On the night of 23rd/24th Feb we drove to Montpellier, taking 2 hour turns driving and sleeping. According to TomTom this is around a 9 hour drive, but this assumes that we will drive non-stop at somewhere near the 130kph limit on French motorways. We don’t. We find night driving both relaxing and economic. Mostly you are the only person on the road for miles, and you can hold a comfortable 100-110 kph without having to work at it. But this was quite a hard drive, at least till we were South of Orleans. The weather was foul, freezing and often quite thick fog. We had breakfast in the Vulcans (its over 1000m high in this area of the massif central) and lunch in the Aire beside the Milau bridge, and arrived at LIRMM for a 1500 meeting with Stefano. As so often, as we dropped down from the hills into the Mediterranean plain, the sun came out, and it was a pleasant 18 deg C in Montpellier.
At the time that I had left I had delivered some information to Madalina Croitoru at LIRMM (ex ECS PhD) who is working on a grant application with us. We had no had a hand-shake yet and needed re-assurance that she had everything she needed. Once done, we left the van and headed down into town on our Bromptons (folding bikes) to find our home for the next few months.
Our arrival was not auspicious. We have found the place quite easily – the joys of Google maps. But it is getting dark and we have to find keys that have been carefully concealed. And there is something going on in the road – there is rather seedy looking man keeping a watch on the house opposite – I think there is a drug deal going on: he is either keeping an eye out for the police or he is a policeman – can’t tell which – but it makes extracting keys from hiding places difficult. And now I climb three stories up an ancient steep stone spiral staircase in the near dark to reach our flat (leaving Su to guard the bikes) and to dump the bike bags and find the key sets that have been left for us. Then I return down and Su goes up to deliver her bike bag and to bring back the bike lock which I have accidentally taken up. And in pulling it out of the bike bag she also pulls out a bottle of 2002 Premier Cru Volnay which we had brought as a gift for Stefano. So the first thing we have to do in our new flat is to work out how to clean up £30 worth of precious wine and glass of the white tiled floor and stairs.
We now have an hour left to find out our way round the flat and to bike up the hill for supper with Stefano and his wife Gianna. It is that most difficult of times in a new place – finding where the light switches are and where things are kept and where we are supposed to keep the bikes – and rather disappointingly the kitchen is in a bit of a mess. And of course no one has been in the flat for a few weeks and it is cold and rather musty at night.
We found our way to Stefano’s house OK (the wonder of Google maps) and had a lovely Italian meal – and we did still have a gift of a bottle of Laphroaig whisky as a gift which had not been broken!
On the way back the handlebar mount for my iPhone broke and deposited my iPhone on the floor – comprehensively breaking it. Upsetting. And that night we are cold – we have not yet worked out how to turn on any heating – and any attempt to turn on the hot water seems to throw the main trip switch.
But it gets better!
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