Troyes, Lyon and Onwards.

Another one from the achives …Yes, it’s true, we’re finally back at Le Tunnel, bound for foreign parts. About time too. That’s not just our frustrated yearning to go travelling again it’s our friends desperate to see the back of us after nine months back in England

Marigold Says…

Off we go again on our travels. Late decision governed by expensive annual travel insurance which needed using up. G said I have done my packing – in what looked like a very small zipped up bag. Good luck with that I thought. I can’t stand seeing his pants drying in the shower, alongside mine. All it does is show my underclothes are larger than his.

Must say am worried about what we will be coming back to. Will everybody be encased in furs with a water bottle under a Cossack hat singing Food Glorious Food whilst eating potato peelings and a faggot? G said we can sit in the car in the drive with the heater on, as long as we can get petrol. Maybe our bodies will grow hair like cavemen. G said he quite likes the smell of Chappie if needed.

So, Liz Truss is going to be the new Prime Minister. What a weird surname, wonder if it originated from a medical ancestor who was an expert in such things as surgical appliances. Have also heard we may have to queue at tunnel for 2 hours. Lots of sandwiches will be required, fruit cake and tins of vimto. We usually leave all this food behind in the fridge and blame each other.

I have brushed up on my French. I only need to know four phases, all of them are about food and then packed the phrase book in G’s bag, well hidden. He won’t bother with it either as he claims to speak French like a native. Not a native of France though.

Called into Waitrose as a last stop expecting to see the starving emptying the shelves in the food crisis. Well, everybody seemed very calm and collected. All we wanted were munchables and crunchables. G can’t travel unless he has some sort of chewy jellies to sustain him.

Now we have a decent car, chocolate is a definite no no after many accidents involving crumbs. Biscuits come under the same category. These are the car rules and must be obeyed, except by me. While G is distracted I can cram a whole biscuit in my mouth and then suck it until it goes soft whilst looking innocently out of the window. This admission will put me in peril.

Tunnel was a doddle, I even remembered to change the time on my phone. I don’t wear a watch, ever, so that was one less thing to do. International travel is easy peasy.

We stopped in Troyes and had even booked a hotel in advance. We are rarely so organised and it soon turned out to have been a mistake.

‘This is like a cell,’ I said when we got into our room. G assured me it was luxurious accommodation as he had read all about it on their website. Hmm!

We had to park the car on the roof of a multi story car park which was derelict and covered in graffiti. G wasn’t impressed and said he would remove the car wheels and take them into the room so the car couldn’t be stolen.

‘It will save the car thieves the trouble,’ he said. When we found three other U.K. registered cars already there he was more cheerful as the odds were better now.

We went for a walk around the town. The girl on Reception offered me a street map. I didn’t take it as maps and me don’t get on at all well.

Troyes is brill, the buildings are older than Jesus. We found a narrow alley, famous for having been a haunt for cats. A girl with purple hair and wearing a pink string vest and not much else told me there used to be hundreds of cats but that was because the area was overrun with rats. G didn’t seem interested in either rats or cats as the string vest was much more interesting.

We tried to order a meal at a restaurant. It had lots of tables outside and most were full of students so it was lively. In my very best French I asked for a menu, which I know is called a ‘carte,’ and the waiter said, in English, ‘I shall bring it immediately.’ So much for my impersonating a chic Frenchwoman.

The carte didn’t arrive, nobody else came either and after half an hour of people watching G got all decisive and said, ‘we will take our custom elsewhere.’

We only went next door and a lovely waitress came running over and took our drinks order saying she would be back with a carte. Twenty minutes later, no carte, no drinks so we gave up, went back to the hotel and ate some of G’s birthday treats. He said his birthday meal could wait until tomorrow. Or the next day.

We moved on to Lyon which is very big and very lively. We loved the murals and the boats on the Rhone. The hotel we found was a big improvement as well. The only prob was a group of Brits had booked in there, they were doing a car rally. They weren’t particularly loud and they weren’t aggressive, just boring. Even worse they noticed we were reading books in English and kept talking to us.

We were soon in the company of some very bossy people, one who turned to me in a one-up-man-ship way and said ‘do you have a log burner’.

I said ‘yes, of course’, although in truth it is a fake electric one with a very unrealistic light supposedly looking like glowing embers. Wouldn’t fool anyone. Didn’t tell him that.

