suggzy

Part Two

With the now customary apology for a massive delay in providing some more reminiscences, let us return to the experience of motoring and navigating the wrong way ‘round.

But first, a not wholly unrelated word about Barcelona.

A little more than a year ago, I made an attempt at landing a job there. Remember? That didn’t go anywhere, but hey ho, at least I landed some sort of gainful employment, and things are on the up a bit – I am shortly to begin a career as an academic Ghost Writer, to supplement my nugatory ‘survival level’ wages from the temporary gig (which has now been temporary for eight months…) Best hope I am better at knocking that stuff out at a regular rate than I am this; I imagine being paid to do so will make me apply myself rather more, by way of a stick to my own backside.

I took the Barcelona opportunity seriously, because I had been there once before, and sensed it was a very nice place. I say sensed, because I went there on a stag-do in 2005. Yes, a stag-do in Barcelona; all that cool stuff to do and to look at and I go with a tribe of Northern Monkeys (nice chaps really) for three days of Compulsory Lager. A rare old affair it was, too. Stolen phones x 2, someone other than me being rounded on by a tribe of Ladies of the Night, and the Groom to be managed to break the Best Man’s leg, on a roundabout, at three in the morning (I was safely abed when that bit happened, but still got landed with nursemaid duties (I read my book, drank cold cans of Coke and smoked; he groaned – took morphine – slept – groaned – took morphine – slept, ad infinitum). Part of my life has been made up by a search for morphine, in fact. So much so that we might have a little bit of an accompanying piece sometime, about my life experiences of watching other people take morphine and never getting to have it myself.

But yes, Barcelona. And here’s where we head back to our main theme, a bit. We’re off there next month. Well, four weeks from now we fly to Bordeaux, and hang around there for five days. Then it’s a train and a bus up into the mountains, so as to visit Andorra, and knock off my fiftieth country. And finally, back down the hill in another bus, to spend five days by the sea in Barça. Many a website tells you to drive that last bit, but balls to that, frankly. And not just because I am lazy, and fearful of what SWK might do on a Pyrenean pass, after the 2015 Greek Tragedy (see later). No, because of my experiences of City Driving overseas (with you in a moment on that – this is just a preamble, as if you’d noticed) and also of the last time I was in the capital of Catalonia.

On the second morning, once heads had cleared and the team was reassembled, it was announced we were to tour the city with a guide, on bicycles. On the face of it, no problem, but with the drag factor to be included that is me on two wheels. When not in my own jalopy, I have generally spent my last 25 years or so either walking or on public transport. I can cycle, and passed my proficiency test (remember those?) in that wettest of wet Winters of 1984. I can still recall having instructions boomed at me through a loudhailer, as I wobbled through standing water on the playground. It’s just that it’s remained a largely theoretical thing, for me. A modest skill one pops in the drawer of the mind and doesn’t really think to pull out again, unless the situation demands it utterly. A bit like, oooh, having a small smattering of a foreign language, I suppose? You don’t just blurt it out at people all the time, you wait to be addressed in it, and then fumble and bumble your way to a credible response. So as you see, I did not voluntarily pop out for a bike ride of a Sunday.

That lack of recent form added to the challenge a bit, when the bikes were handed out on the morning of the ‘grand tour’. I always seem to be last when it comes to these things. Anticipating a comic outcome as you will be, I’ll not disappoint you. I am sure you are all expecting I got landed with some sort of Krusty The Clown bike, on which I had to heave my mighty frame? Like one of these fellows?

Nope, quite the opposite. I was in fact gifted the services of a bicycle the height of a sturdy pit pony. And the width of a piece of foolscap. Very modern, and very bloody useless for a short, fat, 31-year-old. The only way to mount the thing successfully was to sort of take a run at it, and jump across the saddle from about four feet away. This temporarily resulted in one wearing one’s balls as earrings, but it did at least get one into the saddle.

