Charvas, restaurants (and rugby)
By Leipziger
December 10 2006
All in a weekend’s work for a Falcons fan abroad. From London to Toulouse to Montauban and back again, this is the story of how one fan defied missed alarms, remote hotels and Toulouse’s chronic lack of open restaurants to watch the Boys lose 16-10 in South France on Friday night.
December 10 2006
All in a weekend’s work for a Falcons fan abroad. From London to Toulouse to Montauban and back again, this is the story of how one fan defied missed alarms, remote hotels and Toulouse’s chronic lack of open restaurants to watch the Boys lose 16-10 in South France on Friday night.
The weekend began at 3am on Friday morning when, as far as I remember, my alarm went off and I guess I must have closed my eyes as the next thing I knew I woke up, scrambled for my phone and found the time was 04.58! Damn, yet thank heavens for a job requiring an early start!
I jumped up, got dressed, grabbed my bag and within five minutes I was out of the house. On the way down the stairs in the block made sure I had my Euros, passport and boarding passes (thanks the Lord I printed them out at work on Thursday!), anything else I could live without.
Various routes running through my mind as to how the heck I could get to Blackfriars to get a train to Gatwick airport, I legged it to Canary Wharf whilst on the phone to Transport for London. As luck would have it, I could take the first Tube to London Bridge at 05.25, and make the 05.50 to Gatwick from London Bridge, getting me to the airport for 06.20…
With the gate closing at 06.50, and having never been to Gatwick before, I was a touch worried when I saw it was 06.24 and we still weren’t at the airport. Once there, I ran to Departures and got to the gate in time to run into another couple of Falcons (Andy and Karen, here is your plug) who I’d met in Brive but whose names I shamefully couldn’t remember . We were amongst the first on the bus, I needn’t have worried.
The flight over was uneventful, and pretty soon I was at Toulouse Matabiau station buying a ticket for the next train to Montauban, which was the delayed 11.19 to Bordeaux. I arrived in Montauban about 12.15.
Now it was raining, it was humid, and I had been unable to find a map of Montauban ANYWHERE on the internet! So fortunately, with the help of a map beside the station and Mark’s article, I found my way to the square where the Tourist Info office should have been, at the top of Boulevard de Midi-Pyrenees, but never found it. Although I don’t have a phobia of bridges, I joined Mark in not particularly liking the bridge over Montauban’s river – the banister was low, the path was wet, and covered in slippy stones! Not good.
In the end, three separate conversations with a newsagent (he kept coming outside to make sure I was OK!) ended with me buying a map of the town and being told to take a bus – any bus, apparently – towards St. Martial and get the driver to tell me where the Hotel Ibis was, which was quite an achievement considering me and him spoke little of each other’s languages and the map on the Ibis website was at best rubbish.
So I got on a number 1 bus, fortunately the driver spoke English and said he’d tell me when to get off the bus. The hotel was apparently 7km away. What I was not expecting was that he’d tell me (paraphrased obviously) “get off here, walk through those houses to the next road, bear left and walk 5km”!! So I walked straight up, bearing left and ended up in the middle of a hospital!
I should be fair and say it had stopped raining at this point. Perhaps he meant me to ‘turn’ left, and I was just about to give up as I got to the Toulouse-Limoges motorway, as the hotel was supposed to be inside the motorway, so I was just about to turn back, when I saw a small sign with “Hotel something” on it. Hotel Ibis straight on! And there it was, oh Happy Days!
So by now, I wanted nothing more than a bath (especially if you lived with my flatmates ) and / or a pint, so why not both. Sam the Minx and I texted to meet at the ground at half 4 in our quest for tickets for the match, and so at 3pm I began the half hour walk back into the centre of Montauban, dodging, not always successfully, the local charvas between the town’s football stadium and a park.
Walking down the Boulevard de Midi-Pyrenees again, I decided to walk along a town centre street as I was ahead of schedule. As luck would have it, I ran into Andy and Karen again outside a bar, and discovered a number of Falcons were inside said bar! A plug for, and many thanks to, Jane from London for offering me half her potato-laden pizza, and whoever told me free standing tickets were to be had from the Hotel Mercure, where it seemed almost every Falcon was staying bar me and Sam!
Coming up to half 5, several of us decided it might be better to sit at the match. I was skeptical as I do like standing, but went along which included some bloke going ga-ga over a lingerie shop with ‘tanned’ models and a diagonal lift between a dark park and car park, for €25 seats in the Tribune Honneur. It didn’t seem to matter to the stewards or entry operators that half of our tickets said Montauban-Brive on 20/10 on them!
