Strike One
Oct. 13th, 2010 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksWell, apparently France was "brought to a halt" yesterday. You can take this as on a par with London being in a state of panic during the IRA bombings of the 1970s. In other words, total bollocks. In Nice the schools were still open and the shops were still selling food. The city buses weren't running -- one of the most observable absences was the lack of the trams ringing their bells every time they set off from a stop (being electric, they make very little noise otherwise, which is a significant danger to the unwary, hence the bells).
Not many trains were running and, of course, the people who were really screwed were those who wanted to leave the country by plane. Virtually nothing was flying out of Nice through EasyJet. And another strike is planned for Saturday, when my plane is scheduled to leave. Hmm. Strangely, one of the few planes that DID leave Nice Airport yesterday was the "equivalent" to my plane on Saturday -- the early-morning flight to Gatwick. However, if that one is cancelled, the situation is all up in the air. It looks as if I shall have to stay glued to the screen on Friday, ready to rebook as fast as possible if the "cancelled" sign comes up on the EasyJet flight-checker. That should get me a plane on Sunday, with luck.
If it doesn't, I haven't really decided what to do. Various options are available. I know that people would say that there are worse things than being stuck in your holiday destination for an extra few days -- and that is true. But, as I am sure people who suffered from the Icelandic volcano panic earlier this year will testify, it's not exactly a barrel of laughs when it happens.
Oh, and in a brilliant FML moment, this is my first trip in about 20 years without travel insurance, although the additional costs aren't likely to be that great in the grand scheme of things.
Yesterday the clouds broke and the sun came out; and, after a not very stressful day on Monday, I woke up fairly alert. So I headed to the bus station to check if the airport bus was running (useful to know for Saturday) and to see if anything else was running. Answers were; yes, and yes.
I hopped on the 100 bus to Menton and away I went. In days gone by this would have been a good excuse to start a long read, but either I'm getting old or I'm suffering burn-out, because all I did was stare aimlessly out of the window. Clearly I don't get enough "turning-off' time.
It was about an hour and 25 minutes to Menton -- with part of the trip slowed by the inevitable queue to get into Monaco.
Shortly before I got to the centre of town I spotted some gardens that appeared to have some odd statues in them, so I jumped off at the next stop and headed back to investigate. These turned out to be the "gardens of Menton", a really eccentric combination of traditional statues, modern statues and a "museum" of citrus trees.
There was a whole range of citrus fruits, including samples of crosses between oranges and lemons, lemons and limes, plus pamplemousses, pomelos, and so on. We take for granted all of the different types of oranges, but seem to think that "a lemon is a lemon and a lime is a lime". But these gardens had round lemons, big lemons, limey-lemons and orangey-lemons and even...
... a variegated lemon (or is it lime?)
After that I went for a stroll along the beach, but the sun was actually out in force and, despite the wind, it was quite warm. Menton normally gets a couple of degrees more warmth than Nice anyway.
The Menton coast.
So I headed up a street to find some shade, and on my way I came across a computer repair shop with this in the front window:
There was also a Sinclair ZX81 (with expansion pack, obv). Perhaps I should offer them my Tandy. Sadly, I think I did dump the Amstrad 256, mainly because I couldn't be bothered to fix the 3in disc drive.
But the main purpose of my visit was to complete a walk I had begun the last time I was here. On my return I checked the map and discovered that there was indeed a through-route (I had been rather worried that I would end up in a dead-end three-quarters of the way up a mountain, in the dark).
The route begins from the old cemetery where William Webb Ellis is buried (just out of picture to bottom left) and would take me up to the A8 France-Italy autoroute. I've appended some thumbnails, so I've made this picture a bit bigger than normal so that they are not indistinguishable from match-heads.
The arrows indicate the direction of the route and also the direction that the camera was pointing when I took the various pictures.
The start of the walk, by the town's main church.
The "old" port can just be seen to the right. On the left is a football pitch built out of reclaimed land. To the left of that (out of picture) is the new marina.
