the last minute decided to break up our journey by stopping over in Montélimar on Friday night, leaving only a 6/7 hour drive the following day plus a day to chill out before beginning to walk on Monday. This meant we could have a more leisurely journey, arrive more relaxed and take our time. However, nothing could have been further from the truth - best laid plans and all that.

We could have taken a train to St Jean Pied de Port from home (via Paris), but decided to drive for the following reasons:

1) The area is so geared up for walkers embarking on their Camino journey, that you can park long-term and free of charge in St Jean Pied de Port. The only stipulation is that you visit the local Gendarmes, park your car in a specific car park and leave your registration details and contact information with the Police. All very straightforward

2) On completion of the Camino the plan was to take public transport (overnight bus plus train) back to St Jean Pied de Port, pick up the car and drive on into Spain for close to a month’s ‘tour’, staying in different locations working our way down South. Car hire prices currently seem to be through the roof so taking our own vehicle wasn’t a hard decision to make

3) We could keep extra luggage in the car, to take with us on holiday after completing our walk and we wouldn’t have been able to carry all this if we'd taken the train

Fast forward to Friday afternoon and 2½ hours into a 4 hour journey to Montélimar, making good time, traffic not too heavy on the motorway, and the red warning and engine lights both appear. Really? We exited the motorway at the first opportunity given that our dashboard was telling us that the engine oil pressure was low, needed to be checked and that if we continued driving then we were in danger of damaging the engine. The next exit happened to be close to Annecy so after making slow progress through late Friday afternoon town centre traffic, parked and found a large supermarket to buy 5 litres of oil and proceeded to top-up the slightly low level once the engine had cooled down a bit. When we began driving again, all the dashboard lights went out; huge sigh of relief, all was well with the world again and we quickly found ourselves back on track. I even think I started singing. But not for long. 20 minutes later, the dashboard lights flashed on again with the same message. The next motorway exit was a good few kilometres away so to err on the side of caution we pulled in as quickly as we could to an ‘aire’; one of the many things I love about France. An area that isn’t quite a service station but you have space to stretch your legs, sit down in a pleasant wooded area to have a picnic if that’s your thing, or just use the toilets.

By this time it was getting darker, rain clouds had begun to gather and it started to rain heavily. The atmosphere now matched my mood; pretty depressed. We called our insurance company who advised that we needed to call 112 (emergency services in Europe) to be towed off the motorway to a garage first, where they would then organise for us to be repatriated while the car stayed put if it couldn’t be easily fixed there and then. By that I mean repatriated back to Châtel in France, and not a return to the UK!

This possibility depressed me still further but I tried to be positive given that we didn’t know yet what the car’s prognosis was. Having looked forward to, and planned for this walking opportunity for a good number of months now, I couldn’t quite believe that things weren’t going according to out schedule. I'm a bit of a control freak and some may say an ‘over-planner’; I do like to know what’s happening next and don’t always react too well when a proverbial spanner is thrown into the works, especially when travelling.

Half an hour later saw the arrival of our knight in shining armour (disguised as a car mechanic) who I was fully expecting to start the engine, tell us it was a minor problem that he could fix there and then and wave us on our way, wishing us a ‘Buen Camino' 15 minutes later. Not the case. The diagnosis was quick. Not fixabe roadside, the car needed to be taken to a garage for further investigations. At this point he drove the car (with me still in the passenger seat) up the ramp onto the back of his ‘depannage’ truck. That was an experience if nothing else. I fully expected to sit up front in the truck cabin, but this wasn’t to be the case. We had to sit in the car, gripping the sides of our seats, feeling very precious, extremely wobbly and out of control for a 25 minute journey to the garage.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/e77a07_0fe87b97341f4bd3816b680eceb0e292/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Returning home seemed like such a backwards step, so once at the garage we spoke to our insurance company again about taking us to our planned hotel stop in Montélimar instead, which they were happy to organise; it was a much shorter trip than taking us all the way back home so presumably cheaper for them. They then said they could organise a hire car for us for up to 7 days. Great, I thought, expect they then proceeded to mention they might not actually be able to secure a car until Tuesday (being a Bank Holiday weekend of course) and that the car had to be returned to the same point, which didn’t exactly fit the schedule since our journey was an onward one. Things started to get complicated. We sat mulling over our options in a smoky garage reception area on a plastic sofa and for dinner I ate the only things I had with me; a bag of crisps and two carrots.

Following a lot of discussion and flitting to and fro between a number of various options, having to make a decision under pressure, I finally phoned my sister. I consider my sibling to be wiser (as well as older) than me, very cool and level-headed (most of the time) and very reasonable and rationale. She helped cut through all the ifs and buts and advised we get to the hotel rather than go home, then at least we would be making progress and we could sort something out the next day – hire car or public transport. Going home we would only have had the same options and would not have made any developments journey-wise.

