Planes and first week reservations

I'm hoping this blog could be useful for anyone else who is planning this trip so down to basics - how do we get from here to there?  Here in our case is essentially Vancouver BC although we do live a bit out of town.  I'm travelling with my friend and neighbour who's leaving her sweet husband Frank to hold the fort together for 3 months while she makes this trip. We're leaving on a 9:25 pm plane for there - London - a 9 hour direct flight. After a couple of hours in the London Heathrow airport we fly to Nice for a few days to stay with relatives, arriving there in the early evening. And then we'll take a train up to Le Puy-en-Velay and begin our walk.

Once I get my bag packed I'll let you know what's in it. I'm still wavering a bit because I've been watching the weather on the Aubrac Plateau where we will walk for most of first week. This is the site http://www.weather-forecast.com/locations/Aumont-Aubrac/forecasts/latest . It's been listing the nastiest weather in the last couple of weeks - minus 20 degrees centigrade with the wind chill factor. Br-r . But it's starting to look a bit better for the week of the 19th  to 25th of March with daytime highs varying between 1 degree and 10 degrees and lows varying between minus 6 and plus 7 degrees with the wind between 5 and 25 km/hr.  I'm hoping to do without the woolie long johns but still not entirely sure if that's wise. I wonder if they have chinooks in France or if that's a Canadian thing? It sounds like they could use one!!

Since we're starting the day after Easter Monday (Easter is March 31st this year) I surmised from comments of others that there could be hoards of enthusiastic French hikers enjoying the trails in the spring weather so  I decided to make reservations for the first week to be sure we had no difficulties with where we would sleep. I think that first week will be enough of a challenge without adding to it. In my very primitive French I sent off emails to the places I thought we'd like to stay. And a big thanks here to the folks who produce Miam Miam Dodo. All addresses, phone numbers and email addresses are conveniently there along with enough information including pricing, about each possible spot to help make choices. I gather there has been a problem in the past about people making reservations and not showing up, so most, but not all places are now looking for a down payment. That can be complex as most want it in a form not easily available to us in North America.

Here's an example of one of the replies I got after requesting a reservation. (My French is far from great so I'm assuming they understood that I was asking for a reservation and not something completely different!)
"Si vous souhaitez confirmer merci de nous adresser un montant 30€ à titre d'arrhes, sous 5 jours.

 Vous pouvez régler ces arrhes de 3 façons :

- soit par carte bancaire par téléphone. Le détenteur de la carte donne expressément l'autorisation aux XXXXXXXX de prélever le montant des arrhes convenu dans les présentes conditions de vente.
- soit par chèque bancaire (à l'ordre des XXXXXXXX)

- soit par virement bancaire (pour les frais merci de vérifier ce point avec votre banque) dans ce cas notre RIB vous sera joint par mail.

Toute réservation n'est considérée comme ferme et définitive qu'à réception des arrhes."

 (Little note on French - look right after each dash where it says 'soit' ... and 'soit' .... I just learned that this is the way you say either this or that or that - it's the 'either or' thing. I was really pleased to see it used in real life after studying it in my French lessons. And speaking of French lessons...I'm really enjoying  some French tapes I got. They're by a guy name Michel Thomas - who's not alive anymore but he has one of the best ways of teaching a language I've ever come across. I think you can get his tapes either from amazon or his website - which is basically his name. If you do go to his website, you can try a little sample of how he teaches to see if you like it - www.michelthomas.com)  

Okay - back to the response to what I think was my request for a reservation....As I understand it, what they want is for me to send them 30 Euros to hold the reservation- within 5 days from making it. I could send the 30 Euros in my choice of 3 ways:  carte bancaire - bank card with the owner giving permission to them to withdraw the 30 Euros;  cheque bancaire  - which may or may not be a certifed cheque but is at least a check and 'virement bancaire  - which is apparently a bank transfer with some special attention to making sure the bank accounts can find each other (out there in never-neverland I presume). As it happens, my son lives in France and was able to sort this out for me. I'm not sure how easy it would have been without his help. But it's all settled and the  cheques or whatever have been sent and received. I have confirmations for reservations for the first week with everyone wanting another confirmation a couple of days ahead. And I'm feeling pleased with the fact that one way or another my stumbling attempts at expressing myself in French were understood.

And that's enough for today. 17 days until we're on the trail!!