The Journey From Hell

LC, Funsize, and I have just returned from a holiday in France. I may well write more about that in due course, but for now I'll start at the beginning, and a truly horrendous outward journey.

The plan was straightforward - I finished work on Friday afternoon, we would quickly pack the car and get on the road by 3:30, drive down to Manchester, spend the night in a Premier Inn, then drive to the airport and fly from Manchester to La Rochelle. From there, we'd get a hire car and drive to our final destination in La Tranche Sur Mer. A nice easy, relaxed journey all around.

Yeah, right.

My last day at work was terrible. I made the horrible mistake of trying something new for the first time, and made a bit of a mess on the network... and a mess I didn't have the required permissions to clear up and where the colleague who did wouldn't start work until after I'd left. Oops. Also of note, I was having problems with a slow puncture on my car, had decided the tyre needed blown up, and in the process of doing this I had actually broken my foot pump! (We have two of these, one in each car.)

So I was really glad to get home, shortly after the intended 2:30. We then proceeded to load LC's car with our luggage (and Funsize), and we were off!

Now, in the course of the morning, LC had had her car windows open, in an attempt to keep the car cool. This was fine until, about halfway along the M8 we decided to put them up, only to find that mine (the passenger) rose about halfway and then stuck. Gah! Now, we have seen this before, and it has always been the case that you turn the car off and on again, and it's fine - we thought it was a power issue. In hindsight, we should have stopped immediately, verified this, and if not sought help at once, but hindsight is a wonderful thing...

Instead, we drove to Tebay, and only there discovered that we had a problem - the window just wouldn't go up.

So we called the AA. (Actually, used this app they've been advertising with the Red Dwarf crew recently - because of course the crew of Red Dwarf were so noted for their steely competence.) They said they were very busy, but would hope to be with us in about an hour. We also got a call from the garage they'd contracted the recovery out to, who reiterated that they'd be about an hour.

Fifty minutes later, that estimate changed - they'd be another hour. And then an hour after that it changed again, again adding an hour. About 9pm, after we'd been at Tebay for almost three hours, I finally called the garage to ask for an updated estimate.

After some minutes on hold, I hung up and called back, and this time was told that they were very sorry but that we'd been taken off their system - the AA had been unhappy with their ETA so had reassigned the case. We'd need to call the AA directly.

So I did, and after fighting with the automated switchboard finally got to speak to an actual person, who then put me on hold for 10 minutes while she checked things out. Eventually she got back to me to say she didn't know why the garage had told me we'd been reassigned but that this was incorrect, that the original garage would now be coming to us, but that their best estimate was another hour. This was now 9:20, and we'd been at Tebay for just over three hours.

(Incidentally, that "you've been reassigned"/"I don't know why you were told that" is code for "somebody screwed up the IT stuff, but neither of us is going to admit it".)

At this point, I told them to forget it - we'd deal with the issue ourselves. And instead started on plan B (or probably plan F or something, as we'd discussed several options in the meantime).

So we drove home.

(I'll note at this point that, fortunately, Funsize had been holding up spectacularly well. Indeed, she'd been doing rather better than either of her parents, being a happy, smiling, laughing girl throughout. It was only when we started the drive home that she started to complain, due to being extremely tired. Then she fell asleep after a few minutes, and didn't wake again until home.)

The drive home was mostly uneventful, except when we found that a section of the motorway was closed. Naturally, we didn't quite trust the signage for the diversion so decided to use the SatNav for backup, only to find that it was determined to take us back onto the motorway, that being by far the quickest route. Still, we did manage to follow the signs without getting lost, so that only cost us twenty minutes.

At 11:30, after ten hours of hard travelling, we finally got back to where we started. We put Funsize to bed, and then started on the next part of our task...

Fortunately, one of the tasks on my "to-do" list has been to clear all the rubbish from our garage, and this was almost complete. So we spent the next hour or so clearing out the last few things (mostly into our garden and utility room), after which we were able to fit LC's car into our garage (actually, for the first time ever). And then we went to bed.

In the morning we dragged ourselves out of bed around 6am, I finished pumping up the tyre on my car, we loaded it with our luggage (and Funsize), we contacted Manchester Airport and reassigned our car park booking to the different car, and we set off again.

This time we made three stops - one early on for a frankly inadequate breakfast (we of course had nothing in the house), one at Gretna to change drivers, and then again just before leaving the M6 to change back. However, that part of the journey was blessedly uneventful, and we reached Manchester Airport around 12:30 for a 3:30 flight.

The last time we were at Manchester Airport was actually seven years ago, coming back from our honeymoon, where we had to struggle through an eight-hour wait. This one wasn't quite as bad... was was still quite bad. Our flight was delayed, and then was delayed again. Then, somehow, it was delayed slightly less - we finally boarded at around 6:20. (During this time, Funsize was bored and tired - she wanted to run around and see things. Can't fault her for that... but neither LC nor I were in the best coping mode.)

Anyway, the flight out was fine, and we actually made up quite a bit of time. Which was nice. Then we went through passport control in France, got our luggage, and went to collect our hire car. At which point I was stung for a 50 Euro charge for collecting the car late - their office 'closed' at 7pm. Grr.

The rest of the journey, fortunately, was relatively painless - we made a quick stop at McDonalds, then drove for an hour or so, and then we were there! We finally arrived at about 10:15, tired, stressed, and generally pissed off. But we had, at least, made it!

#35: "William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Jedi the Last", by Ian Doescher
#36: "Clan of the Cave Bear", by Jean M. Auel (a book from The List)
#37: "Colonel Sun", by Kingsley Amis