Having drawn people towards the back of the next block so I at least could stand, I was pleased to find a balcony where one could stand and watch, although amongst the Falcons in that area only Bazmundho and I took advantage of the fact. We were however rewarded with the presence of some smoking, inattentive though attractively dressed French girls.
I’m sure everyone who wasn’t at the match and gone over it a hundred times in their head has read about it, so I won’t dwell on it, besides saying that the first half the Falcons did very well and but for a collapse in the third quarter, would probably have won the game. The forwards were superb, I mention Matt Thompson and Andy Perry in particular because they often get a verbal shoeing from many supporters.
The referee wasn’t brilliant, and one touch judge decided that a ball still in play handled by a Montauban player whose foot was on the line meant a home throw, however it isn’t the officials’ fault that we missed several chances in the last ten minutes when we were virtually camped in the Montauban 22.
But of course it wasn’t to be, and a 16-10 leaves the Falcons needing an achievable 15 points from the last three group games to possibly qualify as a runner-up. At least 30 or so Falcons gave a good account of themselves during- and post-match in the battle of the supporters.
Fans and players exchanged pleasantries outside of a beer tent post match, as Jason Oakes and myself decided he was actually taller than me and John Rudd was called by certain nameless fans for not signing the programme exactly beside the name of his alter-ego Mr. S. Hufanga. Some people also met a bloke with a chequered shirt who we will all be watching out for at KP next weekend.
To round off the night for some of us 17 fans wandered out of the ground through a park where some more charvas made an attempt to steal Russian hats, and tried to get the solitary French bloke in the diagonal lift to join in a chorus of “There were ten in the bed…”, and I apologise that I ruined the song by forgetting whether there were two or three left in the bed by the time we got to the top.
We managed to get a €230 bill paid without argument, and though some people saw fit to go to a bar and throw rugby balls around (Sam we await your input / photos), Bazmundho, Ali and myself headed back to the hotel in a taxi and during a conversation with the assistant manager I was forced to retire.
I thought to myself – I want to go to Toulouse tomorrow, but should I check out of here a day early and try to find somewhere in Toulouse instead of getting a train back to Montauban tomorrow night and then again to Toulouse early on Sunday? Don’t make any decision whilst still under the influence, Steve. Sleep on it.
First thing on Saturday, it came to me – go to the reception and ask if I can move my booking from this hotel to an Ibis in Toulouse! After a nice brekky, it worked out that I hadn’t actually paid for my stay yet , but I got a room at the Ibis Toulouse 2 for just another €5, which conveniently Sam was staying at too!
Sam and I arrived at Montauban station at 11.30 on Saturday morning, with a 1½ wait for the next train just after 1pm, but the wait was made more enjoyable by the company of four other Falcons – two lads called Colin and Stuart, presumably their father, and another bloke – so here is your moment of glory and thanks.
Toulouse was great, a very nice Christmas market. There were no Bratwursts or Reibekuchen, but we managed to get some nice Italian pizza slices and found a bar to catch most of Borders-Biarritz in. Yet again I marveled at the man who, for me, is the world’s best scrum-half and the back I would most like Newcastle to sign, Dmitri Yachvili. Castres and Perpignan was also a heck of a game, it made me wish I’d gone over there and seen it live!
After that match it was time to engage in the age-old Christmas market tradition of Glühwein, and then to find somewhere to have dinner. We must have missed the market Mark mentioned between Place du Capitole and Place Wilson, as we wandered through almost the whole of the eastern part of central Toulouse looking for a restaurant. Many were closed, the only two we actually fancied weren’t serving food, the help of a local was enlisted in getting back to the market, and so it was either go down the road where the phone booths were surrounded by charvas or do market savouries again…
An Italian was full and asked us to come back in half an hour before finally, Sam and I rolled up to a restaurant called La Reserve, where pizza and lasagna, and plenty of bread and butter, were consumed with gusto! It was also sadly funny to see people being turned away because the restaurant was full ;-).
After dinner, it was finally time for a crepe and another glühwein, before the weekend took its toll, and I headed up to the hotel room (past three more abusive – to each other – and drunken charvas) to watch Llanelli v Toulouse, but had to sleep at half time (lightweight).
