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Saturday 17th October 2015

Up early to pack and Evelyne’s friend Marco duly arrives to check us out of the apartment.

The next 5 hours or so is taken up with driving from Collioure to Grenoble almost entirely on toll roads and at a cost of approx 50 Euros.

On arriving at the first pay station we encounter huge queues and when it’s our turn to pay into the auto machine it can’t read our ticket and won’t accept either of our credit cards. By now I am starting to visualise the newspaper headline- ‘ white-haired man beaten to death in France in road rage incident’. Eventually, a woman whose name is apparently called ‘HELP’ comes on the intercom and the issue is resolved with that old faithful- cash.

Stop off at a freeway cafe and get surprisingly good coffee and pastries and some time later we enjoy a picnic lunch in a beautifully maintained area well away from a freeway service area.

As we progress north the scenery becomes far more impressive and our destination for the day Grenoble, which neither of us has visited, is in a stunning location on the Isere River and surrounded by mountains. We find our accommodation for the next four nights without any problems( thank you TomTom ) and the apartment located in a former chateau, La Chateua de La Rochette in Fontaine west of Grenoble is all that we could wish for.

We settle in to watch the Springboks beat Wales in the RWC Qtr Final and then it’s off to the local Geant supermarket to buy a packaged Moroccan meal which proves to be very tasty.

End a long tiring day by watching the All Blacks annihilate France in their Qtr Final and go to bed wondering whether any team can beat our’friends’ from across the ditch while they are in this form.

Cheers

The Obese Ferret