Getting underway on the thing was no picnic, either. The pedals appeared to be just under my thighs, and so the downward pressure needed to move this monster truck and me forward was immense. And then, once one had swung through the full revolution a couple of times, the thing gathered the pace of a runaway train, given the diameter of the wheels was about eight feet, so the only way of stopping it was to apply the brakes and leap from it using much the same manoeuvre as one did to get on it. Because the nature of Barcelona is that there’s something cool to look at about every 30 feet, the whole on-and-off routine was required a lot. After about half-an-hour I was weaving around like a man who’d just had a fight and a Vasectomy at the same time.

In typical fashion, it was just in the closing minutes of this rather bruising tour that I started to feel competent, in any way. I had even taken to looking up, now and again, and taking in the city, before we descended back into its underbelly. And so it was, as we cycled down a characteristically wide and unhindered boulevard, that I inclined my eyes to the left for a view down the street where the Sagrada Familia is stationed and came to an abrupt halt as I cycled directly, head-first, into a lamp-post. It’s probably the case that the fact I was on such a behemoth of a bike actually saved me. Such were its gigantic dimensions that I was nowhere near the actual point of collision. There was the most enormous, cacophonous, traffic-stopping CLAAAANG, and I spiralled out of the saddle and onto the flags. To the most uproarious amusement of several hundred people, and a gentle patter of applause. Europe united itself around the folly of the Englishman. “Why does he have such a crazy big bike?” they asked themselves.

I trailed in last, in the end, and made woozily for the afternoon’s insalubriousness.

As you can see, if this is a metaphor for overseas City motoring, I am not about to risk an Andorran motor trying to find my way through that place. Oh no. And certainly not after the Florence experience, either…

I’ve had two honeymoons, in my life, and hired a car on each occasion. On the first, I did all of the driving, and on the second I handed the duties over, briefly, to SWK. Neither period of stewardship was without incident.

So yes, Tuscany, in early 2007. Newlywed the first time out, I had hired and driven a little Fiat safely to our lodgings all the way from Pisa airport. The tolls confused one, but we just handed out money and hoped for the best. Got slingshot off a couple of hairy roundabouts, but no real drama came of it. The tremendously OTT instructions actually got us there pretty well, and we had a few fairly local days before branching out somewhat, having picked up a boot’s worth of provisions en route.

So on, I think, the third or fourth day, we set out to find Vallombrosa Abbey, on the face of it not far from our place in a hamlet near Reggello. Looked nice, for a wander and a trip out, up some hills through the forest. Lovely stuff.

As I said last time, I’m fine when I know where I am going. The owners had sent such precise instructions, and we’d even found neighbouring Figline, so as to take a train down to Siena. Parked up safe, found our way back, all that stuff. However, this was a bit more off the beaten track, and even with the map to refer to, we somehow managed to take a right turn too early, and within minutes, the fun began. It was one of those times when you think “ah, it’s the countryside, this’ll open out in a minute”. And it doesn’t. Indeed, more to the point ‘it’ narrows, to the point at which even one’s little Punto is struggling a bit for breath, as it squeezes up a mountain pass, trying not to look left, to the thundering abyss that awaits an ill-considered flick of the steering wheel. Very much a case of the closing minutes of The Italian Job. Only without any gold bullion, and with a couple of idiots thrown in, going uphill.

The biggest error came when we drove straight on through a farm, as a last hope that we were on the right road. A nice, spacious area, in which I could have safely turned round even that bloody bike I had crashed in Barcelona a couple of years before. Probably. But no, we ploughed on and before long reached a point of no-return. A rocky wall to the right, and the inky void of the late afternoon plunging to the left. Can’t go forward, going backwards would have made it a very short marriage (and I had form in this area, having almost plunged our Rover 400 off a cliff-top on the Isle of Harris, on our first holiday together, 18 months beforehand).

And so a 35629365-point turn followed. Every violent wresting ‘round of the wheel gaining us a precious few inches in pursuit of a full turn. Various items of the mechanics of the motor car either clunked, grated or screamed in sympathy and agony with one another. A burning smell filled the air, as we nestled backwards into the mountain. It was not a January bonfire from a farm below. I tried to remember what the ‘Excess’ was that I had agreed to in hiring the little motor, and wondered if just rolling it forward and walking home, whistling un-self-consciously as it exploded in the valley below us might not be the better course of action. But, with the speed of a glacier, a full turn was finally reached. The hiss that filled the car was the sound of the two of us finally breathing out. Game of the old girl to actually join me inside the car for the duration, looking back.

