Hitching France Pt. 15 – Bordeaux to Villefranche?

Surprisingly, a van pulled over only a few minutes after I put my thumb and sign up. He blocked traffic pretty badly when he stopped so there was plenty of honks for holding up the traffic flow just to pick up a hitchhiker but in no time at all I was up in the van with my pack in the back. He was a forty-seven year old aspiring winemaker heading to Clermont-Ferrand to search for a place in the mountains to rent with the aspiration to set up his own vineyard. After inspecting the location he had in mind, he then planned to drive to Perpignan in order to search for vines. We talked the whole way about various things. He told me about how he had previously worked at a processing sight for McDonald’s and how unsettling it was. He was also an avid runner like me and had done some hitchhiking in the past as well. I had found another person who knew how special that shower was after a few days on the road. We stopped for lunch together at service station and ate our sandwiches at a picnic table. When I looked back I feel rather embarrassed of how nervous I was at times like these when the thought of going to the bathroom and being left without my pack or abandoned somewhere was pressing in my mind but I guess it’s a natural concern and a good thing to not be overly trusting.

However, time and time again the people who picked me up from the side of the road turned out to be extremely interesting and friendly people, many of whom had hitchhiking stories of their own. We jammed to some music together as well like Cats on trees “Sirens call”, AaRon and Coldplay- Midnight (Kygo Remix). I told him about my travel plans, and he offered to take me to the south of France if I’d be willing to wait for him to check out the property. My ultimate destination was Montpellier but I wanted to visit Dijon first since it was the hometown of my French professor and I felt like I owed it to her to pass through while I was in France. So, I declined, and he dropped me off in Clermont-Ferrand suggesting I pass by the black stone cathedral. I decided to walk around the town for a bit while I was there with the day ahead of me. I visited the cathedral to take some pictures and a wandered up and down a few streets. The town seemed extremely quiet while I was there. One thing I remember is really having to use the bathroom and struggling to find an unlocked public restroom where I was near the cathedral. I wandered my way back down to Place de Jaude where I had remembered seeing a small restroom like you see on the sidewalks of Paris. The door was locked when I got there which meant someone was probably inside but it seemed weird due to how quiet and empty the town seemed. Then I heard loud yelling or what somewhat sounded like Arab singing coming from inside. It continued…and continued. Someone else even came by and waited but I said that the yelling or singing had been going on already for a few minutes. The man shook his head and walked away. I started to realize it was a losing battle, so I walked up Avenue des États Unis, fittingly enough, and found a restaurant with street food. It was empty but the guy let me use the bathroom and he gave me a large fry with samurai sauce for the price of a small. I couldn’t complain as I walked out of the city eating fries.

It was a very long walk in the heat ahead to the area it seemed best to hitch to Lyon from. I walked a few kilometers, past the Parc des Sports Marcel Michelin and further on up to the D69 where cars would soon be getting on the A89 heading almost straight to Lyon. I had to stop and rest a few times but soon enough I made it to a sidewalk lined with trees. There wasn’t a very big pull off area which I was a little nervous about but it was where I needed to be so there wasn’t much I could do at that point. I put my thumb up with my sign and stood waiting. To my surprise however, again, it was not very long until a car pulled over. This time it was a rather full, small car so I had my pack on my lap the whole time. I sat in the back with an older woman, her husband in the front with their daughter driving. The older woman in the back asked me many questions about life in the states and overall it was a very pleasant ride with all of them. We had a good time chatting while heading down the road. They were returning to their home in Lyon after visiting family in Clermont-Ferrand. I also found out that the older couple had done a lot of hitchhiking as well all over Europe when they were much younger. We hit some traffic when we were just outside of Lyon so they suggested I just start walking into the city as they couldn’t take me much further. We said our goodbyes and I was on my way. It was late afternoon at this point and I had a decision to make: Should I stay in Lyon that night and head to Dijon the next day even though I was pressed for time or should I try my luck and see if I could get a straight shot to Dijon at that moment and skip Lyon. I went for the latter as I was a bit pressed for time.

Dijon was a must visit in my opinion though it was extremely out of the way for my final destination of Montpellier. In hindsight I probably should have tried to get to Dijon from Clermont-Ferrand but more often than not during my hitchhiking journey I tried to do too much. Anyway, I walked along some roads to get to another spot to hitch my way north. The spot was not great, I stood in the middle of a small median that split the road into a smaller one going in some neighborhoods on the outskirts of Lyon and a larger one taking traffic onto the highway. There was a decent shoulder to pull off on though so I stuck up my thumb and gave it a shot. There was a lot of traffic and I felt super out of place especially since it was early evening at this point. I waited there for probably about thirty minutes at the very least until a car pulled over. It felt much longer considering how many cars were passing by. It was a young guy only a few years older than me who was heading to Villefranche-sur-Saone to visit his girlfriend. He told me he previously did some heating and air work but now drove an ambulance. He said he had never really left Lyon and the surrounding area. It had never been much of an interest to him to travel. I don’t think he had ever picked up a hitchhiker either. We jammed to a lot of reggae on the short drive to Villefranche and he dropped me off on the side of the road just after the Gare de Péage de Limas. I tried to hitch on the side of the road after the toll station but the road was way too wide for the majority of cars to see me and it was slowly starting to get dark. I stayed a little longer hoping for some luck until it really started to get dark.

I went over to a picnic table in the rest area and had a snack from the leftover sandwich materials which I had on me. The rest area was fairly empty with no one to ask for a lift so I went out the back to the roundabout of the D306 and route de riottier. There were two hotels located back there but the prices were pretty high for one night, even at the budget ibis, so I committed myself to pitching my tent. There were only big open dirt fields around which would’ve made for poor stealth camping so I continued down the road where a small town began to form but eventually I turned back around as it seemed my prospects were beginning to dwindle. It’s funny to look back on google maps and see that if I had kept going another two blocks that I would have reached a river or even a camp ground but at the time I didn’t have internet and was only using an offline map. I sat on a bench under a street lamp looking out over the dark field in between a line of trees and I remember chuckling to myself again about the situations I found myself in while on this hitchhiking journey. Dumb, yes, but fun as well. I ended up noticing a pitch black parking lot which had a skatepark just behind where I was sitting . I ventured back there in the dark and found a spot to pitch my tent behind a large bush in the back of the skatepark.