Your journey is not your destination

1,000 miles drive from the north of the UK to Provence. What could go wrong? Beaucoup — it would seem.

We arrived in Marseille after a long and sweaty drive but not before we had a whole raft of altercations along the autoroute du soleil...

Earlier, in a Formica-table topped restaurant in Calais, we watched stunned as a French family stole our used ‘all you can eat’ buffet plates and filled them up for themselves.

As we left the restaurant, I took my daughter’s plate with a half-finished Nutella pancake and slammed it down in front of the woman who had taken our plates.

“Here’s your dessert,” I said.

Then we legged-it out before she could batter me.

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A brief stop off in Dardilly, Lyon, and Aubagne for Starbucks and a service-station-picnic (pictured below).

Some miles into the journey and the car dashboard lit up like Blackpool lights with engine and braking system warnings aplenty.

We waited forty minutes for a recovery technician who was easily 15 years old.

With our tyres strapped to the rescue vehicle, there were some moments I think we feared for our lives.

The hulking great tow-truck tear-arsed about impossibly skinny dirt tracks playing ‘Chicken’ with oncoming tractors and cars.

After a rollercoaster of a journey, we pulled (jerkily) into a small one-dog town surrounded by sunflower fields.

Thierry, the garage owner, claimed la chaleur (heat) had simply caused the car to go fou (crazy).

Crazy isn’t free, it seems, and some €€s later we were on the road again. The car’s mental health reset.

Eventually arriving dog-tired, in Le Redon, a wild-eyed woman blocked the road with her freshly crashed car (speeding/on her phone).

She banged on our car with her fist, screeching that we could “conduire cinq voitures là-bas!” (“You could five cars through that space!”) as we tried to inch past her smashed up vehicle and the chaotic scene.

Chill your beans

My confrontational French was frustratingly insufficient for me to give her 'what-for,' so I made 'blah blah blah' gestures with my hands and invited her (in English) to chill her beans.

From the back of our car, the kids laughed, and I made a mental note to work on improving my French swears and angry retorts for next time.

Because, this is me and there WILL be a next time.

In Marseille, we arrived late into the evening. The villa in darkness smelling of old paper and warm wooden beams. Familiar.

Unpacking the jam-packed car (a month’s worth of possessions), we were enthusiastically welcomed by the entire mosquito population of Le Redon.

À demain (next day)

This morning, I woke up to the sound of early cigales in the cypress trees, angry red bumps on the backs of my legs (I was too tired to fight off the mosquitoes in the night 🦟).

The Provençal morning sun leaking through the shutters in slices across the room.

I opened the window and got that gorgeous first whiff of the day (you know the one…).

Like childbirth, the pain of the journey was forgotten.

And so it begins, five weeks of summer in Provence.

À bientôt à tous ✌🏼

Flip flops a-go-go!