Following on from my earlier post, in the end a taxi driven by a lady ‘chauffeuse’ came down from Thenon, a few miles to the north of where I live, to whisk me back to the garage in the Gironde to pick up my car. It was good practise for me chatting with her in French for the whole journey and we got there in under 1 3/4 hours using yet another completely different route, which I thought was pretty good going. On the way I noticed that despite thinking earlier on that it was an excellent flying day, in fact the vis was pants with high humidity and a thick layer of ground-hugging mist everywhere and I’m worried that this will become a feature as the now quite warm sunshine (21 degrees Celsius today) evaporates the considerable volume of water that the ground now contains. And when we arrived at the garage it was, of course, closed for lunch 🙂
My taxi left immediately to return to Thenon and I walked the few hundred metres up the road from the garage to the previously mentioned LeClerc supermarket to grab something for my lunch. I consumed it sitting in the sun outside the garage on some kind of electricity box and just as I finished, the proprietor returned and opened up again. After I’d handed over a cheque for just under 70€ for supplying and fitting the fan belt, we removed my car and trailer, still loaded up, from his workshop and I started the journey home. I didn’t go above 50 mph the whole way because of the load I was carrying and the drive was a pleasure worth enjoying in the warm, sunny weather.
Approaching one small village in the Gironde, I was impressed again by a notable feature of driving in this part of France which results from the more or less universal hatred of ‘les flics’ (the cops). When drivers coming in the opposite direction flash and point to one side of the road or the other, you know that ‘les flics’ are lying in wait somewhere just up the road, so if necessary you should take action accordingly. This didn’t make a lot of difference for me with the speed at which I was travelling, but even so I made sure until I’d spotted and passed the trap set by ‘les flics’ that I followed the speed limits assiduously and was especially careful to make sure that I was doing no more than 50 kmh as I passed each village sign. And sure enough, there they were, a group of four in hi-viz yellow jackets behind a large bush at the side of the road. Not that they seemed too interested in catching errant drivers, and why should they be on a day like today? Everyone was behaving themselves because they’d all been warned by the flashers going in the other direction, and I’m sure ‘les flics’ knew that. But it just gave them the chance to be outside having a laugh with their mates on a lovely spring day, so why would they want to spoil that by having to stop and check drivers? Contrast that with the attitude of the police in the UK who seem hell-bent on crawling out of every bit of woodwork to prosecute motorists for even the most minor motoring infraction. I know which I prefer 😉
I arrived home just after 4.00 pm after an uneventful drive and managed to get all of my furniture unloaded myself and into my living room, where it can stay until I get a hand to move it up into my spare bedroom. I have to say that I’m very pleased with my purchase and think that it actually looks better in my house than in Robert’s, who I bought it off. I then zipped off down to the Intermarché to get a few things which was a relief after the week-end when I had no car and had to carefully eke out things like milk so as not to run out before I could buy some more. I’d have liked to check out Galinat but I didn’t have time because some of the items I had bought were frozen, so that’s for tomorrow. If the vis looks more promising tomorrow, I’ll do that and also see about arranging the new insurance for 56NE and then I’ll be all set to get back up in the air again. And not before time is what I’m thinking.