French Leave

For the last 28 hours or so, I’ve been travelling to the South of France. I have a 6 week sabbatical – a treat I get every 4 years – and I’m using it to fly and hike here. In fact, it is a little more than that – I’m hoping to move here (either full-time or for the summer months) and I’m using this trip to fine tune my planning. I’m really looking for a place where outdoor activities (flying, hiking, cycling, skiing…) can be done more easily (less driving, better weather). In the last month I’ve barely flown in Portland – the thought of driving for 4-6 hours, taking my chances with (possibly outrageous) conditions and then driving back (maybe skunked) has just been too much for me.

Just booking the flights was challenging. I need to visit my mother in Scotland on the way home, so ideally I wanted a triangular trip – Portland <-> Paris <-> Glasgow <-> Portland. But however you try to do it, it seems as though airlines can’t cope with anything except a return journey. Everything I tried to reduce the cost just increased it. Change a return trip to a single trip? Ok, but triple the price. Cut a bunch of flights from your trip? Sure, just add $800 to the price. In paragliding terms, they can do ‘out-and-backs’ but nothing else. So I ended up with a cheap Air Canada flight - Portland -> Vancouver -> Montreal -> Paris.

Checking all your flying gear is always a bit worrying but at Portland I was told “your gear will go straight to Paris, collect it there”. At Vancouver, I had to go through Canadian customs and immigration. As I did so, I looked idly at a random luggage carousel what did I see - my flying gear! Wow!

It turned out I had to pick it up and move it from the US to the Canadian system, when it would then get transferred to the French system and I’d get it back in Paris. It couldn’t or didn’t move automatically from USA to Canada. If I hadn’t seen it, I’d have arrived in Paris and my gear would have been … who knows where. Talk about a ‘near miss’…

Apart from that, the journey went well. A little sad – the last time I did this trip, I visited my father-in-law and had lunch with him before the long drive South. But he died suddenly last January – these little opportunities are gone for him, and for me too, and won’t be coming back.

Things are always a little more difficult (or less predictable) in France than the US. When I arrived at the apartment I’ll be staying at for the next week, I asked the young girl if there was a super-market nearby. Yes, she said, there is an “Eight till Eight” just across the street. When I was young and naïve I would have fallen for this trap, but I asked her when it closed. “Seven o’clock” she replied, “you’d better hurry”…