Sunday Blog 244 – 2nd August 2026
As I cling to the last days of my fabulous five weeks in France, I’m eking out the travel blogs, still several weeks behind reality. You can expect more after my return to wintry Perth, as I savour holiday moments like macaroons.
On Friday 10th July when I left Chartres for Bordeaux after my crowded shuffle around the Chartres labyrinth, I had a five hour, two minute drive ahead of me. I’d abandoned the 6 hour 24 minute, no toll option; hang the expense.
In many ways, the cost ($35 toll charge, if you’re interested) was the least of my problems. It was determining comment ca marche, aka how do toll gates actually work. A little bit like this.
The motorway suddenly fans out expansively, and around 10 gates open up, with different symbols above them. It seems I’ve learned nothing from my madcap drive from Toulouse to Biarritz and back last year. My mind scrambled for memories and I somehow thought the tollgate with just one symbol was the one for me. I was squeezed through the narrow toll gate to find out just how poor my memory is.
Being in a right hand drive vehicle means I struggle to pull up close enough to reach the ticket or proffer my credit card for the next whack of tariffs. So the driver assist in my hire car shrieked that I was too close the right hand barrier, and when I had to open the door on the left to reach the incomprehensible toll booth screen, the shrieks from my vehicle only accelerated. The toll machine swallowed my ticket but didn’t open the gate, and the only thing I could do was the reverse of shame out. With four French drivers behind me, all of them had to reverse out to release me from the trap, beeping and gesticulating just as you might expect.
With the sour taste of cortisol bathing my mouth, I tried another gate (the correct one, which shows more payment options. More = better. Not hard.) But of course, I now had no ticket. With another two cars backed up behind me in this new lane, I got out of the car (I’m leaving you to imagine with what cacophony of complaints the car was registering) and I gesticulated helplessly to the car behind me.
“Press the button and call for help.” And that, dear reader, worked like a treat.
I arrived at my Bordeaux region super sympa Airbnb with air-conditioning and pool, realising as I pulled up at the house that there are in fact areas of France which are not beautiful. The accommodation itself was exactly as pictured; blistering wifi, aircon, a lovely backyard pool, full kitchen and plenty of room for one. Situated under the family house, I was a slightly unwelcome guest in this suburban wasteland. There was nowhere, and I mean nowhere local to go. No walks, no cute little bistro, no boulangerie turning out warm baguettes for petit dejeuner. Any errand at all required me to get in the car.
I did try a local walk, but not only was it ugly, I soon spotted two condom wrappers on the meagre path. So depressing to think people had nowhere else to express their furtive passions. My lonely footsteps set the dogs up and down the street to barking as I walked past. A couple of times I wondered if they would leap over the fence to continue their challenge to my promenade face to face. They didn’t but about 500 metres from my pad I saw a black dog jogging the empty streets freely and I hastened my steps towards safety. It didn’t seem the kind of neighbourhood for fur babies; these were guard dogs.
Abandoning any local walks, I drove the thirty minutes to the beautiful city of Bordeaux. I’d shaken off the previous day’s disgrace at toll gate; today I was going to tackle a multi-story car park.
My method for this is to keep on driving (with a bit of shrieking from the driver assist system, because those corners are tight) until I’m almost at the top and there is at least one free bay on one side of me. Just one floor into this mission, I watched as a British tourist attempted to squeeze his large vehicle into a tiny bay, and he scraped the neighbouring car so badly, it lifted up of its wheels. Stricken, he gestured in apology to me, and you can imagine how patient I was, being in no position at all to criticise anyone’s driving manoeuvres. I even lent him pen and paper so he could leave a note on the damaged car with his contact details. Two young Bordeaux boys had filmed the predicament and walked off snickering.
Safely out in the streets of Bordeaux, I had a small taste of this wonderful, vibrant, diverse city. But by 12 o’clock, the pitiless sun had warmed it to an unpleasant temperature which was only going to steadily rise over the next six hours. I found the car park again, paid my ticket, found my car, exited the car park without incident; all minor miracles. I returned to the blistering aircon in my pad in the light industrial area, reflecting that it was the perfect place to get stuck into the writing, and keep up with my work commitments.
Other short Bordeaux expeditions included the sweet town of Libourne, where I’d tried and failed to book an Airbnb for that same week. I tried not to lament the outcome of that snafu, and stay Zen about spending a week in an industrial estate. But most importantly, I got to connect with a friend from University years, and see her beautiful home in France.
This was all just before the wildfires broke out; I was safe in South East France by then, in a fabulous renovated millhouse with the constant hum of the river for company. While the wildfires are now contained, thanks to the selfless work of firefighters, two of whom lost their lives, this traumatic evidence of climate change has surely registered around the world.
But this was a blow still to fall, as I repeated the journey back from Bordeaux to Chartres to return the car. This required not just filling up the tank but also getting air in the tyres. In the true style of travel, all this required several attempts, google Translate, broken French and a lot of gesticulation to get sorted. Triumphant, I drove the short distance from the petrol station to the hire car company, basking in the smug knowledge I hadn’t damaged the car.
But when I drove a little closer I could see the gate of the hire car venue was closed until 2. It was 1.30pm, so I figured I could use that time to organise my luggage, and pulled up just around the corner from the entrance.
In the complicated mental gymnastics that re-adjusting to the closed hire company created, I pulled up, then looked to my left, thought the car next to me was reversing out.
Mais non, it was my car, sliding forward down a very modest slope as I hadn’t applied the handbrake. The bump of the hood against the metal pole fence alerted me that me that was moving; too late I jammed on the handbrake. I got out to assess damage and while minimal, it would have cost me the considerable excess. The driver assist had stayed eerily silent as I slid forward into the railing.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is why I take out no excess insurance when I hire a car. Next week, I’ll share more about Rouen, Paris and the wondrous writing retreat.