Toll Booth Antics in the South of France

Having just read the discussion about people's experiences with Peage, I remember one of our skirmishes at a remote toll booth somewhere in the far south of France a couple of years ago. As we left the Autoroute with our outfit, I was horrified to find one of those little unmanned booths - and then started to panic when I realised that we had very little change for the machine. As we pulled up, I saw that you could use a credit card, so I jumped out of our towcar to read the instructions. It then occurred to me that once I had paid, I might not get back into the driver's seat quickly enough to get through the barrier, so I got my wife and co-pilot to move to the driver's seat. It must be pointed out here that my wife is a very good driver, but at that time had no experience of towing. However, she agreed to move the outfit as soon as the barrier went up. This all went quite smoothly, although there was a bit of a build-up of vehicles behind us by now and some of the lorry drivers were obviously getting a bit restless. Nevertheless, my wife passed through quite easily, but did have to drive a little farther than planned before she was able to pull over - with me chasing behind in hot pursuit, much to the amusement of said lorry drivers. Until this day, that remains my wife's only attempt at towing on foreign soil, but we still laugh about the sight of me chasing her and our outfit on foot while a group of French truckers were obviously enjoying the entertainment!

The moral of the story is - keep plenty of change or your credit card handy when approaching French toll booths and don't let your partner drive off without you!