We pretty much just rolled back down the hill, to the ill-fated junction, as the molten underside of the car cooled off. We were, after a while, to reach the Abbey, and as I recall had a nice time, albeit left to look at it from the outside, as it was shut. Really the element of the trip that I remember best was the espresso that we stopped for after our hillside trial. It was blisteringly strong. Just extraordinary – the sort of coffee that briefly allows you to see into the future. Didn’t half do the job after the experience that had preceded it.

Motoring wise, there were no real additional challenges to be faced down, thereafter, until the day we were surrender the vehicle. I was quite pleased it had come though things intact, despite the ineptitude and histrionics of its pilot. But one challenge did remain. Our mission? Drive to Florence, find the AVIS store and drop the car off, before heading for our next base.

No problem, really. Tootle back out to the A35, turn right, drive for a bit, get some petrol, then turn right into Florence and pull up at the car place. Ha ha ha ha ha..

Happily, we left in plenty of time. The bulk of the journey was no bother at all – I even managed to buy the fuel with a smattering of Italian. Smooth. And we even managed to find the right exit off the highway, in pursuit of our goal.

And then matters became absolutely terrifying. Those last two miles must have taken us an hour. Our European friends drove onto the arterial road into the city from seemingly random directions, at fearless speed, and I was consigned to clutch and brake as the drama played out around us. I was, not to put a finer point on it, scared shitless. STF, to her eternal credit, did the most splendid job of map-reading, and kept us on course through the storm. But the storm would not cease, and as we inched into the centre of the City, the hubbub became heavier and heavier and heavier. Eventually, we reached a roundabout. Sort of descended to it, if I remember right. And there were the seven circles of hell, laid out before us, that Dante tried to warn everyone about. Rings of unbroken traffic, circuiting at a speed such as to make the end of one vehicle indistinct from the start of the next. How in the name of God anyone was actually joining or exiting this elliptical beehive, I truly did not know.

However, eventually it was our turn, of course. Procrastination would only have drawn horned opprobrium from those behind us in the queue. So I sort of tried to just use ‘The Force’ like Luke Skywalker at the end of Star Wars, when he is encouraged to “let go” by the trusted voice of Obi Wan Kenobi. And strangely, having faith worked. I just lurched us forward towards the nearest thing that had the appearance of a gap, and the eye of the storm appeared, with an unerring sense of calm to it. We surged round the first 180 degrees, I swung the wheel right, nothing hit us and we were in a side road. Words cannot describe this. One reads about the notion of a driverless car future, where computation keeps everyone from smashing into one another. This was the cosmological photographic negative of that. The fury of the urbanite Italian commute somehow possessed of so much energy as to pull as all apart from one another, like whizzing electrons in a destroyed atom. Or something.

Whatever it actually was, we had arrived. But do not imagine for a moment that I was done with the comedy-tragedy. Oh no. False hope was gained when, a few hundred yards down the road, we saw the AVIS sign on our left. Theory had it that one just swung left, across the traffic, and parked in one of the diagonal bays outside the place. It stayed theoretical; they were all full.

One remained calm. Arguably uncharacteristically so. There were cars parked everywhere, and I figured that as this was just a drop-off, one ought to be able to park pretty much anywhere nearby, run in with the keys and a quick word as to where the motor was, and on to the Hotel we would go. Sounded sensible. And simple. Headed to the end of the road, turned right, and after about 100 yards or so, after a long rack of scooters, I found a gap on our side, and even reverse-parked into it. Failed to notice the orientation of the other cars, which might have given me a hint that something was wrong. Left STF with our luggage, and confidently popped back to drop off the keys, oblivious to the number of pairs of eyes on me from inside the café I had parked outside of.

