The day begins as if it is a normal day (fools, you have no idea yet). Room service for breakfast because we need to get away by 8:00AM. Being really clever we have already scoped le Metro and know what train to take and where to change so we can get to Gare de Lyon (Gary Lyon as Matty calls it) in plenty of time (mwahahahaha he laughs).

The Reception desk was full when we arrived to check out so, since Matty was still in the Hotel and was the one to do the booking, we didn’t bother to book out. We thought that Matty would pick up any extras and we could cover it later. In any case, as I said to Margie as we were heading down the street, “If we hear running feet and people shouting angrily in French, we will know they aren’t happy with that”. At that point we heard running feet and people shouting in French. Stunned we turned around only to see a couple of lads running past and shouting to each other. You think we laughed? You bet we did.

All appears to go smoothly as we arrive at Gare de Lyon with 30 Minutes to spare and casually wander up to the billet (ticket) machine knowing full well that we have these sussed out. And then…the duck…

The French machines ask if you want English but the programmers have different ideas. If you select English that is the last instruction that actually works. Oh, sure, it appears to work but…everyting goes fine until the bit about validating your credit card. “Sorry, this machine cannot read your card”. Three times on the first machine, three times on the second machine, three times on the third machine and then we go talk to the nice lady in the billet (ticket) office where, apparently they have different card reading equipment and it works first time. However we are now running a little behind time and have only 15 minutes to find our train.

Easy peasy, we are looking for the bleau (blue) platform and part M. Following the signs we managed to go down three flights of stairs when the signs changed and appeared to be for Metro trains, while looking slightly dazed and consulting the signs and our tickets we attract the attention of a passerby who spoke reasonable English. He informed us that we needed to be up two flights of stairs and to the right. After one flight of stairs we saw an attendant who seemed to know what she was doing and asked her, she clearly was French and played the French game of “screw up the tourist” and redirected us back down the flight of stairs – we are now down to 5 minutes and beginning to wonder if we will need to catch the next train (they run every hour so no real problem).

Margie then spotted an M off to the right so we went there, up a flight of stairs (did I tell you they breed stairs in France in their train stations for export?) and lo and besudden we found the TGV. Who knew it would be where the stranger said and not the where the Information person said?

We hurried down the platform, found our carriage, boarded, found our seats and settled in just in time for the announcement that the train was leaving. Phew, wipe the perspiration from the brow and laugh about how close that one was, can’t possibly get any worse now can it? Oh yes it can.

Easy trip (always is once you get on the right train) to Lyon Part Dieu, got off at the correct station (easy when you get the hang of it) and go looking for the car rental office.

Symbols are a wonderful thing aren’t they? Pictures can direct you when nothing else can. We found the rental office and a young lady who spoke passable English. When she asked if I would like the “extra insurance option” I could hardly accept fast enough. She explained that the car was brand new and therfore had no marks on it (oh shit, couldn’t they give me an old bomb with so many marks that a few more wouldn’t be noticed?) but if I noticed any when I looked at it to please let her know (now, where was I most likely to put marks of my own?).

I signed all the documents, took the keys and promptly walked out the wrong door. I even had to unlatch it to manage that trick so I was surprised when they didn’t immediately cancel my rental contract and refuse to unleash me on the French road system. I re-latched the door and wandered off in search of this poor unsuspecting little car.

It looked just like Noddy’s car, a genuinely brand spanking new Lancia Ypsilon. The suitcases fitted easily into the back and we fitted uneasily into the front, not to say the seating wasn’t comfortable or there wasn’t enough room, it was just that the moment of truth had arrived, I now had to drive a Left Hand Drive car in a country which expected that most drivers would stay on the right hand side of the road.

Understand that, for me, the right hand side of the car was way too wide and the left hand side was very narrow. For Margie, there was no brake where there should have been one ( saw her stomp on it many times).

OK, a little familiarisation of the controls, indicator and window wiper controls like the BMW, pedals in same proximity despite being on the wrong side of the car, gear lever wrong location but standard H pattern etc. Adjust seats, mirrors (who put the centre mirror over there?) and then check out the map so we know where we are going (hahahahahahahah).

OK, so, out of the car park and turn right onto Rue Paul Bert, Follow that to the A7 and hang a left and stay on the A7 until Tulle. Yeah, right…

What I actually did was, drove too close to the side of the exit lane and scraped the right side of the car down some bushes, ran over the kerb when I went to put the ticket in the machine to get out, put the ticket in the machine the wrong way round, got confused by what appeared to be a traffic jam where my brain said was the way to go, pulled out of the car park and turned left, following another vehicle and discovered that I was, in fact, driving on the wrong side of the road (pointed out to me by a rather large truck turning into the lane I was in) and then forcing myself in front of the line of traffic waiting patiently at the traffic lights. Brilliant start, it actually took Margie 2 days to realise that I had screwed up so fast, she was still freaked out by me driving through the bushes.

Now I was going in the wrong direction in a city I had never seen before with a whole bunch of insane F1 drivers behind me who thought I wanted to race them so now was the time to guess and guess big. Margie found she couldn’t read the map fast enough to give me guidance, probably because it was in French or the street signs were or she was terrified by how close I managed to get her side to things like parked cars etc. At least the gears were going OK, mostly.

