France. The Final Destination.
These are the continuing voyages of the Flying-Brick ‘Gnome’. Gnominally a car.
Chapter 22: Avoiding Zombies.
We set off mid-afternoon from Bristol, just the two of us and the Gnome. Although this had not been our original intention, we felt that we would do the old ‘every problem is an opportunity’ thing. We would take our time on the return trip and visit a few more castles etc on our way.
Fate had other ideas...
The Gnome-transporter was pre-booked for the wee small hours in the morning. This time had made sense when we had worked-out our trip, as the intention was to drive non-stop. However, with just me driving that was not going to happen. Now the middle-of-the-night crossing presented us with a new problem. The French curfew was now firmly in place and did not allow driving between the hours of 9pm and 6am. We were due to arrive smack in the middle of this. It seemed unlikely that this would mean we would be arrested the moment we left the train. I felt there had to be something in place for such arrivals as the train had apparently not been cancelled.
It seemed unlikely, but this didn’t stop us from being a little concerned.
The English part of the trip went smoothly. Hmm. What am I saying? That bloody road surface nearly drove me nuts. It did go more quickly than anticipated however. One reason was that I’d forgotten how few service stations there are in the UK. My wish to stop halfway was thwarted. Thus we arrived with much time to spare, and we had to go into the admin center to get our tickets sorted.
The complete absence of fellow travellers was somewhat disturbing. That and the incessant rain made us feel past of an apocalyptic disaster movie. This feeling was to get worse on arriving in France.
Upon arrival we were not immediately arrested nor did we drop into a black hole. We simply drove off the train straight onto an empty motorway.
Empty.
Surreal.
Ghostly.
Maybe this wasn’t a movie after all, and at some time in our journey civilisation had come to an end without telling us.
My objective was to stop to sleep in an aire, but I had been warned not to stop too close to Calais, presumably because of zombies. You get a lot of zombies in post-apocalyptic service stations.
We were not totally alone, there was an occasional lorry on the road, but very few. It was almost completely deserted. Lorries were allowed to transit in the curfew, but this was Sunday when normally in France there are only food lorries allowed on the roads.
Spooky.
Driving along those deserted highways took me back to when I was a young kid. We lived on the southern edge of sprawling London, my grandparents lived way up north in Lancashire. The only route to the north was through Central London. Back then, in the middle of the night Central London was empty. If we saw other cars we would flash our lights to say hi. I remember driving through Piccadilly Circus and actually seeing another car! Whoop!
This was similar, only with less cars. In fact, the only other car I saw was the police that came hurtling behind us with blue lights flashing and sirens screaming. Ooh-er, I thought. A delayed arrest? But no, he went speeding past us on to some more important prey. Zombies maybe?
We stopped at a service station, void of life apart from a few sleeping ogres. Sleeping was just possible, but not when the ogres woke at 6am to be on their way. The Gnome however rested peacefully, unconcerned.
After dragging myself awake the next morning, the roads started to fill again and we set off into the throng.
Our goal this day was to get to the Loire Valley again, this time our plan was to stay a couple of nights near the Chateau de Chenonceau.
We arrived just before the gates were due to close, thus not getting a sight of the castle over its walls. We parked up ready to eat drink and be merry, then to collapse into undisturbed sleep.
We were to be disappointed...
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