Day 2 - Accidental Detour to Switzerland

Woke up to the BBC news headline ‘France Champagne Industry Gone Flat’. Apparently due to the cancellation of weddings & pretty much all other celebrations in 2020, champagne sales had plummeted & producers in the Champagne region had lost €1.7 million in sales this year. Tens of millions of bottles are likely to go to waste & huge amounts of grapes are ready to be harvested. The 16,000 winemakers in the region are due to have a crisis meeting to decide whether to destroy the excess grapes or send them to distilleries to make hand sanitiser, which seems is not a popular option.

Jackie woke up with a throbbing finger.

The French receptionist who couldn’t speak English charged us more than she should have done, but hopefully Booking.com will sort it out. We paid her for our parking & left the hotel & walked the couple of hundred yards to our car. Upon arrival at our car, I noticed that Jackie was not in possession of her orange Gandy rucksack.

I had to run back to the hotel & found her rucksack containing most of her valuables, makeup & toiletries on a seat. I ran back & we drove to the car park exit only to find the car park was insisting on charging us a second time.

I had to reverse back, then run back to the hotel & obtain an exit ticket from French receptionist. I ran back & we finally headed south out of Reims. After fuelling up, we drove south through a forest to Epernay, a major champagne town, whilst Jackie had her infected finger in a pot of antiseptic solution.

We continued south along roads flanked by vineyards and sunflower fields & stopped for breakfast, coffee & a sandwich, at a nice Artisan Boulanger, Les Fournil Des Maissons. We nearly left door less, after a speeding lorry missed Jackie’s open passenger door by inches.

Continuing, our route took us through Troyes, Dijon, Dole, Montholier, the very pretty Poligny & Champagnole. Somewhere we stopped at another Artisan Boulanger for coffee, quiche & croissant. The kind girl also filled up our water bottles for us.

We then started climbing up into the French Jura Mountains, passing through the heaving Les Rousses, to the Col de la Faucille, a mountain pass at an elevation of 1323 metres. The Tour de France has passed over it a total of 41 times and as we passed over it we were treated to a fleeting stunning view of Lake Geneva with it’s snowy mountain backdrop.

We then drove the winding descent towards Switzerland, impressed by the numerous cyclists battling their way up. We passed through Gex and then all of a sudden whilst following the SatNav, we drove through the unmanned border into Switzerland on the outskirts of Geneva. It came as somewhat of a surprise, because I thought our route was going to skirt round Switzerland. Hey ho.

The Geneva suburbs were busy and I was glad to leave Switzerland about 30 minutes later. We continued in heavy traffic to Annecy, which sits on Lake Annecy. I was looking forward to seeing it, but time was against us so we continued on passing along the shoreline of Lac du Bourget & to finally to Chambéry, our chosen stop for the night. We located our hotel, Hotel L’Actuel, then parked in what we thought was their car park.

We grabbed our overnight bags and checked in around 8.00pm, only to be told that we were in the wrong car park. Bugger! We dumped our bags in the room, then ran back to the car to prevent incurring too much further cost. Back at the car, Jackie realised that the car park ticket was back in the room. Brilliant!

Finally we moved the car to the correct car park, but entry was by intercom & we were told it was full, but due to a language misunderstanding, she let us in anyway. We squeezed our car into the most minuscule of spots that was reserved for the Mercure Hotel. Relieved we returned to our hotel for a chilled beer only for the receptionist to tell us we couldn’t park where we had because it was full & we should park in the original car park & gave us a fob for it. There then began a long frustrating and animated discussion with him, which only got semi-resolved when the night receptionist arrived who could speak a modicum of English. The result - I moved the car to a different space in the same car park.

It was now 9.00pm, we were tired & hungry, so we walked into the old town & found a lovely restaurant with outside seating called Les Halles. We both had a fantastic rump steak with a whisky sauce & pomme frites, washed down with a couple of carafes of the smoothest red wine.

It had been a long tiring day.

Song of the Day : Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood by The Animals.Read more