“You cannot park anywhere on the Euro-Disney resort until the morning, except in the car park of a Hotel you are staying at”, said the security guard, supervising the entrance to the car park of the Sequoia Lodge Hotel. “We are booked in here, for tomorrow night”, I responded. “Then you can come back tomorrow” he replied.
This conversation took place in the early dark hours of the morning. To be more precise it was 3:30am on Thursday and we had booked a room for Thursday night. Perhaps I should have said “tonight” instead of “tomorrow night”.
It had been 7:00pm on Wednesday, when we had left North West London. Now on top of the drive to Dover and the ferry crossing, we had just driven non stop to the east of Paris, from Calais. By this time my desire to get a few hours sleep was the dominant of my priorities.
We had originally booked one night in the Hotel Santa Fe, which was the least expensive of the Euro-Disney hotels. At this time Euro-Disney was a new resort, which had only been open a very short while. Early media feedback suggested that it’s phase I amusement facilities were relatively limited, when compared with its American cousins. We had got the strong impression that a single day in the resort would enable us to cover the major rides to our satisfaction. Certainly there was a lot of publicity about low attendances and the resulting poor revenues.
Three weeks before our departure, the Disney people had phoned, to tell us that we had been upgraded to the more expensive Sequoia Lodge Hotel, at no extra cost. Naturally we were very pleased. They also offered us additional days on the same upgraded basis. We declined them, having already decided to stay for just the one day. We also thought that the few hours between our anticipated arrival and the resort opening, did not justify the cost of a whole nights accommodation. We had planned to sleep in the car for those few hours.
However it was now obvious that the security guard confronting me was determined to thwart this idea. I contemplated driving back to the motorway to find a rest area. By now though, tiredness was winning the argument over the extra French francs I would need to part with.
The receptionist made it clear that I would have to pay for a full extra night, even though the night was already more than half-gone. I was also told I would have to pay the full Sequoia Lodge price for the night, since the special deal we had previously been offered, only applied to advance bookings.
I think I might have raised my voice a bit at this point, because the single receptionist quickly morphed into a group of three hotel staff, who formed a united front to confirm the lack of flexibility in the room charging rules.
With this last bit of adamantly delivered news, money considerations came into play again. I turned to head back to the car park, once more contemplating spending the ever-shortening remainder of the night, at a motorway service area.
Sensing at last that they were about to lose a customer for one of their many empty and at this time of night, unfillable beds, they suddenly softened their stance and offered me the Santa Fe price.
The security guard had won. He had generated more business for his employer. If he was gloating at his triumph as let us into the car park, he graciously showed no sign of it.
We took out our bags and woke Sarah, who we had not told about our planned visit to Euro-Disney. Apart from wanting to surprise her, we knew that like any other seven year old, she would have been impossible to live with, had she known our intentions. Certainly she would not have slept peacefully in the car as we drove from Calais to Paris.
As we ascended in the hotel lift, Sarah sleepily remarked that there seemed to be a lot of pictures from Disney films in this Hotel. Upon discovering more Disney pictures in our room and finding the soap came in Mickey Mouse decorated boxes, she asked whether this hotel was anywhere near Euro-Disney.
Enlightened by the truth and full of anticipation, Sarah probably didn’t sleep much for the rest of the night. She didn’t keep me awake though. I lost consciousness from the moment my head touched the pillow, in the most comfortable bed that I had ever slept in.
The next morning Sarah could hardly contain herself as we went through the turnstiles into Main Street USA. First we stopped at a café for breakfast. Jane and I drank coffee and ate emaciated croissants. Sarah had a Burger and Coke. Normally, neither of us would have let her have such a breakfast, but today was her day and everything she asked for, she got. Then we headed for Thunder Mountain.
Using a guidebook I had bought in England several weeks before, we concentrated on the major rides only. We did not have to queue for more than 15 minutes for any of them. Apart from a short break back at the Hotel from 4:00pm to 6:00pm we stayed the whole day in the park.
We all agreed that the highlight was the electric parade and fireworks just before the park closed for the night. Of course Sarah asked if we could stay longer, but on that count we had to disappoint her.
