Was really looking forward to visiting my girlfriend in France and heading for the mountains for some quiet downtime together.

At the airport made straight for the car hire place to pick up our hire car. Bam- driving licence not in wallet!!! Panic, frustration and annoyed with myself.

Silver lining though, the cock-up forced us to use public transport – better in EVERY way:

Cheaper

Very easy to use

Allowed me to get the rest I needed

Also meant I could look at the scenery

More eco-friendly of course

A win-win apart from the initial drama.

The last obstacle – how to get ourselves from the town where the bus stopped to the little village in the mountains? No worries our kindly accommodation host offered to pick us up and ferry us to the place. A result. If we’d been in our hire car we might not have had so much contact with him.

He turned out to be a very ecologically-minded, low-impact person too. Great for us. Living so isolated up in the mountains away from the world, he was a bit ‘different’, but in a good way. Great bonus for us.

My advice to travellers, ditch the car hire and have an adventure on public transport. You never know who you might meet.