Ok, so I’ve heard people talk about transport delays and cancellations during their travels.  I guess I’d understood that these things were an inconvenience, but surely you just go to a “desk” and someone behind that desk helps you sort things out.  Right?

Hmm, that’s not quite what happened to me on my journey from London to Quimper, France.  The desks in my story weren’t always helpful, but I did receive help – thank you God – from other sources, and I did arrive safely in Quimper.

It was an early morning start, and I knew I was in for a long trip.  The four of us were originally meant to be driving back to London together but a change in plans meant that Clive and I had said goodbye to his parents at the train station in Truro, Cornwell on Friday morning before boarding the 7 o’clock train bound for Plymouth.  We caught another train to Paddington, followed by the Underground to Victoria.  Clive was under a bit of pressure timewise to get back to Heathrow for his flight home, but he was determined to deliver me safely to the bus station – yep, that’s the man I married – so, with Google Maps leading the way and our suitcases clunking  along behind us, we hurried through the London streets towards Victoria Coach Station, arriving there around 1pm. 

A quick farewell (I wouldn’t be seeing him again for another two and a half months) and he was off.  I was alone in the crowd.  I had planned for this moment.  I had watched YouTube videos of people entering the station and finding their gates.  I’d even made notes.  I knew what to do. 

Step Number One – Look at the Timetable Screen.  Easy, it was right in front of me at the entrance to the station.  Scan the screen to find my route number for the bus to Paris, my first stop.   Hmm, it had just gone noon and my bus wasn’t scheduled to depart until 8:45pm.  It was way too early for the details to be up on the screen yet.   I took a chance and approached the desk.  Surprisingly, the lady was able to tell me the number of my departure gate, so onto Step Number Two – Locate Departure Gate.

Departure gate found.  Tick.

The time was 1:30pm.

At this point, I guess most people would have tried to find a luggage hold and then taken the opportunity to walk around the streets, see a site or two, possibly have a drink and something to eat in a nice café or restaurant… but not me.  Courtesy of YouTube, I had seen someone attempt to use a storage locker at the station and I knew you had to have coins.  I had no coins, and I didn’t fancy trying to find a money machine.  Or more particularly, I didn’t fancy getting lost whilst trying to find a money machine.  Inbuilt compass, I do not have.  I did leave the station at one point.  I walked up one street, turned around and walked down that same street and back into the station.  Go me.

I got to know Victoria Coach Station pretty well that day, and the station’s Pret A Manger café even better. 

I had plenty of time to watch people arrive, check the timetable screen, wait for their bus and finally board it.  Yep, the process worked.  I just had to bide my time.

Three visits to Pret A Manger, many walks around the station, a few visits to the bathrooms (lugging my suitcase up and down those blasted stairs and squeezing it into the toilet cubicle, backpack balanced on top – no easy feat!) a blog post finished, some French practice done … and at last the time of my departure was approaching.  When I say “approaching”, I mean that there was over an hour to go, but off to Gate 20 I went.  I was determined to be well and truly on time for this bus.

And the minutes ticked by.  And the people gathered.  Lots of people.  There was another bus to Paris scheduled to leave from the neighbouring gate, thirty minutes before my bus.  But that departure time came and went – and no bus.

Then the departure time of my bus came and went – and no bus.

On checking the Flixbus app, I was dismayed to see a message informing me that my bus was going to be delayed for three hours.  But not as dismayed I’m sure as the poor passengers waiting for that earlier bus to Paris.  Theirs was to be delayed six hours!

A three-hour delay isn’t too much of a drama.  After all, I’d already been waiting almost nine hours, so what’s another three?  However, the drama for me was that the delay meant I would miss the FlixBus that I’d booked from Paris to Quimper.  This was not part of my well-worked out plan!  What to do?  Well, approach a desk of course.  My suitcase, backpack and I raced back to the front of the station and asked for advice from Mr Desk.  Mr Desk didn’t know anything but he kindly phoned Mr Flixbus.  I should speak to him, Mr Desk informed me.  Mr Flixbus was on duty at the very gate I had just left.  He was busy dealing with the crowds, yelling out bus numbers and final boarding calls, waving his hands around and generally trying not to lose his rag.   I knew this because I had spent many hours watching him at his craft (seriously, I hope those guys are well paid.  What a job!).  There was not even a chance he was going to have time to deal with me.  It was obvious I would need to sort myself out.

I began to feel quite panicked.  It was extremely hot, and I was sweating like a very sweaty thing.  The station was packed and noisy, a young lady beside me was crying into her phone – it was quite a chaotic atmosphere.

All attempts at being an independent grown-up flew immediately out the window.  Yep, I messaged Clive.  It was a shot in the dark really, because I assumed he wouldn’t receive my message.  By this stage I knew he would be in the air, on his way back to New Zealand.  To my absolute relief, he answered me.  I know, crazy right?!  He sent me some screenshots of available spaces on a BlaBlaCar bus.

Right, I could do this.