After breakfast the next morning, when I learned Llanelli had won 20-19 and some brunette had won Miss France (which I’d also seen a bit of on the telly), the trip back to London went fine, and I’m looking forward to a good sleep tonight since I have a well deserved day off work tomorrow!
Thank you to everyone who made the weekend so great, to those I knew before, those I met and those I met but whose names I have yet to learn. It is you who make watching the Falcons about so much more than an 80-minute match.
I jumped up, got dressed, grabbed my bag and within five minutes I was out of the house. On the way down the stairs in the block made sure I had my Euros, passport and boarding passes (thanks the Lord I printed them out at work on Thursday!), anything else I could live without.
Various routes running through my mind as to how the heck I could get to Blackfriars to get a train to Gatwick airport, I legged it to Canary Wharf whilst on the phone to Transport for London. As luck would have it, I could take the first Tube to London Bridge at 05.25, and make the 05.50 to Gatwick from London Bridge, getting me to the airport for 06.20…
With the gate closing at 06.50, and having never been to Gatwick before, I was a touch worried when I saw it was 06.24 and we still weren’t at the airport. Once there, I ran to Departures and got to the gate in time to run into another couple of Falcons (Andy and Karen, here is your plug) who I’d met in Brive but whose names I shamefully couldn’t remember . We were amongst the first on the bus, I needn’t have worried.
The flight over was uneventful, and pretty soon I was at Toulouse Matabiau station buying a ticket for the next train to Montauban, which was the delayed 11.19 to Bordeaux. I arrived in Montauban about 12.15.
Now it was raining, it was humid, and I had been unable to find a map of Montauban ANYWHERE on the internet! So fortunately, with the help of a map beside the station and Mark’s article, I found my way to the square where the Tourist Info office should have been, at the top of Boulevard de Midi-Pyrenees, but never found it. Although I don’t have a phobia of bridges, I joined Mark in not particularly liking the bridge over Montauban’s river – the banister was low, the path was wet, and covered in slippy stones! Not good.
In the end, three separate conversations with a newsagent (he kept coming outside to make sure I was OK!) ended with me buying a map of the town and being told to take a bus – any bus, apparently – towards St. Martial and get the driver to tell me where the Hotel Ibis was, which was quite an achievement considering me and him spoke little of each other’s languages and the map on the Ibis website was at best rubbish.
So I got on a number 1 bus, fortunately the driver spoke English and said he’d tell me when to get off the bus. The hotel was apparently 7km away. What I was not expecting was that he’d tell me (paraphrased obviously) “get off here, walk through those houses to the next road, bear left and walk 5km”!! So I walked straight up, bearing left and ended up in the middle of a hospital!
I should be fair and say it had stopped raining at this point. Perhaps he meant me to ‘turn’ left, and I was just about to give up as I got to the Toulouse-Limoges motorway, as the hotel was supposed to be inside the motorway, so I was just about to turn back, when I saw a small sign with “Hotel something” on it. Hotel Ibis straight on! And there it was, oh Happy Days!
So by now, I wanted nothing more than a bath (especially if you lived with my flatmates ) and / or a pint, so why not both. Sam the Minx and I texted to meet at the ground at half 4 in our quest for tickets for the match, and so at 3pm I began the half hour walk back into the centre of Montauban, dodging, not always successfully, the local charvas between the town’s football stadium and a park.
Walking down the Boulevard de Midi-Pyrenees again, I decided to walk along a town centre street as I was ahead of schedule. As luck would have it, I ran into Andy and Karen again outside a bar, and discovered a number of Falcons were inside said bar! A plug for, and many thanks to, Jane from London for offering me half her potato-laden pizza, and whoever told me free standing tickets were to be had from the Hotel Mercure, where it seemed almost every Falcon was staying bar me and Sam!
Coming up to half 5, several of us decided it might be better to sit at the match. I was skeptical as I do like standing, but went along which included some bloke going ga-ga over a lingerie shop with ‘tanned’ models and a diagonal lift between a dark park and car park, for €25 seats in the Tribune Honneur. It didn’t seem to matter to the stewards or entry operators that half of our tickets said Montauban-Brive on 20/10 on them!
Having drawn people towards the back of the next block so I at least could stand, I was pleased to find a balcony where one could stand and watch, although amongst the Falcons in that area only Bazmundho and I took advantage of the fact. We were however rewarded with the presence of some smoking, inattentive though attractively dressed French girls.