The new marina is in the background. Thumbnail of this picture is on map. 4x4 was there, but no apparent owner for miles around. Odd. I was passed by a few cars on this trek, and a few cyclists. It's an excellent cyclist's training route, I would think.
No other walkers, though, presumably because this is not a designated walk.
The small road spends a fair way running parallel to the autoroute. Slipping through the fence to walk in front of a truck would be easy (should anyone ever be so minded to kill themselves in a beautiful part of the world.)
The Super Garavan passes underneath Autoroute 8.
This was about as high as I got. It's possible to walk higher, up some no-through roads that just take you to rather expensive houses. There is also another route that takes you to Castillar, one of the mountain towns. Looking at Google Maps afterwards, it became clear that I could make this route a target next time -- as well as a walk along the lower roads that actually do take you to Italy. As everyone knows, walking to an airport is, as Will Self described it, "a subversive act". I wonder if walking across a border is the same? Or do they not really bother within the EU any more?
Menton has distinct Italian undertones -- newspapers, businesses -- and is apparently quite a Mecca for the Italians at weekends. Unsurprising, considering how beautiful it is. I also looked at the estate agents' offerings, and found that it wasn't as highly priced as I thought. Much depends on location within Menton (and on condition) and, as usual, you get what you pay for. If I take as a parameter where I live in London, then prices would probably be about the same per square foot for a comparable property in a not particularly top-class part of town. For nice large places with a pool up on the road where I walked, think 2m euro-plus.
At this point I noticed on my left some steps that apparently led up to the top of the entrance to a tunnel above the A8. Cool, I thought. I wonder if I'm allowed up there? As you can see from the picture, it didn't look as if anyone had made their way up here for some time.
But I got my way to the top, and this was the resultant view:
And this was the view down from near this point.
The view of the town. new marina at bottom, and the old port further along. The main railway line can be seen to the right of the picture. Further up near the top-right edge is the "new" cemetery, while the church in the middle of the picture marks the beginning of my walk.
As near to Italy as I could get.
Behind me, a wall of "no further".
As I descended, I took this picture of when I came. You can see the two tunnels heading into the rock. My walk was just to the right of that.
On my walk down, I came to realize that my knees have certainly degraded over the past year -- possibly the result of a short period of running for my gym training. As you can see from the map, there are a couple of options where I could have turned left and walked down some steps to get to the coast (although, to be fair, I was unaware of this at the time -- I had no idea where the steps when because I didn't have a map on me -- just my Tom Tom, which served me very well during this trip!). However, my left knee was not reacting well to going down any steps. Indeed, for the last quarter of this walk, I felt that I was walking like an old man.
I decided to beat the rush hour back to Nice, although I had forgotten precisely where the bus station was. Luckily I saw a 100 bus heading towards it, and I folloowed for about a couple of hundred yards. That set me in the right direction and, indeed, turned out to be the bus that I caught back.
The rush hour was defeated. Relatively quiet bus (equals, not packed) and only 1hr 15min for the journey.
I also took a couple of interesting pictures last night, but I've gone on long enough. And I want to get a short walk along the coast in this afternoon -- the continuation of my Saturday trek. My knees seem to have recuperated as well, so clearly this exercise is good for them, even though I didn't think so when I got off the bus last night. Jeez, they'd stiffened up.
+++++++++
I see that Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker prize. Any comment from Ladbrokes? Wankers.
______________
Not many trains were running and, of course, the people who were really screwed were those who wanted to leave the country by plane. Virtually nothing was flying out of Nice through EasyJet. And another strike is planned for Saturday, when my plane is scheduled to leave. Hmm. Strangely, one of the few planes that DID leave Nice Airport yesterday was the "equivalent" to my plane on Saturday -- the early-morning flight to Gatwick. However, if that one is cancelled, the situation is all up in the air. It looks as if I shall have to stay glued to the screen on Friday, ready to rebook as fast as possible if the "cancelled" sign comes up on the EasyJet flight-checker. That should get me a plane on Sunday, with luck.
