Travels with my GPS

Well, we're nearly at the end of the holiday, and there have been no major catastrophes (yet). I think I'm going to write the holiday blog in several parts; travel, food, tourism, and whatever else comes to mind.

So here's the travel part.

We didn't get off to a very good start. We left home later than planned, then one of the cats was ill on the way to Dover and, as a result of stopping to clean him up, we missed the ferry. Only just - the vehicle before us got on - but we had to wait for the next one. At least we had GPS to make sure we didn't get lost on the way to our overnight stop some six hours drive away in Brittany.

We forgot one thing. We have very few toll roads in Britain, but Luc had been up near Birmingham recently and had set the GPS to avoid them. France, of course, has lots of toll roads. And we hadn't reset the GPS. The funny thing was that it didn't avoid all toll roads, just those that were "exceptional" in some way, so it had taken us through a section of tolled autoroutes before it suddenly routed us south. It was only some time later when I commented that it seemed to be avoiding the tolled bridge at Le Havre that we realised what had happened, but by that time we'd taken quite a detour and there wasn't much we could do. So I 'phoned the hotel, reassured them we were on our way and gave them a new ETA and all was well.

We've travelled in France with a couple of GPS systems before, but not this one. It's strange. You can programme it for either fastest route, or shortest, but nothing in between - for example, you can't give it a balance of mostly shortest but some fastest to avoid really minor roads. As a result, we've been down a fair number of minor roads - some of them very minor - some of them scarcely roads. Going from the north coast of Brittany to Brest in the far west, we found ourselves going through winding lanes and small villages, never more than five km from the main E road at any time, but cutting off all possible corners. Not that we lost too much time going that way, as the car pushing us from behind for a substantial part of the trip seemed to be driven by Alain Menu. Front wheel drive with gravel edges to the road is fun, if you're not the one driving.

That was our only major trip while in Brittany but this week, in the Loire Valley between Amboise and Blois, we've been further afield. "Afield" seems highly appropriate in this case, as we've gone down quite a few single roads with little in the way of passing places. Make that "aforest" as well - yesterday we found ouselves on a logging road ... But it means we've seen some very beautiful bits of rural France, found some charming villages, and been dazzled by the sun glinting off the white stone of everything from the finest chateau to the simplest farmhouse. So I'm not complaining.

I will, however, be double-checking that toll roads are included in the acceptable routes before we start our long drive home tomorrow.