He then went on some boring diatribe about burning oak logs and how long they take to dry.

G butted in and said, ‘we usually burn sandalwood or ebony as it’s so long lasting.’ I know those are hugely expensive woods and even billionaires wouldn’t have a sandalwood tree chopped down for firewood so the man gave G a funny look and ignored him. Bored with no reaction, G wandered off and left me with the log burning expert.

The next story went on so long I wondered how long it was going to be before he dried up. It took 20 minutes and I didn’t notice him taking a breath at any time. I love travelling. It broadens the mind, so they say. Haven’t noticed that effect yet.

I’m thinking of putting G in a home soon. This one looks as if it will be quite posh. He’ll still need to drive me around though, but I am sure they allow day release

Marigold looking tres chic.

G looking far from chic in his ‘travelling clothes.’ Lots of zipped pockets.

Most of Troyes is like this.

G Says…

We’re finally off travelling again. It’s been far too long. No set plans, but we intend to head to The Luberon, our favourite part of Provence, and after that will go wherever we decide on the day. Yes, it’s not so much a rubbish system, it’s not a system at all, but we like wandering. Aimless wandering, even with no destination in mind is our kind of travelling. It’s a serendipitous system and that’s the best kind.

We both loved Troyes. It has the ultimate mediaeval city centre, unspoilt in the main, apart from the odd souvenir shop, and strolling around on a perfect summer evening there can be few better experiences. Troyes is the capital of the Champagne Region and the town centre, supposedly, forms the shape of a champagne cork. Lacking access to a drone I was unable to verify this claim.

The half timbered buildings have faded red, yellow and white backgrounds and make a mockery of any ‘shabby chic’ facsimiles. There are many interconnecting alleys, one in particular, the Ruelle des Chats, is decidedly narrow at ground level and the buildings on either side slope inwards so markedly as to be almost touching at roof level. In the days when vast numbers of cats inhabited the area this alley was perfectly suited to any feline adventurers who needed a short cut between buildings.

Like most of the roads this alley is paved with cobblestones with a central channel for the flow of water. A wall plaque informed us the alley was reconstructed after the Great Fire of 1524. Oh, recently renovated then!

Next day we moved on to Lyon. Usually, I try not to go into big cities by car as Marigold occasionally gets agitated in traffic. I suspect it’s a legacy of us driving through Fez and Marrakesh where there are no ‘driving rules’ whatsoever. Lyon didn’t disappoint. The mighty River Rhne divides the centre and we found so much to enjoy.

The city dates back to 43 BC and is best known in modern times for its food. Paul Bocuse, the guiding spirit behind the Nouvelle Cuisine revolution was born in Lyon and Burgundy is regarded as the spiritual home of French gastronomy. A weird structure on the banks of the Rhne, all right angles and gleaming metal, turned out to be the Muse des Confluences and we were told later that day we had missed a treat in only viewing it from outside. Ah well.

As major fans of street art the numerous murals of Lyon were a feast for our eyes and at times defied belief. There are 60 or so large murals, (we didn’t find all of them), including the best examples of trompe l’oeil I have ever seen. Viewed from across the street it’s impossible to decide whether the vista in front of you is real or artifice.

The most remarkable, in our opinion, is a vast mural entitled Mur des Canuts the wall of the Canuts. A ‘canut’ is a slang term for a silk worker and the mural is sited in the silk workers’ district. In some ways it’s merely a series of scenes depicting ‘ordinary life,’ but the sheer scale and artistry of the product left us standing in awe.

Another mural is more complicated. The Fresque des Lyonnaise depicts famous former residents of Lyon standing on their balconies. We found Paul Bocuse easily enough and then those film making pioneers the Lumiere brothers. We also found a Roman Emperor but Claudius wasn’t among our many guesses. Even so, he was a Lyonnaise, born here when his countrymen ruled over what was then known as Gaul.

Just down the road is La Bibliothque de la Cit – the City Library ‘ another masterpiece. Whoever painted these murals must have possessed not only a great deal of artistic talent but also a head for heights. It’s often said that walls have ears; in Lyon they also tell stories.

We were hoping for a restful evening after many miles spent on the road and then an hour or two traipsing around Lyon on foot. Our hotel had a guests’ lounge with armchairs. Perfect. We settled down with our books and a cold drink.

