Samedi Noir

Thats what the French call it.

Shit Sandwich is what I would call it, and I took the biggest bite.

The first weekend of August in France is known as Samedi Noir (Black Saturday). This is the weekend that any part of France not working in a bar, restaurant, on a beach, in a club or in any part of the "tourist" industry packs their bags, loads up the car, or more often than not the bloody great camper van and heads en masse to the South of the country. In all fairness, if the climatic difference was so pronounced in the UK I could understand us doing a similar thing, however NOT on the same fucking day. My schedule was simple, get to Le Havre about 13:30, drive to Limoges about 350 miles away, using peage where possible, average about 60/70 miles per hour and get to the stopover hotel for around 8 in the evening. I'd even got a route that avoided skirting Paris.

However the route then took me through French village after French village during their Friday evening rush hour, so any potential gain by avoiding Paris was lost by being stuck in local traffic for local people. It still amazes me how driving through these places you don't see any French people. They're like ghost towns. The suburban French equivalent of the Marie Celeste.

The we hit the A10 heading south. Relief surged through me for about 5 minutes until we hit the ......traffic. The first tranche of the people heading to the south was already out. In the end we got to the hotel at 23:00, a miscalculation of around 3 hours on my part. Too late for dinner, so we feasted on service station rolls instead. I'll give them their due, they're not bad and they are cheaper by some distance than our service station bread based snack foods.

The next day we left at 10 in the morning and I hit the gas, still oblivious to the time of year. I had estimated arrival at around 4pm at the camp site, including a supermarket stop for food etc for the mobile home.

Yeah right.

At around 2pm I joked with Baby that she might not get a swim as we might be too late. We had made good time and the fuel consumption was around 57mpg, and according to the computer I was around 150 miles from an empty tank. Then we hit the A9, the main east-west road across the bottom of France. And we stopped. And we crawled. And crawled. And stopped some more. The computer (hereinafter known as HAL, in tribute to the finest big screen computer ever) then decided to tell me we had 75 miles left to an empty tank as it re-calibrated in the 35 degrees of heat and the snails pace (an insult to snails in fact). 75 miles of range lost in a second as HAL decided to play its mind games. But hope was in sight at the next service station. Fine, we would be late, but I could at least fill the car up.

Wrong. So very wrong.

In this service station from hell, there was one diesel pump open. One hose, feeding both sides of the pump. And a delta shape of lorries, vans, camper vans and cars all pushing towards it in a complete free for all. On top of that there was one cashier dealing with each transaction and only releasing the pump when the previous customer had paid in full. In all about 75 vehicles all pushing to the singularity of the diesel pump. One thing was for sure, this pump would not be working by the time I got there. I just knew they were on the verge of running out and being part of any ensuing riot was not part of the plan. Why else would the other 6 pumps be closed, and the 2 truck specific ones unless they knew what was about to happen?

It took an hour to extricate my car from the delta crowd. And no, I was no closer to the oasis of Diesel promised by the singularity pump. We left the station, tempers fraying, tension rising and got back onto the A9. HAL now said we had 50 miles left to empty tank. I knew we had around 45 miles to go. Diesel burning away with progress being made at a particluarly fat and lazy snails pace. The car's life blood was draining away bit by bit. 4 lanes of Highway Hell. The CD blurted out Chris Rea's "Road to Hell". I skipped it forward, not needing to be reminded that running out of diesel on a packed foreign motorway would not be good. How would the recovery people get anywhere close? And being a diesel you just can't refill it from empty. It would be expensive, embarassing, frightening for the kids, bloody inconvenient and most of all fucking stupid. Then I saw the sign "Sortie 41 - 20km". We needed to be at Sortie 42 but I figured that I could get off here, hopefully fill up in Perpignan centre and then drive the back routes to Argeles.

20km, thats all.
20km, doesn't seem far.

But when you're running out of fuel, the beads of sweat falling despite the aircon, the worried looks and furrowed brows of GMD and myself barely masking our faux nonchalance to the kids, believe me 20km is the same distance as it is to the Moon. HAL now said 15 miles left to empty tank. How I prayed it was wrong. How I despised my trusting this silicon chip fuel measurement device. If it had a voice, it would have been saying "I'm Sorry Jack, that is not possible" in it's gently threatening manner. At this point I started to question my policy of seeing just what the range on the car was from full with the whole family dependent on it.

I tried cheating via the hard shoulder but a French trucker, no friend of humanity and compassion stopped me dead in my tracks by blocking me. If i had run out there and then, I'd be in jail now for the murder of a french trucker with my bare hands. Finally after 2 hours, yes two hours to do the 20km we made it to Perpignan. Into the Carrefour supermarket station d'essence only to find out the card machines would not work. Fuming I reversed back through the queue for fuel and switched to the cashier lane. They don't like it up 'em the French! Finally, just like when you release the longest piss in the world, the one you've been holding onto for the whole day, the relief as the diesel flooded into the car was met with a longing sigh. 70 litres it took. 70 whole litres.

It's capacity?

70 fucking litres. I could have kissed the car with tongues for getting us that far. We arrived on camp at 7:30 pm with me shaking visibly under the very stress this holiday was supposed to be immune to. 17 and a half fucking hours to do what took around 10 last time in total. Never again will I fall into that trap.

Amazing how 7 pints of Amstel and a bottle of Red soon put paid to the stress.

Beware Samedi Noir.

Later, Grocerjack