A new year

A New Year

A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.

Opening lines of “Journey of the Magi” - T S Eliot

It’s 9 am on Monday 4th January and I’m waking in our bed in Lescun. With shutters closed and eyes slow to adjust to wakefulness it’s difficult to tell whether dawn has arrived. I am, however, aware of the subtle whisper of light rain on the bathroom Velux. The headache, which is the result of celebrating our arrival with a little too much enthusiasm, asserts itself. We have arrived and my “dry January” will start today.

January 4th - a misty new year

At times it seemed as though the Gods were determined to prevent us from returning, what with the pre-Christmas tooth ache and consequent dental treatment that didn’t quite work and resulted in three trips to A & E when, really, we should have been knocking back mince pies and getting stuck into the Highland Park. And one thing led to another and the ferry was rescheduled for a night which just happened to coincide with a tempest through the Channel that the deities had been labouring over during the holiday period. So we clung to our bunks and tried to sleep as the

ship rolled and groaned and I imagined the cars in the hold jumbled up like toys in a toy box and what it might be like in the black cold water outside.

At times like these we trust in the professionals: the doctors, the nurses and dentists, the ship’s crew, the navigators and the pilots. And, of course, when summoned from our beds at 5.30 am by the lilting Breton melody oozing out of the cabin’s speakers - that never-changing musical alarm which over the years I have come to loathe - we discovered a safe arrival with a cargo of cars, miraculously, just as we had left them.

It was still dark, though, as we queued in the rain, still groggy from lack of sleep, to present our documents to the young female border official who, given the time of day and the conditions, seemed unnaturally cheerful. (In love, perhaps?)

By 7 am we were on our way - Kathy’s Golf lumbering its way towards Avranches with its dim headlights and lazy wipers clunking and sighing.

It’s a journey I know well.

Starting with the crawling line of vehicles coming off the ferry and creeping out of Ouistraham, we pick up speed around Caen before heading out into open country and the rest of France. For us the day will be punctuated by familiar landmarks, familiar place names: Avranches, Rennes, Nantes where the high bridge launches a convenient curve across the Loire, Nijort where we join the A10 from Paris, Saintes with its interminable hectares of maze in summer, but now just ploughed earth which, in turn, gives way to the pine forests of Bordeaux. Cross the Dordogne, then the Garonne and follow its valley up to Langon before swinging south towards Pau with the gravitational mass of the Pyrenees growing stronger with each kilometre travelled. In two hours we quit the efficient system of autoroutes and wind our way down to Oloron St Marie and, finally, along the narrow Valley D’Aspe and up the hairpin bends to a night-time Lescun.

But this was no sight-seeing trip.

The miserable low pressure system that, butting up against a “high” over Scandinavia, had lodged itself over Britain for a month, had now edged its way into France. Precipitation, starting in the North continued through the journey - ten hours of road spray and tail lights with no chance of a glance to left or right.

I’ve always felt that there were a large number of dangerous drivers in France and it certainly felt like that as we fought our way south. With poor visibility, drenched tarmac and, as it was the end of the holiday season, a higher volume of traffic to cope with it would be an understatement to say that driving was challenging. Thankfully, however, being Sunday, there were few lorries on the road.

Now, in France there are two speed limits on motorways: 130 kph (80 mph) in dry conditions and 110 kph (70 mph) when wet and I have to say that most drivers respected the bad weather limit, even though they treated 110 kph as the speed at which one ought to be travelling rather than the maximum. A sizeable majority, on the other hand, clearly considered themselves immortal ploughing down the overtaking lane at speeds bordering a ton. If anything unexpected had occurred, if they had had to stop suddenly, it would have been carnage.

Later, I decided to put my prejudices to a factual test by consulting the European Union data on motoring fatalities for 2014, the most recent year for which statistics are available. There, I read that, in the UK, there were 30 deaths per million inhabitants whereas chez les neighbours the figure was 64, clearly demonstrating that you are more than twice as likely to be killed on the road in France than in Britain*1.

Consequently, I have to say that the joy I felt at pulling up outside our little place in the mountains was probably due to relief at making it there in one piece.

But after unlocking the garage and, instead of unloading the car straight away, I continued up the stairs in order check that everything was OK in the house, and suddenly came across a better reason to be pleased. A fire was burning cheerfully in the wood burner, the house was warm and a small pile of presents, including two pairs of ski poles, was waiting for us on the sofa. There was also a note which read: “WELCOME BACK TO YOUR YEAR IN THE PYRENEES”.

It had to be Alf as he was the only one who had keys. And, talk of the devil, within ten minutes he had turned up to see if we’d arrived and help with the luggage.

He also invited us to eat with him. The chicken was already in the oven.

* Finally getting out of bed to make some restorative tea, I reflect that it had been a good evening.

We were glad to be back and the wine and the conversation had continued to flow long after the time when Kathy and I should have turned in to recover from the stresses of the journey.

Consequently, I begin the day with a headache which, nonetheless, fails to dull my excitement at being back. Even the cheerless weather that appears to have hitched a ride with us, fails too.

Enough to look down on the clutter of familiar roofs, the iconic church tower and beyond the glimpse of a ridge or a forest or a snow-streaked mountain face as mists creep stealthily from here to there letting slip brief snatches of a view.

There is no food in the cupboards so today we will shop in Oloron. In the afternoon, our neighbour will come with a home baked savoury cake containing ham and olives. It is his speciality and he will tell us once again how it freezes well. We will visit the owners of the house in order to pay the rent, spending, more than an hour there, drinking coffee and catching up on the news. And, after, there will be another Christmas present, this time a hand-made wooden rake - the product of our landlord’s hobby - that I will carry home on my shoulder in the dark and the rain, much to the amusement of an old man loitering in the square who, next day, will say to his cronies in the village: “Guess what I saw last night… those English… they’re crazy!” ______________________________________________________________________________ *1 The only country in the EU “safer” than the UK is Sweden with a toll of 28. The most dangerous place to be on the road, however, is Romania - 117.

January 6th 2016