We were heading off to the house for a 9am meeting on Friday, and successfully got over the channel (Yay! After our last trip that felt like a result) on Thursday evening, had dinner at the first motorway services and were heading towards our hotel.
And then it all went wrong!
Firemen, police, SANEF (the guys who run the motorway) trucks littering the motorway, and there we were sitting in an ambulance...
The fear seeing two guys pulling out the portable stretcher was only eclipsed by the horror of seeing four men struggling back under the weight of the body bag on the stretcher a few minutes later.
But I'm jumping the gun.
Let's start at the beginning: We saw a (huge) lump in the road...
Just about had time to think: "What the ....?"
(I don't think I managed to get to the missing word; it all happened so quickly - lucky, it probably wouldn't have been a word I could print!)
And then we'd entered an army obstacle course: the car was up & over, and we think we took off, then skidded on landing.
Which morphed into a fairground ride - we spun round & round, before hitting the armco and bouncing back to face the way we'd come, straddling both lanes of the motorway.
I always hated fairground rides - that feeling of being out of control, spinning & waiting for death - and I've not been converted!!
We were in shock, but thankfully fear of getting caught by the flics for not showing our warning triangle overcame the wobbling .
We got the triangle out, and the high-viz gîlet (irony of ironies: I'd suggested buying another one when we were on holiday, but we didn't!). David put on the waistcoat, and pushed the car to the side of the road whilst I was walking to put the triangle out to warn other drivers of the accident.
How far away do you put them?
Thankfully the A26 is a really quiet motorway, and by the time we were aware of what was going on, there were two trucks blocking both carriageways & holding back the traffic from us.
On a busy road, we could have been hit whilst spinning out of control; it could have been so much worse, in so many ways - I'm really thankful to be just left a bit achey!
I spoke with the lead lorry driver, and asked him to telephone for help (David was walking to the nearest emergency phone, but we weren't thinking really clearly at this point).
Either that lorry driver or another chap told me we'd hit a wild boar, and that someone else had hit one as well.
I was terrified that someone else would have an accident if they hit it too (we were doing 65-70 - well less than the speed limit of just over 80mph, so it could have been much worse), so I was walking back to see if I could move it (I told you we weren't thinking properly!).
Someone pointed it out to me - just a hint of buttock & tail poking through under the armco by the side of the motorway - and some kind souls had moved it out of the way.
Thanks unknown guys!
What surprised me was how much it was steaming, but thinking about it, of course it would! They just don't show that on TV...
By the time I got back to the car, we had a SANEF van by the car, he'd picked up & brought back our triangle & I was just explaining to him what happened as David got back.
Piecing together what we were told/heard, after we'd got to the hotel: we think that a lorry had hit the boar & killed/stunned it, and he'd pulled off at the next junction to call SANEF/the police (wild boar are a protected species). Probably also CB radioed other drivers on the A26, which could be why the lorry drivers knew more about what had happened than we did...?
That would also explain why the SANEF vehicle got there so soon after David calling for help.
The absence of a second corpse (if our vehicle was the only one needing to be towed, and the driver of the tow-truck had to take the beast to the fire station so that they could start the process of reporting the death & autopsy [to see what the state of the health of the boar was before it died], it seems odd they didn't give him the second body, if there had been one), coupled with the fact the boar was lying stationary when we hit it, makes us think there was only one boar, but 2 accidents!
Wish driver number one had dragged the body off the road!
We're very thankful, for lots of reasons:
- we're both fine;
- no other person/vehicle was involved;
- it was all so quick, we didn't really have time to be frightened!;
- I wasn't driving (so won't get any new complexes about driving - I'd nearly suggested it; glad I didn't!);
- I was awake (so got thrown around less than if I'd been asleep);
- the boar was probably dead before we hit it (not too much guilt);
- we had emergency contact numbers for T+B (I left a message apologising that we wouldn't make the meeting);
- we had the number for the hotel (who, for the second time in 3 weeks, were good about us cancelling at short notice!);
- the car was virtually empty (I could have been taking a huge load down to the house);
- we'd been doing at least 10mph below the speed limit (dread to think what effect that extra 10mph would have had on our trajectory)
Apparently the boar was a whopper - 90-100kgs, according to the various estimates. Sadly, he won't end up as steaks & sausages (the paper work to certify him 'fit-for-consumption' would make it too expensive).
And I still haven't seen a whole wild boar! Seeing a body bag in operation was pretty horrible; would much rather have seen the animal itself.
The tow-truck driver kindly phoned around & (eventually; all the hotels in Laon were full) found us a hotel, and took us there. We got to our room about 12.50am, and decided to phone the recovery services (I've seen on TV/in the press, in the past, too many cases where people's insurance claims were turned down because they didn't follow to-the-letter the claims process).
All the people at the breakdown and insurance call centres we spoke with were very helpful - we were taxied to Paris (much) later that same day, and booked on a flight at 9.55pm. Another irony: we probably got home earlier than we would have done if we hadn't crashed!
We're hoping that continues - we really want our car to be fixed (and French prices are lower/it is a French car), and not written off.
Fingers crossed!
Needless to say, we didn't make our meeting!
M. Boyer must have heard my answermachine message by the time he phoned David back after the meeting - he was very concerned. [I try my best with French, but stress/tiredness can make it much more interesting! And I'm sure I sounded a bit more random than usual.]
We believe progress is being made, but will have to wait till we get an update/see it in a couple of weeks before I can tell you what...
I'm personally hoping my philosophy ("Third time lucky") trumps that of my mum ("Bad things come in threes")!
;-)
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