I am the real Quaid

After 13 years of safe motoring (not including wheelie bins, or other stationary objects) I have finally been involved in that unfortunate event that is an RTA. But to really compound my many years of driving without incident, this crash just happened to take place in my favourite city of Paris, France. We were travelling through France on our way to the lovely Ardeche region, on the first day of our holiday. Luckily there was no harm done as the crash was relatively low speed, but from looking at the photos you could not tell this. The SMax crumpled up, whilst the robust Peugeot 407 that was driven into hardly had a scratch on it. No one was hurt and the kids continued watching their DVD not really knowing what the fuss was about.

Why were we in Paris? I have no idea, except that the satnav decided to have a spaz attack and send us through the centre of the 'Worst city in the WORLD for driving' on what it classified as the FASTEST route to our destination. How did it ever believe that driving through the centre of Paris would provide the fastest route to anywhere, except maybe Paris. And to be perfectly honest if I wanted to go to Paris I would probably choose to drive to somewhere close to Paris (like and airport) and then decide to go somewhere else. It's not that I don't like Paris, I just don't like driving on any of the roads in Paris, when there are perfectly good toll roads that can get you to you destination faster and also potentially safer. Chris commented whilst on holiday that I had quite a few 'blond hairs' popping up at the back of my head. I put these grey, sorry blond hairs solely down to driving in Paris for 8 hours.

What is so implausible and what I do not understand about this bizarre satnav event is that last year we programmed the satnav exactly the same to go to the same destination. And it sent us on what it felt was the FASTEST route via the toll roads, without going near lovely Paris. This year we enter the same destination and it navigates us to a completely different route.

To cut a very long story short, the car was undrivable after the crash and so we had to phone the AA 'International Rescue' and ask them to make lots of arrangements for us, so that we could continue our holiday. This involved the following:

• Tow truck for SMax and me to recovery garage
• Taxi for kids and Chris to recovery garage
• Hire car at Gare de Lyon station (with the help of Paula at work)
• Taxi for me to go from garage to Gare de Lyon station
• NO hire car at Gare de Lyon station due to Europcar screwup. But they did kindly offer me a Nissan Micra for the family
• New superdooper Hire car at Chales de Gaule Airport (honestly)
• Taxi for me to go from Gare de Lyon station to CdG Airport
• 1 hour waiting around for the hire desk to confirm that they had a car, as yes it wasn't a Nissan Micra
  VW Touran for 1 week to continue our journey to Ardeche region from Paris (hurrah!)

By this time it was around 7pm on Friday evening and we had spent 6 hours stationary because of the crash. We were well behind schedule and I wasn't sure whether my wife and three kids were alive still, and if they were, whether they were still talking to me as I'd left them with no money and not really spoken to them for 4 or 5 hours whilst i was trying to sort the mess out (and getting a little stressed). Luckily for me the AA had been helping out on this side also, by giving Chris regular updates on my progress around Paris trying to find the elusive MPV hirecar.

Luckily by 8pm or so we were the proud temporary owners of a VW Touran. A 7 seater MPV that would be our car and overnight accommodation for some of the holiday at least.

I actually picked he hire car up at CdG airport at 6.30pm, but due to another satnav disaster it sent me to the wrong part of Paris, when I was trying to navigate back to the garage to pick up the family and all our luggage. Damn you satnav, I am the real Quaid.

By 8pm on the Friday evening I could have been happy to ride a camel to the south of France, but didn't have to as we had our trusty German VW. So after a 7 hour pit stop we started off on our journey once again. A little frayed around the edges, but still just about happy to be on holiday. I think that this was mainly helped by the fact that we knew what lay ahead of us was a week of relaxing by the pool, getting a healthy tan, whilst eating a mainly cheese, ice cream and wine based diet. To be honest it was that thought that spurred me on. Mainly the ice-cream I think, and the triple espresso I had at a service station around Dijon.
The VW Touran, whilst our trusty German friend for the week, it did throw us a little problem at about 11.30pm when we stopped at the first service station. We pulled up to the pump and I jumped out to fill up with Diesel, as you expect to do in these circumstances. Only problem was that I couldn't open the filler flap on the car. I pressed it in and it wouldn't open. I then went back to the driver' seat and looked for a handle or a release mechanism. Couldn't find one. I went back outside the car and gave the filler flap another press just to make sure that I hadn't done it wrong in the first place. I hadn't. I then went back inside the car again and put the interior lights on a looked around the seat, on the door, on the dash, on the passenger seat or door. Nothing. By this time I was a little nervous and concerned. I think I actually might have even gone back outside and given the filler flap another little press just to make sure that my previous two attempts hadn't accidentally been a bit shit, and that the third one was going to sort the problem out. It didn't. I returned to the inside of the car again and decided to drive off and worry about it later.
I started the car and drove forward about 2m. But, to be honest, I was worrying about it then and I couldn't put it off till later, so I stopped the car and had another look around the dashboard and under the seats and the centre of the console. Still nothing. By this time a French lorry driver was asking if we needed help. We did, we needed a miracle.

Then we opened the glove box and pulled out the instruction manual looking for clue. OK, I wasn't holding out too much hope, as my French is awful (D at GCSE, although this probably equates to an A these days) and my German is worse. Luckily for us the instructions were written in Spanish?!? This didn't help either, but eventually we found a diagram pointing to the release for the filler flap being at the bottom of the drivers door storage compartment at back. Result! By this time it was midnight and we'd been on the road for only 19 hours.

At 2AM or so we were south of Lyon and we parked up at a parking area for some sleep. The kids were already asleep and had been for some time, so we woke them up, put them in the front with the adults and tried to get back to sleep. It was hit and miss for a couple of hours until the camper van next to us started up at about 4am. About 7 or 8 people, plus a dog emptied out, had a pee and whatever, and then they drove off. Finally got to sleep after that.






We woke at around 6am and had a quick snack in the car before leaving our overnight parking spot. You would be surprised how busing it was at 6am. I would be lying if I said it was the best nights sleep I'd every had.
Then after another 2 hours driving we arrived at the resort in Ardeche. The sun came up, the views over the hills and valleys were stunning and it was 20 degrees centigrade by breakfast time. We were in for a hot week away. And it was hot and a little wet, but we had fun and I'll go into that another time.

The trip back through France was OK, we diverted away from Paris and were involved in no road incidents. The only part of the journey that got a little hairy was when we tried to fit all our kids and luggage from the VW Touran into a Vauxhall Corsa. This didn't work. Although the AA came up trumps again and sorted us out with a hatchback each for Chris and I. So we split the kids in two and made a made dash back from Calais to Home. I think Chris rather enjoyed the trip back, probably because of the way we split up the luggage and kids, rather than the fact we had matching Chevrolet Auras.

Anyway, once we got back and unpacked it didn't take long for the talk to turn to next years trip. Although I did hear Chris say she would quite like to fly............ God bless the AA

Thanks also to Chris and the Kids for not losing it, because we've all seen National Lampoons European Vacation and we got very close to it. XXXX