Missing my flight by the skin of my teeth, I weighed up all my various options, these being to change my flight to an alternative destination, or to come back the following day for the next flight to Toulon. Faced with the daunting prospect of having to travel out to Stansted Airport again, I decided that an element of adventure and daring was called for.
And so I decided to fly to an unheard of destination in Southern France, somewhere I thought would be close to Toulon, and make my way overland instead. Well that particular destination was Rodez. Standing at the Ryanair customer services counter and peering into the destinations map, the distance between Rodez and Toulon did not appear so far. But as I was to find out soon enough, maps on walls can be rather deceptive. The distance between Rodez and Toulon is km, something which I found out only after the event.
It is perhaps a manageable distance by car. But Rodez is a smallish town, and as I was making this trip by public transport, you can imagine the potential logistical issues that this journey presented. First, to demonstrate how small the town is, only four taxis operated in Rodez at the time.
I know this because I waited over an hour for one of them at the airport, and the only reason I managed to make it to my hotel room was because the kindly lady at the tourism office eventually took pity on me and offered me a lift. Second, to demonstrate how logistically problematic, I also soon learnt that to get to Toulon, you must first travel by bus to Montpellier, followed by a train to Marseille, and then by another train to Toulon.
I therefore decided to skip going to Toulon altogether, and to head to Marseille instead where I was to meet a friend two days later.
