My year of motoring tourism didn’t begin auspiciously. Early on the morning of New Year’s Eve, in downtown Dieppe, I looked out of the window of our rented apartment with its magnificent view of the Église Saint-Jacques, painted by the likes of Pissarro and Sickert, and noticed that our car had disappeared.
What followed over the next three hours was a journey of discovery – of the government offices and gendarmeries of the historic maritime town (on foot, in the rain), by which process I was eventually informed that my car was now residing in a secure pound on an industrial estate some five kilometres out of town.
I tried to get a taxi there. Eventually I found a rank by the harbour with three cabs, but they were driverless. I rang the number on one of them. A bored-sounding man answered and explained that the drivers would be in one of the surrounding cafes having a glass of wine.
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