On the Thursday before the Ireland-Belgium game recently, I had to drive a rental car from Paris to Bordeaux, stopping en route somewhere to witness Irish supporters doing 750 words’ worth of colourful things for the next day’s paper.
It would have been a hefty trek – 5½ hours – even if done the easy way. I did not do it the easy way.
Sense of direction
The ordeal began with my decision to rely on route maps, road signs, and the innate sense of direction that all men like to think has never failed us yet.
Yes, the car had GPS.
But I had never used a Satnav while driving and this did not seem the right moment to experiment.
Besides, my starting point was close to the outer périphérique, the Parisian version of the M50. I just had to get on that, then follow general direction signs for the southwest. What could go wrong?
Map
The fact that the route map, printed off in the hotel, ran to several pages, should have been a warning. But two hours later, I was still in Paris, pulled into the latest of several sidings and studying the maps again, while breathing deeply, and composing myself for another plunge into the ninth circle of hell, aka the aforementioned ring-road.
The road had no general direction signs that I could see, only very particular ones, none of which quite corresponded with the map. They always added or subtracted a piece of information that you needed to slow down and think about.
But thinking is against the rules on Paris roads, which are populated by homicidal commuters who, like bees, react angrily when they smell a tourist.
Anyway, wading into the madness one more time, I now began to notice one sign a lot – for Charles de Gaulle airport. This was precisely the opposite direction to the one required. But I was already desperate, so it seemed like a plan. If I reached the airport, I would have escaped the massive gravitational pull of Paris. Then, surely, there would be signs telling me how to avoid the city on the way back.
The plan worked. An hour later, after getting lost only once more, I finally made it onto the road south. Then, still five hours from Bordeaux, I stopped for lunch.
Progress
While stopped, I also belatedly introduced myself to the Satnav, which proved so easy to use I became instantly dependent on it. So after lunch, we went south together along the A10, finally making progress, although now slowed by torrential rain, so heavy as to make the motorway lane markers disappear.
Soon, in any case, it was time to stop again, and find material. A bit reluctantly, I left the motorway again, pulling into Orleans. And by the time I left there, it was already late evening, with 470 kilometres still to go.
Picturesque
On the plus side, the Satnav screen had become a calming presence, as it outlined our path through the countryside ahead. Also calming was the scenery south of Orleans, where we now wound through picturesque towns and villages.
So relaxing was the scenery, in fact, it took me about 40 minutes to wonder why we were passing through towns and villages. This was when I realised that, without telling me, the Satnav had defaulted to an “avoid motorways” setting. Whereupon I gave it new instructions, not all of them polite.
After that, for a while, I consoled myself that we must have gained something in the detour – that we could cut across country somewhere to rejoin the A10. But no. It turns out that it’s not just Irish people who advise, of a given journey, that they wouldn’t start from here if they were you. French Satnavs think like that too.
Espresso
Based on its new orders, ours sent us back along the road we had just come, every centimetre of it, to Orleans, where we reentered the motorway. It was beginning to get dark now and we were still 470km from Bordeaux. I could have cried.
There were no more detours, at least. From then on I stopped only for diesel and an espresso, and then later for another espresso and, sometime after midnight, for a double espresso and a packet of jellies.
When I reached Bordeaux, at 2am, I was buzzing from sugar, caffeine, and stress. It wasn't easy to sleep that night, as you can imagine. But somehow, after circling the périphérique of consciousness for hours, I finally found the right exit, just before dawn.