My childhood adventure from Manchester to Spain 1969. Анна Томкинс
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signs for ‘Centre Ville’ or town centre if you like. Once in the town centre another sign, ‘Toutes Directions’ led us back out again. A turn off the main road indicated ‘Orleans’. We were back on track, but on a minor road not a main route.
This was a single lane in each direction. The road had a pronounced camber with drainage ditches running along each side. Tall poplar trees flanked the route, providing a welcome shade from the afternoon sun.
It was easy to imagine it packed with refugees fleeing ahead of the advancing German troops just thirty years before. Now the road was quiet. The only people blitzkrieging their way along it were us. Dad was trying to make up lost time. We were going through sleepy villages and hamlets so fast, that it is a wonder they didn’t scramble the French airforce to intercept. For the rest of the holiday, my little sister was convinced that all the sheep and cows were about thirty feet long and blurred in shape.
It was late afternoon when we reached Orleans and found the “Toutes Directions” signs. All the car windows were open but it was still stifling hot inside, as we crawled along the busy rush hour streets of the city. At one point the road ran alongside a broad river spanned by several bridges. We stopped at a set of red traffic lights. On our left stood a charming pavement café, where a family of four were enjoying delicious looking ice cream sundaes. At another table an elderly chap in a grey flannel suit was reading a newspaper, sipping alternately between his coffee and a large brandy.
“Lord I would murder for one of those ice creams,” Mum voiced aloud what the rest of us were also thinking.
“Know what you mean love” agreed Dad. “Never mind. With a bit of luck this time tomorrow we will be on a beach in Spain sipping pina colada.”
I had no idea what a pina colada was, but I was very much looking forward to finding out.
The lights changed to green and our car followed the general flow of traffic onto a bridge and across the river. Progress out of Orleans was proving to be very slow going. It’s a big place and everybody around was heading home at the same time. After about forty-five minutes we were again running parallel with the river and stopped at another set of traffic lights. They certainly went in for charming riverside pavement cafes in this place.
Wait a minute – isn’t that the same elderly chap in the flannel suit? So it was. The family had gone. By now the man had finished his newspaper and was reclining in his chair, head back and eyes closed. A fresh brandy in his hand, he was enjoying the last of the afternoon sun on his face.
Judging from the steam coming out of our driver’s ears and the groan of dismay from the front passenger seat, I was not the only one to have noticed.
“I think we should carry straight on past the lights and keep the river on our left,” suggested mother with little conviction. “What a great idea,” said the driver sarcastically.
“Eventually the river will reach the Atlantic. Then we can hug the coastline down past Portugal, round the Straits of Gibraltar, up the Mediterranean and approach the campsite from the south. Hey! That saves us getting lost in Barcelona! Brilliant”
He was losing his sense of humour, I could tell. I was already dreading the rest of the trip.
“What do you think kids? Anybody in the back know the Portuguese for thirty liters of petrol please?”
He ate some more caffeine tablets, wiped his tired eyes with a wet wipe and sullenly drove on, keeping the river on our left.
More by good luck than good judgement we found the way out of Orleans and rediscovered the auto route south.
Once again we were low on petrol, but we insisted dad keep driving until we reached a Total filling station so we could add to our collection of miniature plastic busts of famous French people that we had never heard of. The lady who took our money handed me a small plastic Voltaire. I showed her our expanding haul of plastic busts to indicate that we already had a Voltaire. She kindly exchanged it for a Debussy and threw in a Jules Verne for good measure. The day wasn’t going so badly after all.
Evening turned to night. In the back of the car we dozed fitfully as dad drove on, ever closer to the Spanish border. By now dad had been driving for over twenty-four hours, much of it on the opposite side of the road to what he was used to. It was a stressful journey, particularly for dad.
Despite having consumed the caffeine equivalent to a couple of Starbucks Coffee Houses, his head was starting to nod and he was struggling to maintain concentration.
“Its no use love,” he admitted to mum. “I’m going to have to pull over and rest for half an hour.”
Ever since his time in the army he has been able to catnap for half an hour, then wake up refreshed and ready to go. A very useful knack if you have it.
At the next services we picked up some more fuel, thirty liters to be exact, and a plastic Chopin. To one side of the service area was a large car park with a picnic area. We parked up in a quiet corner. Mum woke us all and pulled us from the car so dad could recline his seat and stretch out a little.
We were somewhere in the Massif Central. The elevation made the night air cold, so we pulled on our coats. Tired and irritable, the Quasimodo children followed their mother to a nearby wooden picnic table, where she distributed soft drinks and the last of the sandwiches she had prepared before we left Manchester.
All four of us were fussy eaters. Mother always indulged us by making a pile of sandwiches to cater to our individual tastes. She need not have bothered this time. By now the sandwiches were so stale that they were not so much food, but more like a new form of composite building material. After a few half-hearted bites I left mine on a wall for the birds. Really it was not an act of kindness. Any poor bird that managed to eat some of my leftovers would probably find itself too heavy to take off for a week. We spent a very boring hour sat around the picnic table, before dad at last emerged from his chrysalis like state in the car. Fresh as a daisy, just as predicted.
“Let’s go guys. With a bit of luck we could be on the beach by tea time,” he assured us.
By the time dawn had risen we were within an hour of the Spanish border. Time for another fuel stop. No Total station around this time, so we had to make do with patronising an Elf station and collecting some glassware instead.
We had reached a large service area with an out of town shopping mall. Mother had noted our lack of enthusiasm for last night’s sandwiches and suggested we visit the hypermarket for some fresh supplies.
I love shopping in hypermarkets abroad. Okay, it may take two hours to walk round the place, and sometimes even longer to negotiate the check out queue. And the owners should face criminal prosecution for the tacky background music [Beatles cover versions played on a Hammond organ – you know the stuff I mean]. At least you can just pick up the products you want without having to overcome a language barrier or tote around an English to whatever-language dictionary. Having to deal with completely disinterested shop assistants in your own language is bad enough, but abroad? You’ll see what I am getting at later.
So, thirty litres of petrol heavier, we turned out of the fuel area and towards the central car park serving the mall. Trucks and buses to the left, cars to the right.
“ Bill STOP! Screamed mum. Just for a change he didn’t ask why, he stood on the brakes. The car came to an abrupt halt mere inches away from an overhead barrier with a sign on it indicating <maximum vehicle height 2 metres>.
Why do they do that? I mean what bloody difference does it make how tall your car is. All you want is a convenient place to park so you don’t have to carry your shopping half way round the continent. It’s not like you’re at the front of a drive in movie theatre and nobody behind can see the screen. It’s just a sodding car park.
Even the local fast food burger place has an overhead barrier on the car park. Why for God’s sake? Is it to keep out those riffraff truck drivers? Hardly. Those riffraff truck drivers have got more sense.
When truck drivers are hungry they stop at places that sell real food cooked by people that actually know how to cook, and not a slice of gherkin in sight.
They stop at places