I’m sure everyone who wasn’t at the match and gone over it a hundred times in their head has read about it, so I won’t dwell on it, besides saying that the first half the Falcons did very well and but for a collapse in the third quarter, would probably have won the game. The forwards were superb, I mention Matt Thompson and Andy Perry in particular because they often get a verbal shoeing from many supporters.
The referee wasn’t brilliant, and one touch judge decided that a ball still in play handled by a Montauban player whose foot was on the line meant a home throw, however it isn’t the officials’ fault that we missed several chances in the last ten minutes when we were virtually camped in the Montauban 22.
But of course it wasn’t to be, and a 16-10 leaves the Falcons needing an achievable 15 points from the last three group games to possibly qualify as a runner-up. At least 30 or so Falcons gave a good account of themselves during- and post-match in the battle of the supporters.
Fans and players exchanged pleasantries outside of a beer tent post match, as Jason Oakes and myself decided he was actually taller than me and John Rudd was called by certain nameless fans for not signing the programme exactly beside the name of his alter-ego Mr. S. Hufanga. Some people also met a bloke with a chequered shirt who we will all be watching out for at KP next weekend.
To round off the night for some of us 17 fans wandered out of the ground through a park where some more charvas made an attempt to steal Russian hats, and tried to get the solitary French bloke in the diagonal lift to join in a chorus of “There were ten in the bed…”, and I apologise that I ruined the song by forgetting whether there were two or three left in the bed by the time we got to the top.
We managed to get a €230 bill paid without argument, and though some people saw fit to go to a bar and throw rugby balls around (Sam we await your input / photos), Bazmundho, Ali and myself headed back to the hotel in a taxi and during a conversation with the assistant manager I was forced to retire.
I thought to myself – I want to go to Toulouse tomorrow, but should I check out of here a day early and try to find somewhere in Toulouse instead of getting a train back to Montauban tomorrow night and then again to Toulouse early on Sunday? Don’t make any decision whilst still under the influence, Steve. Sleep on it.
First thing on Saturday, it came to me – go to the reception and ask if I can move my booking from this hotel to an Ibis in Toulouse! After a nice brekky, it worked out that I hadn’t actually paid for my stay yet , but I got a room at the Ibis Toulouse 2 for just another €5, which conveniently Sam was staying at too!
Sam and I arrived at Montauban station at 11.30 on Saturday morning, with a 1½ wait for the next train just after 1pm, but the wait was made more enjoyable by the company of four other Falcons – two lads called Colin and Stuart, presumably their father, and another bloke – so here is your moment of glory and thanks.
Toulouse was great, a very nice Christmas market. There were no Bratwursts or Reibekuchen, but we managed to get some nice Italian pizza slices and found a bar to catch most of Borders-Biarritz in. Yet again I marveled at the man who, for me, is the world’s best scrum-half and the back I would most like Newcastle to sign, Dmitri Yachvili. Castres and Perpignan was also a heck of a game, it made me wish I’d gone over there and seen it live!
After that match it was time to engage in the age-old Christmas market tradition of Glühwein, and then to find somewhere to have dinner. We must have missed the market Mark mentioned between Place du Capitole and Place Wilson, as we wandered through almost the whole of the eastern part of central Toulouse looking for a restaurant. Many were closed, the only two we actually fancied weren’t serving food, the help of a local was enlisted in getting back to the market, and so it was either go down the road where the phone booths were surrounded by charvas or do market savouries again…
An Italian was full and asked us to come back in half an hour before finally, Sam and I rolled up to a restaurant called La Reserve, where pizza and lasagna, and plenty of bread and butter, were consumed with gusto! It was also sadly funny to see people being turned away because the restaurant was full ;-).
After dinner, it was finally time for a crepe and another glühwein, before the weekend took its toll, and I headed up to the hotel room (past three more abusive – to each other – and drunken charvas) to watch Llanelli v Toulouse, but had to sleep at half time (lightweight).
After breakfast the next morning, when I learned Llanelli had won 20-19 and some brunette had won Miss France (which I’d also seen a bit of on the telly), the trip back to London went fine, and I’m looking forward to a good sleep tonight since I have a well deserved day off work tomorrow!
Thank you to everyone who made the weekend so great, to those I knew before, those I met and those I met but whose names I have yet to learn. It is you who make watching the Falcons about so much more than an 80-minute match.
Bookmark or share this story with:
Digg
Delicious
Facebook
Reddit
Stumbleupon