There is comfort in the kind faces and words of strangers
Monday 27th June 2022
Around 7:30am, after another fitful night, I lost the plot and phoned the RAC. Rodney had to take over the call because I was going round in circles with yet another operator. He had to go through the whole story again with Ryan, who promised to confirm that a car had been booked for first thing on Monday morning. He promised to call back before 10am or we should call the RAC again. At 10:01am we called the RAC again. There is something completely soul destroying about sitting in a hotel room waiting for contact from strangers on the end of a telephone line, so that you can get on with life.
This time Corinna asked us where we were! “In the hotel you put us in, near Grenoble!” She told us to find out the address. We told her to read our now extensive file. She finally said that she could see that a car was ‘being booked’. She promised to phone us back very soon. At 11am we missed a phone call from them while we were heading out of our room and walking down to reception to check out of the hotel. At 11:03am we phoned the RAC and were told that a taxi was on its way to take us to a car rental depot. At 11:05am Corinna did call back to tell us they would pay for the taxi, but we could definitely only take the rental car to Dunkirk, as she couldn’t find one to get us to Calais. She will send us a text when the taxi is on its way. There was no mention of accommodation for tonight. At 11:22am a text message arrived to tell us the taxi will arrive at 11:22am. At 11:31am Corinna rang again to say the taxi had been cancelled because the car rental would be closed for lunch by the time we got there. The taxi had been re-booked for 2pm.
We are continually amazed at how the two-hour lunch break is sacrosanct in France. We’ve started to think about other countries trying to do this. We wondered if surgeons down their instruments if the operation looks like it won’t be finished before midday. Parking meters and car parks don’t charge for the two-hour lunch break, they obviously need the break too. We wondered how bus drivers and train drivers cope with having to work through the French lunch break, or have they tried requesting to stop wherever they are at midday? If it wasn’t so ridiculous, it would be hilarious.
Rodney needed a walk, and we both needed some fresh air, so we walked around a few local blocks and then I slept for thirty minutes on the sofa in reception. Two and a half hours of waiting was at least somewhat shorter than the four days so far. Lunch over, the taxi arrived at 2pm and we had no idea where he was taking us. It turned out to be just 100-metres from our first smelly hotel in Pont de Claix!!!
Europcars then wouldn’t release the car to us because I wasn’t Neroli, and Rodney wasn’t Mr Long. We showed the receptionist the breakdown policy showing all four names. More phone calls while we waited. We finally drove out of the Europcars base at 3:30pm in a scratched Opel hatchback and headed, yet again, back to Reggie; hopefully still sitting at the car yard in Le Bourg de Oisans. After the 50-minute drive it was a relief to find him there, now covered in leaf encrusted cobwebs. This was definitely not the work of our resident spider, hers are much smaller and daintier.
There was a strange feeling of slight relief as we sorted out a few things in Reggie, but thoroughly annoyed that we had had to wait all day to get here. It was now 5pm and we were tired, so we booked ourselves a hotel in the ski resort of Le Alpes d’ Huez, just 20-minutes away from Reggie. The route is famous for often being a stage in the Tour de France and was due to be again in July this year. It was only a 20-minute drive, but it included 21 hairpin bends up a very steep hill !!! And it turned out, the Hotel Eliova Le Chaix was beside the finishing post for the race. But we were a few weeks early for that.
Tuesday 28th June 2022
We woke up after the first good sleep for days and looked out of the windows to a wonderful view of clouds rolling around the surrounding mountains and white cows jogging down the ski slopes. Now that’s a line I never imagined I would write. Breakfast in the restaurant on the fourth floor was a very panoramic affair. As the clouds moved and shifted, we continually wanted to take photos of this happy place. Heading back down to Reggie in Le Bourg de Oisans we chased a cyclist all the way down the 21 hairpin bends. The cyclist won, then Rodney overtook him on the roundabout at the base, which seemed a little cruel at that point.
We returned to Reggie for the final time and spent a couple of hours in a dazed state of disbelief. We bagged up everything that we couldn’t, or didn’t, want to leave there. The fridge was emptied and sadly there was quite a bit that had to be dumped. Not the chocolate and cherries, of course! The fridge was wiped out and defrosted. The toilet and grey-water tanks were emptied. The gas was turned off, power off, blinds closed, etc.. Our sheets were left on the bed and all the towels and tea towels are all on the bathroom floor. It was as if someone had just pulled the plug on our life and we were like deer in the headlights, not sure what exactly to do next.
At 1:15pm we handed the keys over to the garage manager, along with a string of fresh garlic we had bought as a gift for a friend (sorry Lynda). The rental car was loaded with our new reduced life on wheels, and we pointed ourselves north-west to finally leave Le Bourg de Oisans, vowing never to return again. Annoyingly we were heading back towards Grenoble yet again and that road was starting to feel like bad de ja vu, so we tried turning off to avoid Grenoble and find somewhere nice for a picnic lunch, but ended up just down the road from our hotel of the previous three nights in Corenc. Using our knowledge of the area we returned to the Carrefour supermarket and purchased another suitcase rather than travel with eight shopping bags. I’m not sure why we needed to buy the suitcase because I’m sure we could have used the enormous bags under my eyes by now. Rescued olives, cheese and crackers were eaten in the supermarket carpark; no table and chairs for us anymore, and we finally exited Grenoble, vowing never to return again. Ever!!!
We got as far as Aix Le Bains and decided the day had been long enough. We booked an apartment close to town and then tried to find it. It was a tiny place hidden down some very narrow lanes and it’s under the owner’s apartment set in a lovely garden full of fruit trees. It seemed very peaceful and perfect, until a train sped past the back fence! The next problem……the washing machine didn’t exist and we had a pile of clothes in need. So the kitchen sink was put to good use for a handwashing session. The owner, Sebastian wanted to meet us at 7:35pm, so dinner was either going to be very late or not at all, so Rodney drove around Aix until he found a supermarket and came back with soup, which was all that either of us could face by now. Sebastian turned up early at 7:10pm, just as we were trying to heat the soup. He was really nice and on hearing our brief ‘google translate’ of our reason for being there, he disappeared and came back with a chilled bottle of white wine. I would rather have had a washing machine, as advertised, but hey ho, go with the flow….
So our first evening was spent sorting all the small bags into the big bags and working out a system for loading them into the car in a way that we wouldn’t need to drag every bag out of the car into hotels every evening, while France played soccer against Israel on TV. Israel won. Life seems bizarre right now.