If it doesn't, I haven't really decided what to do. Various options are available. I know that people would say that there are worse things than being stuck in your holiday destination for an extra few days -- and that is true. But, as I am sure people who suffered from the Icelandic volcano panic earlier this year will testify, it's not exactly a barrel of laughs when it happens.
Oh, and in a brilliant FML moment, this is my first trip in about 20 years without travel insurance, although the additional costs aren't likely to be that great in the grand scheme of things.
Yesterday the clouds broke and the sun came out; and, after a not very stressful day on Monday, I woke up fairly alert. So I headed to the bus station to check if the airport bus was running (useful to know for Saturday) and to see if anything else was running. Answers were; yes, and yes.
I hopped on the 100 bus to Menton and away I went. In days gone by this would have been a good excuse to start a long read, but either I'm getting old or I'm suffering burn-out, because all I did was stare aimlessly out of the window. Clearly I don't get enough "turning-off' time.
It was about an hour and 25 minutes to Menton -- with part of the trip slowed by the inevitable queue to get into Monaco.
Shortly before I got to the centre of town I spotted some gardens that appeared to have some odd statues in them, so I jumped off at the next stop and headed back to investigate. These turned out to be the "gardens of Menton", a really eccentric combination of traditional statues, modern statues and a "museum" of citrus trees.
There was a whole range of citrus fruits, including samples of crosses between oranges and lemons, lemons and limes, plus pamplemousses, pomelos, and so on. We take for granted all of the different types of oranges, but seem to think that "a lemon is a lemon and a lime is a lime". But these gardens had round lemons, big lemons, limey-lemons and orangey-lemons and even...
... a variegated lemon (or is it lime?)
After that I went for a stroll along the beach, but the sun was actually out in force and, despite the wind, it was quite warm. Menton normally gets a couple of degrees more warmth than Nice anyway.
The Menton coast.
So I headed up a street to find some shade, and on my way I came across a computer repair shop with this in the front window:
There was also a Sinclair ZX81 (with expansion pack, obv). Perhaps I should offer them my Tandy. Sadly, I think I did dump the Amstrad 256, mainly because I couldn't be bothered to fix the 3in disc drive.
But the main purpose of my visit was to complete a walk I had begun the last time I was here. On my return I checked the map and discovered that there was indeed a through-route (I had been rather worried that I would end up in a dead-end three-quarters of the way up a mountain, in the dark).
The route begins from the old cemetery where William Webb Ellis is buried (just out of picture to bottom left) and would take me up to the A8 France-Italy autoroute. I've appended some thumbnails, so I've made this picture a bit bigger than normal so that they are not indistinguishable from match-heads.
The arrows indicate the direction of the route and also the direction that the camera was pointing when I took the various pictures.
The start of the walk, by the town's main church.
The "old" port can just be seen to the right. On the left is a football pitch built out of reclaimed land. To the left of that (out of picture) is the new marina.
The new marina is in the background. Thumbnail of this picture is on map. 4x4 was there, but no apparent owner for miles around. Odd. I was passed by a few cars on this trek, and a few cyclists. It's an excellent cyclist's training route, I would think.
No other walkers, though, presumably because this is not a designated walk.
The small road spends a fair way running parallel to the autoroute. Slipping through the fence to walk in front of a truck would be easy (should anyone ever be so minded to kill themselves in a beautiful part of the world.)
The Super Garavan passes underneath Autoroute 8.
This was about as high as I got. It's possible to walk higher, up some no-through roads that just take you to rather expensive houses. There is also another route that takes you to Castillar, one of the mountain towns. Looking at Google Maps afterwards, it became clear that I could make this route a target next time -- as well as a walk along the lower roads that actually do take you to Italy. As everyone knows, walking to an airport is, as Will Self described it, "a subversive act". I wonder if walking across a border is the same? Or do they not really bother within the EU any more?
Menton has distinct Italian undertones -- newspapers, businesses -- and is apparently quite a Mecca for the Italians at weekends. Unsurprising, considering how beautiful it is. I also looked at the estate agents' offerings, and found that it wasn't as highly priced as I thought. Much depends on location within Menton (and on condition) and, as usual, you get what you pay for. If I take as a parameter where I live in London, then prices would probably be about the same per square foot for a comparable property in a not particularly top-class part of town. For nice large places with a pool up on the road where I walked, think 2m euro-plus.
