Читать книгу One More Croissant for the Road онлайн

61 страница из 105

They’re more anxious about us getting run over by what they call ‘milk floats’ – the tiny, whining voiturettes you can drive in France without a licence, making them, they claim, popular with those banned for drink driving. ‘They’re lethal, those things,’ she tells me as we leave. ‘Watch your back.’

This slightly sinister warning, as well as a vast, bloated dead cow I spot out of the corner of my eye as I roll past a farmyard on the outskirts of town, make me feel quite nervous and when I lose Matt on a long climb shortly afterwards, I become positively paranoid. Just as I’m about to turn around to see if he’s been flattened by a drunkard on a milk float, he comes round the corner looking a bit pink, and asks, very politely, how many more mountains we have to climb before the big one. I have to confess I have no idea, but there’s certainly no mistaking the thing when we finally reach it: Avranches is a very pretty town, if you don’t mind heights.

The road in winds up round the lower suburbs like a snake, though this gradient is at least preferable to the shortcuts Google Maps keeps trying to divert me onto, all of which appear near vertical. When I finally make it to our budget hotel, I’m puce, and there’s no sign of Matt. ‘Do you have a bar?’ I ask Madame, sweating onto her registration forms. She looks genuinely apologetic as she shakes her head, so I head upstairs for a cold shower instead.