Diary 12. The Day We Almost Became A Convertible

 First things first, I've only ever driven in the UK. I've watched Matt drive in America, and I've watched foreign films, and that is as far as my knowledge base goes for driving anywhere other than England. And even then, I must admit, I sometimes misread a sign, or take a turn the wrong way down a one way street (I know, I know, you can slap my wrists later, but remember, always an honest mistake, never a shortcut!). 

I'd watched Matt drive the first evening we arrived in France, where we quickly realised that we had completely neglected to look up anything about European road signs, what they mean, and what the national speed limit is! So I gave us a crash course (excuse the pun) on the meanings that night, and felt a little more ready to conquer the French road system. I decided to be a good wife, and told Matt that I would drive as he had covered a lot of miles the night before. So, behind the wheel I got, with my old second hand Sat-Nav directing us and letting us know that we had a joyful 7 hour drive ahead of us to get to dads house without going on toll roads. Unfortunately for you guys, we hadn't figured out any of the dashcam or other filming equipment just yet, so there's no footage of the fun time we had driving through our first small city. 

I was already flustered as we had entered a one way system, which seemed to have lots of parked cars on it. The speed limit kept changing, and the left hand lane kept switching from being ahead only to left only. We'd been over a couple of roundabouts, and then the Sat-Nav told me to stay to the left this time, to avoid a roundabout. It was then, at 70 kph, that I saw the big red and white hanging height strips. There were cars behind me following quite close, and there was no way to get out of the lane as there were bollards to the right. BAM! A huge crashing sound on the roof from the height barriers. Good God no. Please no. But the town planners had other ideas. Looming before us like a dragon from a cave,  a bridge. A low, full of cars, made of steel and concrete, going underground bridge. I looked around wildly, but there were no means of escape. The sign on the bridge edge said 2.6m. We had never measured it ourselves, but the previous owner had a sticker on the drivers panel saying '2600m high'. 

An example of the type of sign

I'm no mathematician, but if the bridge is 2.6 high, and we are 2.6 high, allowing for bumps in the road or layers of tarmac, we had ZERO wiggle room. Plus we had an upside down metal pot welded to the roof which wasn't there before. The bridge drew closer, and revealed that the road underneath it was not straight. Oh no, that would be too easy. It was a very steep decline to get under. We weren't going to make it without damages. I was sure of it. 

To avoid any sliced off parts of our van flying at 70kph towards the trail of cars behind us, I slowed down to an army crawl as we passed beneath the bridge, frantically looking and listening as hard as we could for signs of being wedged. Somehow, we made it out the other side, seemingly unscathed. Sweating a little, I turned to Matt and we thanked our lucky stars.  

And then, the bridge's twin! Gosh darn it! We only made it through the other one by the skin of our teeth (well, the skin of the roof, which I luckily hadn't painted, else perhaps we would've gotten stuck!). It was breathe in time again. At this point we had worked out that the underpass of the bridge was to provide a shortcut for those continuing straight, rather than having to stop at each roundabout above. It also had a higher speed limit than the roads approaching the roundabouts, one which the poor motorists behind me hadn't gotten anywhere near in at least 5 minutes. 

We held our breath, and slowed to the pace of a snail pulling a chariot, just in case this bridge happened to be lying about it's height. I honestly think that the cars behind must've thought we would get stuck, as looking up from their angle behind the van, we must've been millimetres from scraping. Luckily, again, we remained unscathed, and as quickly as I possibly could I moved over into the right hand lane to take the annoying, but less white knuckle ride route through the town, using the roundabouts. 

The woman who had been behind us looked utterly disgusted and perplexed by our actions (I say 'our' as we're married, so I can blame bad stuff on the two of us, right?). I held my hand up high in the air and gave her my absolute best puppy eyes/ puss in boots expression to amend the wrong. 

That day, everyone who encountered us driving under those bridges were probably muttering to themselves "Bloody English". 

Safe to say, not long after this, we stopped for a rest break, and Matt climbed into the drivers seat almost before I could remove myself from it. He didn't let me drive for 2 weeks after that....

Jenna x

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