Some say that the best thing about going away for a spell is coming home to your own house and the comfy bed that you know so well. I’m all for it, of course, the extended break in Portugal sharpening the appetite for being back in our little town here is south-west France.
But it did take us a long time to get here.
More of that after the latest in the Merrie England cartoon strip below. As always, the first three strips pick up the tale and the last is the latest.
The trip back home and why it was so exhausting..
Once upon a time I was a carefree driver and could go anywhere.
Terrain and topography gave me no cause for concern, so a day’s driving was simply an opportunity to marvel at countryside, mountains, coastal views and picturesque lakes.
I’ve always been a bad passenger, though. My feet will instinctively go for the brake pedal and my hand will reach for a steadying surface if my driver seems to be braking even a millisecond too late.
As you may easily imagine, when that driver is my wife, tensions can rise as the day wears on. My every twitch becomes a silent criticism and my every squirm is a silent rebuke. And we all know what happens if you criticise a person’s driving. And when that person is your wife, well, the atmosphere can become somewhat fraught.
So, with the wisdom born of twenty-three years of marriage, we agree that I will drive, as that will ensure that I’m not silently gibbering with nerves and winding up the irritation quotient to breaking point.
This was just about bearable until 2015. A fateful year.
As I have aged, I seem to have become risk-averse and annoyingly nuerotic. My two phobias, which are heights and spiders, are the two most common, so I know I’m not just an odd ninny. Many of us have the same issues. Anyway, for several years we have driven from the south-east of England to our place in south-west France, traversing several valleys by way of the various viaducts that have been constructed across them. They are high but for whatever reason, my fear of heights had never been an impediment to my driving over them.
Until 2015. For some reason.
We were driving home to England and approaching the city of Rouen, some tens of kilometers distant. Next to me in the passenger seat was my mother-in-law, who I think was snoozing, and in the back seat, Leona was fast asleep. She is blessed that way and will become almost narcoleptic when seated in any mode of transport that rocks a little. Trains, planes, boats and cars; all will rock her to sleep in moments.
We came to the valley near the small community of Aclou. Once upon a time, travellers would have had to descend into the valley, drive quietly through small settlements, up the other side and onwards but now, an imposing viaduct of around a kilometer in length and a height of 70 meters (around 230 feet) spans the divide.
What’s different about this collosus, though, is that its crash barriers at the side give the impression to the driver of being no higher than your knee. I suspect that it was built this way so that we could all enjoy the view but in practice, it seems that one is more or less driving on a flat ribbon.
Get to the point, lad! I know it bothers you but just get to the point!
I had driven over this thing in both directions more times than I’ve had birthdays, I would think, and never once had my height phobia ever crept up on me but this time, as soon as the car’s wheels touched the roadbed the blighter had me gripped by the vitals. I simply stopped breathing and my knuckles went white on the steering wheel. A terror gripped me so profoundly that all I wanted to do was get that car down to ground level as fast as possible. To my horror, I found my hands wrestling with my mind, which seemed to think that the best thing to do was to drive over the side and touch down below. And it would have been easy with those soppy siderails, I can assure you.
You can get an idea of the view by clicking here.
Well of course, as you must know, I didn’t drive over the side. My hands outdid my screaming mind and got us across, where I pulled over to the side of the road and finally took a breath.
At this point, I woke Leona and told her that she had to take the wheel for a while. I knew that there was another viaduct about ten minutes further on, slightly shorter but just as high, and I knew that I couldn’t countenance another episode like that one.
From that day to this, when these viaducts are part of our trip, we work it so that Leona takes the wheel. I have improved a little, in that I can now drive over substantial river bridges but these spindly tightropes have me beaten for the time being.
You will readily understand, therefore, that if I have to drive anywhere new, I am gripped by trepidation. The idea that a high crossing will suddenly appear in front of us creates a lurking dread just behind my eyes as I scan the road ahead. We had driven back from Portugal once before, two years ago, so I already knew about the bridge from Portugal into Spain, crossing the Guadiana river. This one is far from a doddle for me but I can at least cross it without being stricken with terror. After that, it’s pretty much a simple drive for me as long as we stay on the motorway.
Which we did until we found ourselves running out of fuel.
We had a booking at a nice hotel in Merida but we realised that we had to go off the motorway to get fuel. In Spain, by the way, you can never be sure of service stations that aren’t big and red with Repsol or Cepsa emblazoned on them. So many times we’ve come off the main road to be led to a petrol station that hasn’t seen action since my childhood, probably. Turning up to find a desolate forecourt on a windswept and desolate moor (no, not Othello!) we would curse loudly and spin around back to the motorway, even more stressed than before we had first noticed that our fuel was running dry.
Eventually, though, we found ourselves at a service station, some distance now from the motorway. We filled up and, being pretty hungry, decided to stop and eat our sandwiches. Then, I inexplicably took the decision to carry on across country, as the GPS system said that our detination wasn’t that far away.
This was a bad idea. We drove inexorably upward into a mountain range. And the further we went, the less practical it became to turn around and head back to the sanctuary of the motorway.
I could describe that little detour for hours but won’t, as I’m sure you’ve got the idea. Me, teeth gritted, fully expecting to be faced with the driving equivalent of a threadbare rope crossing (the type seen in Indiana Jones films) ploughing ever onward and seemingly, ever upward. The feeling of dread mounting with every upward kilometer. Then encountering a gigantic quarry the like of which I had never seen before, hundreds of feet deep with lorries the size of our house looking like children’s toys below us, our car skimming the edge of the drop and bouncing wickedly on the uneven road.
Yet, as you can see, dear reader, here I am. We didn’t die horribly nor even get a scratch on the car. No bridges rose up in our path and no viaducts traversed improbably deep valleys. In fact, a friend of mine who is a psychologist has told me that the problem is the fear of fear itself and not of the high places. I bow to her knowledge but would respectfully point out that when I don’t have to cross ravines, I don’t get into a lather!
Still, I was exhausted by the time we got to our hotel, and soon got to grips with the barman’s whisky-based offerings.
And so home to our garden full of bright daffodils, other people’s cats and the rich promise of great banks of bluebells still to burst into flower. We get daffodils in March and bluebells in April, which all seems quite miraculous to me. And we get two cats who treat our garden as their territory. They don’t look like strays, being glossily healthy and imperious. They keep the mice away and prevent any other cats from using our garden as a latrine, so we’re always happy to see them.
It was a fun trip away and seven weeks well spent in the Algarve. I can heartily recommend it to you, should the opportunity come your way to give it a try.
Now, “what about a link to a film about drawing cartoons?” I hear you cry.
Well, here it is.