On Friday morning, as we drove back toward Paris, we talked about our Euro-Disney experience. We all agreed that the hotel rooms were excellent and the quality of the fixtures and fittings both in the hotel and the park was superb. The rides were good, but to make a longer stay worthwhile, there needed to be more of them. It also seemed a pity that there was so little to choose other than junk food, right in the gastronomic heart of Europe. I have to admit that Sarah did not concur with this final thought.
Largely because of the Sequoia Lodge’s incredibly comfortable beds, we had not risen particularly early. Having also eaten breakfast at the hotel, the morning was already well advanced when we departed.
Unusually I was in no hurry to reach the Languedoc, since in any event we would need to stop off for another night before reaching Frasquenet. I had received several bookings for the house during that summer and the current residents were not due to depart until the following morning, Saturday.
The Auto route had made some progress since the previous year and now bypassed a particularly slow piece of road near St Flour. It ended a few miles before Millau, where we stopped and booked ourselves into a hotel for the Friday night.
The Hotel was situated conveniently in the centre of the town and smelt of Gazpacho, a cucumbery smell which I must confess I used not to enjoy, but which now I love. It is an acquired nasal experience, which for me awakens childhood memories of Mediterranean holidays, continental hotel restaurants and sunny days on sandy beaches. A waft of Amber Solaire strikes me similarly.
In the event we didn’t eat at the Hotel, but in a small restaurant in the partially pedestrianised shopping area of the old town. The meal was not memorable for anything in particular, other than the Rose wine being a little tart.
Later, while Jane lay in bed reading, I sat in a chair on the Hotel balcony, watching dusk turn to night. I listened to the local noises and sipped the Brandy, that I had extravagantly awarded myself from the Mini Bar.
Sarah sat on my lap and we watched the lights of cars on the steep road, which ascended one of the surrounding mountains. “We’ll be on that road early tomorrow morning”, I told her. “Not too early please dad”, she replied. Well I thought maybe I would need a bit longer than usual to sleep off the brandy, so I didn’t complain.
The next morning the ascent up the mountain road out of Millau was the usual race. As on previous occasions, I endeavoured to overtake as many cars towing caravans, as possible, before reaching the top. This stretch of road is three lanes. The middle lane overtaking priority is allocated to the ascending southbound traffic. I usually enjoy the progress I make on this stretch, but on this occasion one inconsiderate, caravan puller was overtaking another one. The time this took seemed interminable and I’m sure it robbed me of at least five passed caravans, from my total tally.
We eventually reached the top and started to cross the plain of Larzac. I eagerly anticipated the usual wonderful, sense enriching, descent onto the Languedoc vineyard plain, on the dual carriageway, which passes Lodeve.
I had been too optimistic, because large diversion signs and the tail end of a queue of slowly moving traffic greeted us instead. The traffic crawled slowly along some new carriageway, around a new roundabout and through the centre of a previously sleepy village. When the traffic wasn’t crawling it was stationary. It took us an hour to cover a distance, which under normal conditions takes less than five minutes. Sarah became quite irritable and suggested that we spend the full duration of all future holidays at Euro-Disney.
At the end of the main street of the village, we reached a fork in the road. At the apex of the fork was a large sign which displayed yellow and black chevron styled arrows, pointing both left and right. I could not discern any official basis for making a decision as to whether left or right was the correct way to go.
Based on the fact that most of the traffic was going left, we went right. After two minutes of wild abandon, during which I may have broken the speed limit, we joined the back end of another queue.
This traffic was moving at 2CV speed, which was not too bad, but for the fact that on straight stretches, I could see the actual 2CV which headed it.
The 2CV is a basic post World War II French, peoples car, with a top speed which matches the low price. Other European equivalents are the UK’s Morris Minor or the German Beetle. The styling is such, that some have christened the 2CV “The Flying Deckchair”. However I can confirm that like it’s UK and German stable mates, the standard edition hardly moves, let alone flies.
Patience prevailed however and we descended the mountains on back roads, without overtaking a single car. Admittedly we and the rest of the procession were ourselves overtaken, by what appeared to be kamikaze pilots in tuned up Renault 5s.
I wondered at the patience of the residents of Bedarieux, the small town we had visited some years before when house hunting. Now they had to put up with a continuous procession of diverted traffic, it was already bad enough in mid July; I tried to imagine August.
We were now in familiar territory; I broke away from the queue and headed for Frasquenet. It was just after 2:00pm when I reversed the car off the village road into the barn.
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