Follow that bus! (France)

Jeanette and I had got up nice and early for me to catch the very first bus from Auch to Agen, where I was to board my TGV train to Paris, and from there my Eurostar train for London.  Again, another stack of domino-effect arrangements (see blog entry Cuzco chico). 

It was still dark when we got there, at about 530am.  Sat there in silence—Jeanette can’t speak English, and I can’t speak French—waiting in the car park in front of Auch train station from which the coaches normally left.  Being half awake, we didn’t quite consciously register that the car park was unusually devoid of any coach traffic, parked or otherwise.  There was only one other car a few spaces away from us, with three people in it, obviously also waiting for a coach.

The next thing was, we saw my coach beetling off down the road.  Now where did it appear from??!! 

It turned out that they’d moved the coach bays, which were now over to the other side.  Neither we nor the occupants of the other car knew that, so we'd been waiting all the while at the wrong place. 

The driver of the other car leapt out of his car at the same time as Jeanette and I, and dashed over to the one coach sitting there in the new coach bay area.  He challenged the poor driver of that coach, in French: “Why did no-one tell us that you’ve now moved over to this side!  We’ve been waiting over there for ages!  And we have to catch a train at Agen for Paris!!  Now what are we going to do!?” 

The coach driver just shrugged his shoulders.  After all, what was he to do about it?  He did try to help though, by saying, “Maybe you could catch up with it as it’s doing its round of village stops.”  The car driver said, “Right, that’s what we’ll do.”  Jeanette, hovering just behind him, fully awake now, eagle-eyed and ears all flapping, looking like a vulture eagerly waiting for even the smallest crumbs, said, “Et la Chinoise??”  I’d never heard myself referred to as such before. 

The man said, “She can come too.”  I hopped in with my bag, and we started chasing the bus, which by now had a good 10-minute head start on us. 

The route was a straight one to Agen on the main road, but the village stops involved turning off the main road, doing a loop, picking up passengers at the village stops, then re-joining the main road.  For a few village stops, we would just miss the bus by a few minutes—arriving to find seers-off turning away to go back home—then quickly rush back to the main road. 

One more village stop and then the coach would be on the long and straight run into Agen.  It was starting to get hairy.

Then, just before we got to the final village stop, we saw ahead the bus emerging onto the main road, so we sped forwards.  Once abreast of the coach, we ran alongside it, wound down the windows, stuck all available arms out of the windows, waved madly and shouted out at the driver to let us get on.  He pulled over, and we climbed aboard.  Phew.

Also read blog entry: Follow that train! (Switzerland)

(France)