I write this blog post having been to France, raced, and returned to the UK in search of an EU visa, enabling me to continue to race the full season in France when it resumes in full towards the end of May (because of Covid).
Travel
Traveling to France was surprisingly easy, I flew on the 30th of March out of Manchester airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle and later onto Marseille Provence airport. Two hours and a half total airtime with a total travel time of twelve hours, this was my first time having to wait around in the airport for my next flight. My Auntie told me, who had flown to Charles de Gaulle, that the airport departure lounge was fantastic, posh shops, bars, and restaurants. Plenty to do I thought, the time would go quickly, I will later explain this was far from the reality.
Anyways Dad dropped me off at Manchester terminal one waved his goodbyes and I walked into the airport. "Where is everyone I thought" The place was completely abandoned no one in sight, I have been on holiday from Manchester likely to Mallorca with my family and I remember at least a few people milling about in the WHSmiths and a collection of smokers by the door, but this was oddly quiet. It was almost like the government's bold claims about fines and special checks before travel had worked. Talking about fines, one thing you must have before flying is a Covid test negative result from the last 72hours, it has to be private, you can't use the NHS test centers. I used boots, £120 for a PDF document...
In the queue now for the check-in now and things had started to busy up, it was the most people I had seen in a long time in one place. One by one people were either granted a boarding pass or told to go home. I would say it was about 50/50 people allowed to fly and not to fly. I had prepared a little collection of letters off my team and other supporting documents to enable me to fly, but basically, all they wanted to see was a negative covid test and that was all. All the government's claims about strict checks seemed to be a load of hot air.
On the plane now having spent an hour or so sat in an empty lounge with no shops or cafés open, incredibly boring. It was a quick one-hour hop down to Paris following the M6 then over the Isle of Wight. It was the first time I had ever seen the Eiffel tower, all be it out of a plane window over twenty miles away. After we had landed and gone through a sort of airport security 'lite' it was time to get my passport stamped. Strange I was used to the EU border official just scanning your passport and throwing it back, now I've got a real tangible stamp in my passport dated, it, in essence, a count-down clock.
Now it was back to waiting, six or so hours in Paris staring at an oddly busy airport, a stark contrast to Manchester (at this time France was not in a lockdown). At this time France was doing a level approach to its inevitable full lockdown, this meaning that all cloth shops were closed in Paris, and the airport was in Paris. It's strange to me because it's not like anyone in the airport's departure lounge actually interacts with the city of Paris but those were the rules. One thing I found amusing was every time you moved from one side of the airport to the other you had to go through a temperature check, much like in the UK at some pubs, its not like everyone needs a negative PCR test to enter the building in the first place.
Fast forwarding the transfer time and I am now sat on the plane, packed and a very different feel to the plane down from Manchester. My feeling was from Manchester to Paris covid was taken much more seriously everyone wearing a mask, it was almost like they didn't really want us traveling to France or the EU for that matter. Whereas now on the plane down to Marseille it was far more relaxed, it was almost like a tourist plane full of kids and old people. With the classic mask around your chin which seems partially popular with people of a certain age.
This flight was a little more boring wasn't all that much to see except interior France, one interesting thing was the snow still on the Alps in the distance. Once we had landed in Marseille we didn't really go through that much of a passport check, I assume they all thought we were French. I grabbed my two bags, one a suitcase and one a bike bag, without the bike. Then it was a job to drag them out to the carpark of terminal 1 and wait for a guy from my team called Jorge from Columbia. He was in a VW van which reminded me of my dad's apart from the fact it was silver and not red. We drove up the empty motorway I literally saw no cars in the 20-minute drive, this was because of the French curfew at 6 pm. Our destination was Ibis Budget Les Milles, Les Milles being a small village just to the southwest of Aix-en-Provence.
We arrived and Jorge helped me to carry my bags up to my room, we dumped the bags and went back down to the reception in search of something to eat. The options were either frozen Provence lasagna or crisps. I chose the lasagna all four euros of it. Then it was back up to my room and goodbye to Jorge, this is when the realization hit. "I am here, and I am alone", I thought to myself.
This was part 1 of a blog series I am writing at the moment, keep an eye out for more to come in the future, and thanks for reading if you got this far ;)