Rhi Axtell – Writer

Picture the scene:

You’re tired. It’s been a long, emotional day. You’ve just stepped off a ferry into a dark city named Ouistreham – somewhere you have never been before – and are looking for a B&B you booked online earlier that morning*.

*it was the only hotel in the area that allowed check in later than 9pm and your ferry arrived at 10pm.

Luckily, your phone plan works in France (Julie’s doesn’t – ironic as she is French), so you can use Google Maps to direct you to the B&B location.

It’s 20 minutes walk away. No big deal. You drag your suitcase through a sleeping city. Homes, illuminated by orange streetlights, have their shutters closed. Bars are closing, packing up chairs, cleaning empty tables. At one point, you pass a pizzeria, still open and serving people, and Julie jokes you should stop for a bite.

Do you want pizza? No, you’re still full from the meal on the ferry.

You continue down the road – opting to take the road on the right, not on the left, because this is what Google Maps tells you to do.

About twelve minutes into the walk the city stops. You are faced by a wall of darkness, the road extending onward. The pavement is nowhere to be seen.

Even though you are using the walking function on Google Maps, Google seems to think you are a car.

But you have no choice. The B&B is in that direction. You push forward. The suitcase rumbles along the road, refusing to move through the grass that you are forced to walk on.

Julie suggests you should turn on your torch light.

You laugh and say boldly (perhaps too boldly) back that, “No one is going to jump out at us here!”

About half a second after you finish your sentence, the jogger appears from behind you and you almost jump out of your skin.

You turn on your phone torch. You say nothing else.

Will you ever find your B&B?

The answer is obviously yes, about ten minutes later at a roundabout. But you are once again humbled by how this world is not built for the humble pedestrian. You rage quietly against the injustice.

(If you’re wondering, yes, if we had taken the road on the left, not suggested by Google Maps, we would have been walking along a well-lit, well-maintained pedestrian pavement.)

C’est la vie!

See you next time.