I breezed in to the air-conditioned office, just as the last customer exited the place. Smilingly removed my sunglasses and told the staff I had brought our trusty Fiat back.

“Ah, yes, and where is the car, please?” said the lady, receiving my keys across the counter.

“Ah, I’m afraid your drop-off bays were all full, so I turned right at the end of the road and dropped the..”

“I’m sorry, what?” she said, cutting me off. I detected a derisive snort from the back office. Her eyebrow was set to inquisitive.

“I turned right at the end of the road and parked up by the café there”, I said, concluding my description of events.

“Oh, Mr Suggzy” she said, swallowing down a grin and choking down a laugh.

“This is no turn right. This is one way street.”

Bollocks, I thought, as the first pips of perspiration found their way to the surface.

“Please to go left, instead, and drive up the ramp into our garage”.

I wondered about requesting someone else did this for me, but thought better of it, wanting to salvage some pride from this latest balls-up.

“Righto” I said. And attempted to leave jauntily swinging the keys in the manner of a confident adult, whilst inside the store, cooler and better-looking people pealed with laughter.

Back to the junction I went and yep, sure as shit, there was a bloody great sign saying AVIS DROP-OFF GARAGE FOR STUPID ENGLISH. Or something like that – I don’t recall precisely.

I sighed at the inevitability of it all. And made for my new bride and our luggage.

As I got within hailing distance, she called out to me:

“Someone came out of the café, and said we’ve parked the wrong..”

“I know”, I growled through my teeth. A moment of silence, and back into the motor I folded myself.

At which point I made my last questionable decision of the motoring for this holiday. I reasoned that, as I could not see ahead to a point where one could turn right, and so begin a route back to where we had been (with the possible threat of a trip back to the roundabout), I would reverse back to where I had made my erroneous turn. That way, I would at least not actually be driving straight at the enemy, would I?

Well, no, but it wasn’t a manoeuvre without its problems. I got back into a position in the middle of the road easily enough, but soon found that going backwards meant the road behind me appeared perilously narrow. And the drivers now advancing upon my position, bonnet to bonnet, were not slow to reach for the horn, as I began to weave, uncertainly backwards. I came within a whisker of sending the scooters over like dominos. Crowds ooh-d and aah-d with every little flick of the Englishman’s steering wheel exacerbated the developing drama. I’ve just looked the street up on Google Maps (Street View) and gone both cold and sweaty at the same time.

Sometime in what appeared to be the late evening, I arrived back at the bloody junction. I righted my wheels, and roared off up the other way into the garage, never to look back upon my vehicle once I had locked it up and sprinted for the exit. Wordlessly, I submitted my keys a second time, and the whole affair was, very gladly, over.

As we know, however, I do insist on getting married now and again. And so came another honeymoon, eight and a half years later. SWK and I had spent 48 hours settling into Crete, and were readying ourselves for a couple of days of road trips under our own steam. This time, the lady had submitted her driving licence for behind-the-wheel duties. All most exciting. Guide books had suggested to us that perhaps Greek motoring wasn’t the absolute safest, but ever the optimists, we made ready.

Matters vehicular were somewhat concerning from the very off, just as an observer in the back of a cab that we hailed at the airport, to take us to the hotel we were staying at, about ¾ mile outside of Heraklion. A tired-looking cabbie leaned back across the seats to us, and asked where we were going.

“The Hotel Paradise” I replied, wielding a piece of paper with the address on it.

Another one of those long pauses. This time a Greek rather than an Italian eyebrow was raised.

“Really?”

“Well, er, yes” I countered.

“Mmmm. That’s no place for a holiday” said our man, rather decisively, and pulled out into the traffic.

The mind boggled. And it boggled rather more, once we took a long left-hander up and out of the airport, and our chap had to violently swerve into oncoming traffic, whilst a squad of stray dogs commenced an impromptu canine orgy, smack in the middle of the road.

“Bit hot for that malarkey” I commented. To silence.