Google BlaBlaCar.  Enter details.  Name, date of birth, email address, contact phone number…..  hang on, why wouldn’t it accept my eSIM phone number.  Did I have the prefix wrong.  Check again.  No luck.  Message Clive.  Try again.  Still no luck.  Stress levels rising.  Did it need to be a French phone number?  What to do?  Extremely hot now, stress levels pretty up there, telling myself to breath…

The only person that I knew with a French phone number was the person I was to be staying with in Quimper.  Could I be cheeky and ask to use her number?  It was almost 9pm.  Would she still be awake?  (In fact, it was almost 10pm in France.  I hadn’t been aware of the time difference.  If I’d called a few minutes later, her phone would have been switched off!  I made the call, hoping that she might still be awake.  “Hello Renie”, she calmly answered, despite having never spoken to me before.  I can’t tell you just how grateful I am that she answered my call.  She kindly allowed me to use her French phone number.  I found out later that she has done this for a few of her WorkAway guests as BlaBlaCar doesn’t accept eSIM phone numbers (it’s a non-text friendly system).  So now I know.

Well, thanks to my lovely host-to-be, I finally managed to book a ticket from Paris to Quimper for 1pm the next day (instead of the initial 8:45am).

The 11pm Flixbus FINALLY arrived and those of us at Gate 20 boarded, slinking rather sheepishly past the passengers at Gate 19, who still had another three hours to wait, the poor things.  I was very glad to find that each seat had a charging port.  According to YouTube this could not always be guaranteed, and after my recent bus-booking dilemma I was absolutely terrified of running out of phone charge.  Who knew when I may need to make another emergency phone call!?

 It was an almost silent bus trip from London to Dover, with most people seeming to sleep.  We arrived in Dover around 2am.  It was dark of course, but I could still make out the white cliffs towering alongside the port.

An hour later, it was time for all vehicles to board the ferry.  After boarding, all passengers were sent off the bus and up to the ferry lounge area.  A free breakfast, thanks to the standard Flixbus voucher, a few photos through the grimy ferry windows (from a distance because I didn’t want to lose the spot at my table and I couldn’t risk leaving my backpack by itself) and Calais came into sight.

We drove off the ferry around 6:30am and onto French soil.  Yippee!  I was both relieved and delighted to be back.  I wanted to stay awake and see it all but alas, my eyes kept closing.

We drove into Paris Bercy Sein bus station at around noon.  My BlaBlaCar bus was scheduled to depart from the station at 1pm.

If I’d thought Victoria Coach Station was chaotic, this place was even worse!  It was dark, dingy and really crowded.  There was one small timetable screen nearest to the entrance that didn’t seem to have my bus number on it, but then I noticed a very small note at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen stating that all BlaBlaCar buses were shown on another screen near gate 65, right at the other end of the station.

I found the even smaller screen at boarding gate 65.  I could see my bus number, but the departure gate numbers seemed only to be shown fifteen to thirty minutes prior to departure.  I thought I should probably go to the bathroom, which was not easy because of my luggage – but I had a very good spot within the waiting crowd, right next to the timetable screen, so decided to stay there until my gate number was shown.  I then planned to visit the bathroom and be back in time to board, once I knew where I was meant to be.  My stress levels began to rise after the 30 minute mark was passed.  If it got to fifteen minutes prior, I decided I would ask the very helpful BlaBlaCar assistant who had been doing a great job of answering frantic people’s questions right up until ten minutes prior to this, when I guess she must have gone off for a well-deserved break, because I never saw her again.  A few minutes before the scheduled departure time, the gate number finally came up on the screen, and thankfully it was right where I had been standing – Gate 65.  The minutes ticked by and still no sign of the bus.  All the other buses I had been watching seemed to arrive right on time.  This was not helping my stress levels at all!  I did ask a fellow bystander and despite her limited English (which was much better than my French!) found out that she was waiting for the same bus. I had downloaded the BlablaCar app but only after the frantic booking of my ticket back at the station in London, so my trip was not logged in the app and therefore I was unable to track anything or get any messages.  My host-to-be in Quimper did get a message though via the initial booking and forwarded it to me. So great of her!  It said the bus would be ten to twenty minutes late.  Thirty minutes after the scheduled time, the bus arrived and ten minutes after that we finally pulled out of the station.

There were no announcements, screens or signs on board.  About two hours into the journey the bus pulled off the road and everyone started getting off.  When I questioned another passenger, I was told we had stopped for a break.  I had no idea how long that would be, so I made a beeline for the toilets and returned immediately to the bus.

Thirty minutes later we were on the road again.

After another two hours or so the same thing happened.  Thinking this would be another pit-stop, I exited the bus only to see everybody removing their luggage from hold!  I felt a huge rush of panic as I knew we were nowhere near Quimper.  After all that, had I caught the wrong bus?  Was there a transfer that I hadn’t been aware of?  After trying to communicate with the driver (me with no real French and he with very limited English), I was finally able to confirm that the bus was continuing on to Quimper.  Whew!

With rather shattered nerves, I returned to my seat.  There was another stop on the way.  This time the bus driver muttered something over the intercom, but it was in French.  Fair enough. As I disembarked, I asked him “Five minutes?”.  “Thirty minutes”, he replied.  “No stress”.  Damn it, obviously he could tell I was a bundle of nerves!  Ah well.

By this time, I knew we were so close to Quimper, that I didn’t dare risking any chance of missing the bus, so after a very quick freshen-up in the extremely smelly public bathroom, I got back on the bus, determined to make it to my destination.

Despite the bus driver having a very hard time finding the bus station at the stop before mine (he had to be guided by two other passengers!), we made it to Quimper, arriving just after 10pm.  Despite the late hour, my lovely host was there waiting for me, calm and radiant as could be.  I felt like bursting into tears, but didn’t – well not on the outside anyway. 

I’d done it.  I had travelled from London to Quimper by myself.  Well ok, not quite by myself.  I’d definitely had some help along the way.  But I’d made it.