At this point I noticed on my left some steps that apparently led up to the top of the entrance to a tunnel above the A8. Cool, I thought. I wonder if I'm allowed up there? As you can see from the picture, it didn't look as if anyone had made their way up here for some time.
But I got my way to the top, and this was the resultant view:
And this was the view down from near this point.
The view of the town. new marina at bottom, and the old port further along. The main railway line can be seen to the right of the picture. Further up near the top-right edge is the "new" cemetery, while the church in the middle of the picture marks the beginning of my walk.
As near to Italy as I could get.
Behind me, a wall of "no further".
As I descended, I took this picture of when I came. You can see the two tunnels heading into the rock. My walk was just to the right of that.
On my walk down, I came to realize that my knees have certainly degraded over the past year -- possibly the result of a short period of running for my gym training. As you can see from the map, there are a couple of options where I could have turned left and walked down some steps to get to the coast (although, to be fair, I was unaware of this at the time -- I had no idea where the steps when because I didn't have a map on me -- just my Tom Tom, which served me very well during this trip!). However, my left knee was not reacting well to going down any steps. Indeed, for the last quarter of this walk, I felt that I was walking like an old man.
I decided to beat the rush hour back to Nice, although I had forgotten precisely where the bus station was. Luckily I saw a 100 bus heading towards it, and I folloowed for about a couple of hundred yards. That set me in the right direction and, indeed, turned out to be the bus that I caught back.
The rush hour was defeated. Relatively quiet bus (equals, not packed) and only 1hr 15min for the journey.
I also took a couple of interesting pictures last night, but I've gone on long enough. And I want to get a short walk along the coast in this afternoon -- the continuation of my Saturday trek. My knees seem to have recuperated as well, so clearly this exercise is good for them, even though I didn't think so when I got off the bus last night. Jeez, they'd stiffened up.
+++++++++
I see that Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker prize. Any comment from Ladbrokes? Wankers.
______________
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If it's just the planes
Date: 2010-10-13 02:44 pm (UTC)Re: If it's just the planes
Date: 2010-10-13 06:31 pm (UTC)PJ
Return Trip
Date: 2010-10-13 10:31 pm (UTC)As regards return, it might be worth checking whether you could stay on in the flat for an extra night or two with the landlord. When we were stuck in Barcelona the hotel told us they had no vacancies for an extended stay. However come check out day, they were happy to keep us as the "new" arrivals couldnt get to Barcelona either.
And one more thing, appreciating this aint quite so big as the Volcano lockdown, Easyjet were turning other people away from our flight saying it was fully booked, yet it was less than half full. Many people had booked multiple escape flights and so not turned up. So if you do go to the airport hang on until the last minute if you can and hassle them.
Having said that you will either be ok or the circumstances completely different. Whatever, dont let it stop you enjoying the next two days. Cheers. Richard
Re: Return Trip
Date: 2010-10-14 12:37 pm (UTC)I'm not panicking or letting it bother me, although I did have a dreadful night's sleep last night for some reason.
First of all I have to check whether or not my flight is cancelled. I hope that "my" flight kind of qualifies as a late Friday flight, and so French ATC allow it to "get back home". That's the only reason I can think of that it was one of the few flights out of Nice on Tuesday.
If the flight is cancelled, then I have to see how soon EasyJet can get me back to the UK. If it's Sunday, no problem. If it's any later, it's kind of a biggish problem that I will only think about if it occurs.
Either way, if the flight is cancelled I will approach the letting company first to see if this flat is still available and whether I can stay an extra day.
Thanks for the hint about hanging about at the airport. If there are apparently no spaces, I might well just turn up and tell them to page me if any space becomes available on any flight to the UK (except Newcastle or Belfast, obv).
If that's a no-goer, there are plenty of hotels. So, no real panic, yet!
PJ