40 minutes later we were back on a dark rainy motorway in a taxi headed to our hotel in Montélimar, a captive audience for 2 hours to the taxi driver who insisted playing what sounded like a French Frank Sinatra. Don’t get me wrong, I love to listen to a bit of “New York, New York” and “Strangers in the Night” every once in a while, but not over quite such an extended period of time. We were dropped off safe and sound at our hotel close to midnight, checked in and then started researching options for hire cars and public transport to get us to St Jean Pied de Port the following day. We decided our best next step was the train, so set our alarm early with a plan to order a taxi or Uber when we woke up, to take us to the main train station in Montélimar. Surely nothing could go wrong now?

The alarm sounded bright and early at 5am, we got up, got sorted and started to look at taxi options for the train station. At this point imagine tumbleweed rolling down the road outside our hotel and complete silence with the exception of the noise of crickets. On the map it looked like Montélimar was quite a ‘major’ destination and even though we were 14km north of the station surely they had some sort of taxi provision? Clearly not. Uber threw up two options, both of which turned out to be ‘not available’. We called at least 4 listed taxi companies on google only to reach ansaphones with encouraging voices requesting that we leave a message. I had a sneaking suspicion any messages wouldn’t result in much, not within our tight timescale anyway. I was feeling very pleased with myself as I took the initiative and briskly headed down to the hotel reception to seek further assistance from someone with local knowledge. Now when I say ‘hotel reception’, I really mean a small foyer with a vending machine, microwave and a less than enthusiastic member of staff setting up plastic tables with plastic cutlery and dry, cold packaged breakfast items all ready for his hungry early-rising guests to arrive in the plastic-looking eating area. As you may have gathered it wasn’t the most luxurious of hotels; just a bed for the night and somewhere to lay our heads mid-journey. As I politely asked in my best French what the taxi options would be for someone hoping to reach the train station in the foreseeable future I swear I saw a smirk cross his face. He shrugged his shoulders, let out a little laugh and politely advised me that there were no taxis. I thought I had (surely) misunderstood, so asked for clarification. I had unfortunately understood him perfectly. He even went so far as to advise me that even if you manage to book an Uber, they usually take between 1-2 hours to arrive. Following a little more conversation it transpired that there was a bus stop ‘not too far away’ and he ‘thought’ there 'may' be a bus around 7ish headed into the town centre. I felt no confidence whatsoever that his information was correct but we had nothing else to go on.

5 minutes later we left the hotel with packed rucksacks and suitcases in tow, and headed in the general direction of the main road in search of a bus stop. I felt deflated, particularly when the handle of one of the suitcases we were pulling, the one with the already dodgy wheel, snapped clean off making it very difficult to manoeuvre.

For those of you who have been watching the BBC’s latest season of “Race Across the World” I quickly sympathised with the challenges the competitors face; having to reach a location they have never been to before, by any means possible, with a limited amount of money, short amount of time and levels of patience and frustration pushed to their limits. Emotions were running high. In fact we passed a petrol station en-route to the bus stop (which we still didn’t know even existed) and I came close to walking onto the forecourt to ask anyone and everyone I could find whether they could give us a lift to the station. I also contemplated hitching a ride, which I have never considered before, but I had started to feel quite desperate.

The bus stop suddenly appeared in the distance like an oasis in the desert. We had found the holy grail, our apparently only way out of this place. The timetable advised us the bus into town would arrive at 7:14 am (it was about 6:45am by this stage) so we waited patiently in the pleasant warm early morning sun and I started to feel a little more positive. I did however notice that only 4 buses make a stop here on a Saturday and it was hours between each one. I seriously hoped they were reliable otherwise we would have a pretty long wait; a waste of time that we could ill afford. We had considered walking the 14km to the station, given we’re about to embark on a walking challenge, but dragging handle-less and almost wheel-less luggage behind us wouldn’t have been very practical. However, bang on 7:14am the bus put in an appearance, we hopped on and made our way to the train station where surely nothing else could go amiss?

As we trundled towards Montélimar I had a vague recollection that the town was well-known for something, but couldn’t remember what until we passed a large sign for the Nougat Museum. Arriving at the station we quickly headed to the ticket office which we then discovered was closed. The night before we had spotted a train to Paris and onwards to St Jean Pied de Port, due to leave in around 10 minutes so rushed to purchase our ‘billets’ at the ticket machine. My stomach dropped as the screen advised us in no uncertain terms that any trains to St Jean via Paris on Saturday, Sunday and Monday were fully booked; apparently due to the pesky Bank Holiday weekend - again. We managed to find a member of staff just to verify this and yes, she confirmed that we weren’t going to be able to buy a ticket for that route. However, the machine unhelpfully didn’t advise whether other route options were open to us. We spent the next half an hour searching online for possible train options to reach our planned destination. You may be asking yourself "why don't you just start walking a few days later?" Given how much time our walk would take, we had already planned 95% of our accommodation along the route so changing our itinerary at this stage would have been a massive headache and possibly not doable at such short notice. 230 euros later we finally found a solution which seemed like it would work. That said, we were unable to do the trip all in one day and would only arrive on Sunday afternoon rather than Saturday afternoon. However, it did mean that our planned start on Monday could still go ahead . . . . all being well.

As an aside, if anyone is thinking of setting up their own taxi company, you could do worse than re-locate to Montélimar.