Rain and Early Morning Showers
We awake in a field where we camped just outside the French port looking out into the mist trying to see if in the dark the night before we’ve camped with livestock. Safe from bulls we pack up our trusty tent and get on the road. I say trusty, it was the most expensive we could afford from a Keynsham garden centre (i.e. the cheapest) and a basic one layer nylon affair which lost it’s shape between being put up and us going to sleep. A large bit of plastic sheeting saved us from the rain. Just. So not much good for rain (leaked, condensation) or sun (miniature version of the ozone layer).
Our trusty bit of flappy nylon
Anyways on the road again and the sun is beating down on us so all is good. We reach Paris uneventfully with a very sweet French guy taking pity on us and buying us lunch in a service station. Now French service station fayre is much better than Little Chef (especially as it was in the early 1980’s) and our driver’s generosity was much appreciated. This was to be repeated by others and we grew to understand that the supposed hatred of the English by the French, as imparted by the Daily Express, was much exaggerated. Our hero also finds a free truckers map for us which spans from European Russia to Portugal from Finland to Gibralta. Not too detailed but at least tells us the main roads we need to travel down. Without many francs to our names we hardly paint Paris red instead kipping in a park once dark. Much safer than our last night in England’s capital and than last summer when we slept on the Champs Elysees to be rudely woken by French paramilitary submachine gun butts but that's another summer's story. Next morning Metro out to the road south where the fun begins. Or doesn’t. Now two blokes hitching is not ideal in any circumstances but a slim boy in Panama hat swigging cheap vin de park bench with werewolf in tow smoking Galloise non filter tip was enough to put anyone off at a hundred yards, or metres, unless they were looking to take a major role in a Hunter S Thomson novel. Car after car pass us usually full of parents and kids on holiday but eventually we get lifts from the short sighted, kind hearted or maniacal that babbled in French to us with my O Level ungraded grasp of Oui and Non punctuating the monologues. After sleeping in another field we reach Lyon, follow the Rhone and get onto the Autoroute du Soleil in time to catch a day of rain. Oh the irony. Being soaked and wearing flourescent rain ponchos didn’t help the speed of getting lifts but to be fair once we did get a lift it was usually a long way.
We discovered that no self respecting French person would give a
lift to a perverse Jacques Tati look-a-like
By that night we reach the outskirts of Avignon and meeting up with hitchers from various European countries we all decide that as it’s dark we’ll forage for local vin baguettes et fromage and as it’s stopped raining eat together in the middle of the large roundabout we’ve met at. It was about half the size of a football pitch with paths crossing it so a great place to chill out and communicate by sign language and shared bottles. I think Simon and I treated ourselves to sardines in oil. Yum. We all find bushes to sleep under and with safety in numbers and feeling part of the wider European Community we fall asleep to dream of the Moroccan sun. Unfortunately my dream goes pear shaped when it starts raining - in Maroc? Surely not... Not enjoying this one bit I struggle awake to find Simon in his underpants gathering up his sleeping bag and clothes. More bloody rain I exclaim to which he retorts that it’s not rain it’s sprinklers. Yep, watering the plants in the middle of the roundabout. Once in jeans and shirts we see the funny side in hitch hikers hopping about the sprinklers semi clad and swearing in a multitude of languages - mainly of Saxon origin by the sound of it. We then realise that there’s lots of dry respectable looking folk also laughing along with us and find out that this happens every morning at 7am and the locals come down to enjoy a little light relief before going to work. How we laughed even more when we found that out. Hmm. Anyway, sod them we’re off to somewhere sunny. Eventually, as there was then a swarm of soggy hitchers hitting the highway south.
Early morning showers for the dirty hitcher community
Sultry or just plain moody?