from Bilbao to Provence
The route took us up the coast, north eastwards from Bilbao for about two hours, then East with the Pyrenees to our South, our right-side, for the remainder. We drove first in the direction of San Sebastian, a place my wife would very much like to visit, through undulating landscape of hill, rock and tree. It was snowing, which was worrying, as we were heading for the Pyrenees. At our first stop, I looked at our route and saw that Tarbes seemed to be the highest point of our journey. We agreed to stop over night if the going got too sketchy. Our car displays the external temperature and for the whole journey it hovered around 1°. We passed through Tarbes in mid-afternoon, the warmest part of the day with the snow having given away to intermittent sun. The thermometer got down to -1° for a stretch but not for long and it was a flat stretch, no steep hills to trigger skids or fears. Before Tarbes we passed by Pau, a cool name, and Lourdes, a name well known to any Irish catholic, as a pilgrimage to Lourdes was a very Irish thing back in the 80ties. So that’s where Lourdes is – nestled in the western foothills of the Pyrenees. I learned so much about French geography on that drive, towns that I had heard of from news and sports now had a location. Toulouse lies just north of the Pyrenees heading east, Biarritz, a name I know from its rugby club, is Basque Country. Montpellier just sounded cool had zero clue where it was lies near the Med, Avignon with its popes, Marseille the one place I knew the location of, Carcassonne, another rugby town, to the south of Toulouse…all towns that featured on signs during our journey.
11 hours on the road, sur la route, the particular dice with death that each vehicle journey in part represents. Movement is danger, movement is risk, and its absence is stagnation, attenuation and death. Die if you go, dead if you stay. One of the unresolved fault lines of the human condition. I have chosen movement and so it goes. From Bilbao to Provence in one day, from the Atlantic to the edge of the Med, from the sea to the mountains and then again towards the sea. Snow in Bilbao and sunshine in the Pyrenees. Engine warning lights, hounds in the back and crawling up inclines in limp mode. Pees and coffees at filling stations, the first one grungy from truck exhaust and traffic grunge, later in France in mountain areas with picnic benches under trees and tasty baguette sandwiches from bright well designed retail spaces, and later again towards Provence with wooden bee hotels in the shape of miniature houses comprised of woodpiles of different cuts creating a pleasing natural oasis next to the electric charging outlets. Diesel in France 1.99/L thereabouts, Spain 1.65/L about the same as Ireland. Tolls and more tolls, the largest for 32 euros for the stretch from Toulouse to the exit beyond Montpelier for Avignon. No fights no escaped hounds nor whining hounds, the ability of beasts, both two and four legged, to rise to the occasion, to sense the scale of the challenge and to push their personal, petty needs to the rear, to put them aside in the face of a larger collective challenge. One of the better attributes of our collective evolution. The French motorways are forgiving for those driving them for the first time. Driving as we were in the slowest, rightmost lane for large parts of the journey, it was reassuring that these lanes did not abruptly become exit only lanes as can happen. The on ramps too were of a generous length, allowing our pedestrian, slow moving vehicle merge back into the moving mass of metal with little difficulty. Driving on the right side was not a problem, I had internalised the process of turning right and left, before I ever left left side driving Ireland. Probably it is a reflection of my competence as a driver – those years driving in Ireland following the credo of taking every opportunity to get behind the wheel have paid off, it seems.