This idyll lasted a mere twenty minutes. I had tuned out the voices of French speaking arrivals at Reception, but Estuary English, at significant volume, was harder to ignore. A group of twenty or so middle aged new arrivals, all speaking at once, were now thronging the whole area.

After a dramatic eye roll, Marigold wandered off, ostensibly to collect a tourist leaflet but with the intention of gathering information.

‘They’re a car club from Essex, on a driving tour of France, a sort of a car rally,’ Agent Marigold reported on her return. ‘They’re looking forward to having drinks at the bar.’ We both glanced at the bar area, worryingly close to where we were sitting.

‘They’re probably quite good fun,’ Marigold said, hopefully. We’re not antisocial after all.

They weren’t good fun. Or any approximation of fun. A dozen or so men, several wearing red trousers, and about the same number of women arrived en masse at the bar and our restful oasis was no more. We tried to match up couples, but without much success as there were no obvious signs of longstanding familiarity.

‘Ah, fellow Brits,’ a voice boomed out. ‘Are you enjoying your book, my dear?’ The question was directed at Marigold who somehow refrained from replying, ‘well, I was until you lot turned up.’

After ten minutes we both realised it would be a long night. As the only alternatives were to go for yet another walk or lie on the bed in our room we decided to hang around for a while longer. We certainly weren’t tempted to ask about the chances of joining their motoring tour.

My usual response to unwanted conversation is to act in a vague manner and hope to be viewed as a dullard. It’s much easier than it used to be. Loss of memory is a natural concomitant of increasing age. In my case the same also goes for deafness, fading eyesight and bushy eyebrows, although the latter does in some small way act as compensation for the gradual diminution of hair on my head.

We recently visited Ludlow in deepest Shropshire and social obligation required us to suffer an hour or in the company of a couple who would happily describe themselves, as indeed the man did at one point, as experts on art. Fair enough as we were in an art gallery at the time, but that conversation had been a graphic demonstration of Dunning-Kruger effect. I’ve heard the phenomenon explained away as a form of cognitive bias, an incapacity to recognise the overestimation of a person’s knowledge and capabilities.

Being lectured on art appreciation is preferable to being exposed to adverse views on politics, religion, or, worst of all football by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, but there’s no joy in any of this.

Picasso, taking just one example, according to that self styled expert, was a talentless con man who had fooled the artistic community for generations. Marigold appeared relieved at my forbearance, but is this merely a sign I am belatedly willing to accept fools, and their nonsensical utterances with equanimity?’ I do hope this isn’t the case.

In our hotel in Lyon the subject of art didn’t crop up at all, but things didn’t improve much as one man in particular decided we needed to be talked to. At length. Perhaps it was a hangover from our Ludlow experience , but I found myself becoming irritated by just about everything this annoyingly grandiloquent man said.

One example – ‘Forward planning.’ He kept repeating this phrase. Is backward planning even remotely possible?

He moved on, eventually, to talk about houses. He owned ‘a detached four bedder with a decent sized garden,’ but he was far more interested in where we had lived. Specifically, the ‘terrifyingly’ ‘ his description ‘ large number of places in which we have set up home, albeit over very many years.

Musing, he said, ‘I like stability, but that may be because my parents moved around a lot when I was a child.’

‘But, you still kept finding them I suppose?’ said Marigold.

Nothing. No reaction. Marigold had obviously failed to notice one of the dominant factors in his make up. He didn’t possess a sense of humour. It wasn’t sitting in the background, only to be revealed on special occasions, it’s evidently been absent since birth. You don’t miss what you’ve never had, so they say.

Whoever ‘they’ are.

A sense of humour isn’t like a hairline, or indeed a waistline, subject to change with the passage of time. You’ve either got one or you haven’t. Marigold and I are firmly rooted in the frivolous end of the spectrum where very little is taken seriously. I can’t imagine being unable to find humour in a situation. Perhaps I just lack gravitas. Marigold certainly does.

For which I am eternally grateful.

We escaped at last and walked around the car park expecting to see a fleet of vintage cars. No, not even one. Plenty of GB plates in evidence, but nothing to prompt a casual observer to say, ‘I bet they’re on a car rally.’ The Essex effect? Maybe.

We’re off on the road again in the morning, heading for The Luberon along the Autoroute du Soleil ‘ the road to the sun. Never was a road better named.