What’s the French for ‘gunshot’?

“Are you sure we don’t need to look at the map?”, the lovely Sarah asked as we walked down yet another residential street lined with yet another white apartment block. “Where’s the fun in that?” I replied with a confident but ultimately foolhardy manner, “we always see the best parts of cities by avoiding the main tourist routes. Anyway, we’re definitely going in the right direction…”.

On our recent trip to the Loire Valley we found ourselves visiting the lovely city of Tours. It’s official site describes it as a ‘city of captivating charm’, whilst Wikipedia describes it as a metropolitan univerisity city with fabulous achitecture and ‘the garden of France’‘.

“Was that a gunshot?”, Sarah tentatively asked, trying not to sound too startled by the VERY LOUD BANG that did indeed sound just a little like a gunshot. “No, just a moped”, I replied, “Maybe we should look at the map?”.

So we found ourselves standing on the corner of street x and y looking at the map of Tours in the Lonely Planet Guide to the Loire. We’re trying not to look like tourists and failing miserably as a) we’re speaking in English, b) have cameras, and c) are looking at the map of Tours in The Lonely Planet Guide to the Loire which is of no use whatsoever as we’ve walked a very long way off the top of page 31. So far, in fact, that we may well have stumbled into a completely different book altogether. Quite possibly The Lonely Planet Guide to the best places to be mugged and murdered whilst lost in France.

“Well that’s street x over there, and we’re on street y”, says Sarah. “Yes, quite right. Does that information help us…?”.

At this point I’m thinking about developing one of those walks. You know, the ones you see in American rap videos. Where someone tries to make themselves look like they shouldn’t be messed with, by dragging one leg along behind them like they’ve been shot or a going lame.

Thankfully, I’m saved both from myself and from a telling-off from Sarah by a man carrying a large empty folded bag, which I’m hoping doesn’t have the words ‘Gun and stolen swag” written on the other side.

“Lost?” asked the possibly-but-seeming-increasingly-less-likely man who would be later cutting up our dead remains with a stanley knife.

“Um… Yes?” we replied. He looked at our map very briefly, and then asked where we were heading. In all credit to him, he didn’t laugh when we explained we were heading towards a cathedral which was now some considerable distance away in the opposite direction armed only with a map of an area of the city the size of a postage stamp.

“Okay. You go straight on… then… ur [he gestures with his hands frantically]… umm…”.

“Left?” offered Sarah. “Yes. Sorry, my …er English is not so good. I’m going that way. I will show you” he replied.

So there we were, walking around an area of Tours we would still be unable to name or locate on a map, with our newfound best French friend.

“So, you are here on vacation?” he asked.
“Yes” replied Sarah.
“So, do you like Tours?”
“Yes”, we replied in unison. To an outsider we may have seemed to have replied a little too enthusiastically here, but there was still a remote possibility we may have found ourselves in that bag he was carrying later on in easy-to-bury-sized piece later on.

And that was pretty much it. Our guide had exhausted his English, and although Sarah speaks very good French, we’d exhausted our ability to construct polite coversation. We suddenly found ourselves with all the verbal skills of a mute antelope booked to give the key-note speech at a pro-gun pro-hunter conference.

For the next 100 miles we walked in an awkward silence (okay, it was about 800 yards but it felt like an eternity), betraying the English stereotypical fanaticism for small talk. There is definitely a limit for how long you can walk along guided by a stranger without talking. I’d say about 10 metres.

Finally we reached a busy street which we knew was on our map.

“Very good. This is where I stop”, said our impromptu-guide. “Thank you ever so much”, we both replied in a very English tea-with-the-vicar accent that would have suited a 1960’s BBC sitcom perfectly.

Then there were enthusiastic goodbyes. In reality we’d exchanged about three sentences at most, but our situations and failings had given us a fleeting bond of friendship.

Plus, I’m sure he’d have got endless mileage at the local bar telling his friends the story of the crazy lost English who’d tried navigating France with a map showing an area of Tours the size of a Citroen 2CV.