Two days later we walked down to the port, to collect our trusty steed, and to have a bit of a practice on rather more local roads, before we set sail for Rethymnon the following day (about 50 minutes or so from where we were). Plan was to noodle up the coast to a beach for a swim and a spot of lunch, then go for a nosey in a cave that afternoon. Handed the keys by a big friendly bear of a fellow, for some reason I handed over a few extra € when presented the option to extend the insurance cover somewhat. Not the sort of thing I normally go for, but unusually prescient, as it turned out.

We found our way gently out onto the highway, and made our way through suburban Heraklion, past the airport and up the coast to a beach. Prior to swimming, we scarfed a spot of lunch (breaking all the rules of childhood, there), which included some salted anchovies. Big buggers, they were, and so intensely salty as to require one to immediately bolt a half-bottle of water to level one’s chemistry back out again.

There was swimming, and then we went cross country, in what was now the searing heat of the day, to go visit a cave. Second choice cave in the end – the other one eluded us, but in the end, after a lot of driving, all of it rather sedate and worry free, we came upon a tiny church, and a path down to the yawning mouth of a huge cave, which was really rather startling. One climbed down into it for what felt like miles, and I have never been so struck by the temperature differential in all my life. Outside, it was frankly infernal, but clamber down a couple of hundred feet or more, and one started to shiver, after a while.

Plenty of snapping and touristy behaviour, and then it was herself’s turn to pilot. With a nervy start: “it’s all the wrong way ‘round!” she exclaimed. “Well.. yes”, I replied, helpfully, earning myself a rather dark look. However, before long we were tootling along quite nicely, and I even managed a spot of video, which made me enormously popular, in those early foothills of married life.

Back towards town, a bit of local road sense and gentle reserve was employed, and SWK deposited us back at the Hotel Paradise (which was fine, it turned out). High fives all ‘round. Drinks, dinner, shuteye, then off to Rethymnon the following morning.

No bother. Had us over there in no time. Basically just drive along one road, and turn right. Park up on the front. Lunch, some wandering through the cooler and atmospheric streets, then another afternoon swim, before a coffee and hometime.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that this was a simple case of repeating the same trip in reverse order? But no. My attempts to navigate were confounded at every turn – literally. Farm animals blocked the road, slip roads proved elusive, and we were soon driving parallel to the motorway on country roads. Indeed I think we may briefly have charged through someone’s farm.

But, eventually, we came to a hill, up which SWK was driving – looking back, quite a long way to the right hand side, and I spied what I believed to be the way back onto the main drag. “Over there” I cried in triumph. “What? Where?” the driver replied, as we veered inescapably near to the parked cars next to me, and then, with a crunch and a tinkle, into them.

We remained calm, under the circumstances. Pulled up, got out, and walked back to retrace steps. First thing I saw was a car with a smashed windscreen, which set the pulse racing rather. Got a bit closer and realised it was simply a derelict car. Soon enough, one was picking up a partially-smashed wing mirror glass off the highway, and SWK was chatting up some older-stager who’d appeared at the sound of her giving his motor a friendly nudge. She signalled to him what had happened, and pushed his own wing mirror back into place, on what was, I recall, not a motor on A-Grade order, and arguably the veteran of rather more forceful impacts. His overall attitude was summed up with two words in English: “who cares?” Sold.

Fine for him, but we had gifted the Greeks a wing mirror. SWK declared herself no longer willing to drive the wrong way ‘round (and has not since), and in between her (rather breath-taking) criticisms of my own attempts to drive back (hands up if you haven’t had an RTA today… oh, just me?),  we gradually cobbled together a tale of woe about how our car had been cruelly damaged whilst parked-up. Complete hooey, of course, but neither of us somehow felt up to the paperwork the following day. White lie. When it came to the time to deliver it, we were so utterly transparent in our bullshit excuses that it was more acutely embarrassing than telling the simple truth would have been. Sad and sympathetic eyes from our big friendly bear, as we pointed out that the car now only had one eye. An assurance that the advanced insurance I had purchased would, of course, cover the cost of this dreadful tragedy.

And so we departed, back onto feet alone. Tails between legs a little. Best I don’t get married again, eh?

I shall have a little think about what to cover next. Back soon! Probably..