After following a number of cars through lights and turns (to keep me on the correct side of the road) and heading roughly where I thought we needed to be going I found that we were actually on the A7 (how did that happen?). At this point Margie determined that she now had the map under control and I needed to go down that off ramp. This I managed by changing across two lanes, cutting off a small red Citroen which was coming up fast and also wanted to exit there but not actually causing any accidents (I think).

At that point Margie decided that we shouldn’t have left the A7 and I had to get back on it. After a litle excursion we managed to do just that, again by following various cars which appeared to be going in the correct general direction. So far So far. We followed the A7 for a while and then correctly changed to the A47 to St Etienne. All appeared to be going reasonably smoothly, the car was running well, I had it in 5th gear, I was cruising at around 100kph, every other vehicle was doing about 130kph, the speed limit signs said 110kph apparel which we decided was French for approximately. But it was all going reasonably smoothly when Margie decided that it was all too boring and we needed to take the N16 exit to add some excitement to our day.

Which I did smoothly and then decided I needed to consult the map, I should have consulted chicken entrails as they would have been more use. We found ourselves in a small town which really should have known better and got out of our way, by avoiding any direction which pointed to “centre village” we managed to drive up their main street – is this just a French thing, where the signs don’t actually point to where things are? Any way we discovered the only sign in France which is any good for the traveller, “Tourts Directions”. I have no idea what it means but we use it whenever we are lost and we always find out way again. If in doubt, go that way. (It actually means “all directions”).

However, insted of finding our way onto the A89 (which we wanted) we found our way onto the A88 to Le Puy en-Velay which we decided was really where we wanted to go in any case. Everything settled down again to the rhthym of the road, the blood slowly came back to Margies knuckles and she lifted her foot from the brake. We needed to turn off just before Le Puy (shame really, I thought we could use a small break) and get ourselves onto the N102 to get onto the A75 for a short distance before leaving it for the N122 to Aurillac. Gee, I make it sound so easy.

The road that bypasses Le Puy isn’t called the N102 at that point it is something like (don’t quote me I forgot in the confusion) N243. However, there was a sign pointing to Cleremont Ferrand and we knew that was roughly the right directions so we went that way. Cleremont Ferrand is an old friend, when in doubt use Tourt Directions and/or Cleremont Ferrand. As we approached the A89 we passed an unusual sign with flashing lights, “be useful to be able to read French” I said to Margie, “that sign might have told us something”.

It would have as well. What it would have told us is, turn here for the A89 because the access is closed for maintenance. Not controlled access, closed, blocked, access interdit. Around the roundabout and back the way we came to use the deviation for the next 20km. Never did get onto the A89. At the small village of Massian we found our way onto the N122 to Aurillac.

Now French drivers have the attitude that they can all drive better and faster than you. This means that they will, almost, always arrive on your rear bumper just when you are the most confused and least likely to be able to go faster. They won’t honk at you, they will flash their headlights at you and they most certainly will attempt to overtake you at the very first streach of road which appears approximately straight for about 10 metres.

They indicate clearly that they will pull out but never cancel the indicators until they are about 200 metres in front and back on their correct side of the road. This appears to be normal. We saw similar behaviour in Paris and thought it was just a city thing, it seems that it is a French thing. Most of the cars we saw, particularly in the country, are small cars. The biggest would be what we would call medium cars. After a while we realised why, no it isn’t price, it isn’t fuel cost, it is simply that there isn’t room at most houses for a big car and all the parking spaces in the streets assume you have a small car, they are really tight.

On to Aurilliac, relatively straight forward and mostly panic free. Some interesting moments when I attempted to read signs with traffic behind me and ran over kerbs, footpaths, almost sideswiped parked cars, caused a few pedestrians to rethink their road crossing attempts and entered roundabouts while looking for traffic the wrong way and cutting off the traffic I should have been giving way to. This Lancia is a very forgiving little car, you know they’ll do 80kph in first gear? They do complain about that though. From Aurillac it is onward to Argentat and a new best friend sign “Autes Directions”, they didn’t have a “Tourtes Directions” but I figured it had ‘Directions’ in it so it couldn’t be all bad, and it wasn’t because it led us to the sign for Tulle. (This one actually means “Other Directions”).

Now we were in the zone of the directions the Ian had put on the website and we figured we could finally follow some directions in English. Which we did, and they were excellent. We found Forges and turned off to the B&B up the wrong road, came back onto the main road and then promptly missed the correct turn off which meant I had to do a U-turn, across a narrow but reasonably busy main road. Oh, and I had to do it back to front. I managed that and we managed to get into the correct turn off this time.

We walked up the hill to the B&B and were greeted warmly by Ian & Jacqaline. I drove the car up to the door of the B&B, unloaded the cases and Ian kindly drove the car up to the parking area. We settled in for a cold drink and a chat, Ian bookd us into the local resturant for dinner and we walked down the hill for our first genuine country French meal. Michael and Styz are not French but Michaels cooking is excellent. A delightful local Rose to drink, soup du jour was piosson (fish, not poison), seafood main course, Margie had chicken, fromage du peys and icecream (coffee with chocolate covered coffee beans and coconut) Margie had chocolate mousse. Stuffed, ample to drink, wallet lighter by 65euro and back to bed where we slept soundly. Possibly nervous exhaustion helped. I had driven for 6.5 hours and covered approximately 365km.