sam and the city

It's a wonder they're not ALL dead!

Good day faithful readers. It may or may not be true, but one of the strongest arguments that the Australian police use for not raising the speed limit in Australia is that it is higher in Europe and there is a significantly higher road toll. Now, of course I don't have the statistics in front of me, but after my week in France I would imagine that the road toll has nothing to do with the speed limit on the motorways, but rather the nature of the backroads. It's not that they're in poor condition, all the ones that I drove on seem to have been kept in reasonably good shape, it's that they're all tight, twisty and largely unused. Of course if you're anything like me, then being provided with this sort of road is basically like being given your own personal race track and of course driving everywhere like a maniac is always going to result in an extra casualty or two!

Now, while I was in France I wasn't exactly lucky enough to have a Ferrari 430 or similar to enjoy these roads with. On this occasion I was put behind the wheel of a Renault Twingo, which is hardly a sports car and could fairly be described as 'lacking' when it comes to highway driving. Get it high in the rev range and put it on some narrow, twisty roads however and it performs quite admirably... Europecar would have been horrified!

Since my time in France was purely for relaxation I decided that whenever I had time I would take backroads to my destinations. Sometimes this had me heading down roads that at first glance appear to be someone's driveway (god help anyone trying to find one of these roads in the dark!). I'm sure that the only people besides me to have used some of the roads in the last few months had been the farmers who own the adjacent land in their tractors!

Nevertheless, this only made it all the more exciting... especially when you came across someone heading in the opposite direction while you're going around a corner on a road that is only one car width. The other benefit is that it is not unusual to come across little villages and countryside as beautiful as you're likely to see anywhere and the type of which France is famous for.

On one of the days that I was in France I decided that I would head up to the Pyrenees, and particularly to the Col de Tourmalet, one of the most famous climbs to regularly appear in the Tour de France. I wasn't able to get all the way to the summit thanks to the fact that it is currently winter and the road was snowed over. However I did get a significant portion of the way up and certainly far enough to whet my appetite for when I bring my bike over in July this year.

I actually enjoyed my daily drives so much that after each day's touring I marked off in my map book the exact routes that I took, so that when I go back next time I might be able to ride around on some of the same roads. I was actually amazed at the number of cyclists that I saw out riding, particularly given that I nearly froze to death every time that I stepped out of my air conditioned car! This is in stark contrast to here in London, where I've probably seen 3 cyclists the entire time that I've been here. Of course I'm comparing the world's cycling Mecca with, well some place that obviously isn't!

Anyways, at the end of my time in France I had to say a fond farewell to Mr Twingo, who had treated me so well all the time I was treating him so badly. Given that I had only been in a car twice and not driven at all in the previous three months, and then it was on the left hand side of the road, I thought that I did rather well to come out the end of my trip with only a single displaced hubcap thanks to a close encounter with a curb coming into Condom... no pun intended!

posted by sam @ 6:20 pm