Bordeaux is a great town for the practised “nomad numerique”. It affords its budget visitors with a huge density of relatively dark and quiet residential side streets, quite close to the city centre. I have developed a technique for locating appropriate night parking which will cause the minimum of disturbance to the permanent residents.
- Drive straight through the centre of the town as soon as you arrive. This gives you a good overview of the busier parts, allows you to judge the level of traffic, so that you may better adjudge what a “quiet” street might be. The best way I have found to negotiate the cities themselves is to always have somewhere to go. This may sound odd, maybe akin to the flight plan that all controlled aircraft must submit in advance of hitting the runway. In fact, it makes perfect sense: A traveller, lost in the desert could – at his risk – advance in what he believes is a straight line. But a small inaccuracy in judgement or maybe bodily imperfection (one leg longer than the other?) will result in our victim taking a circular course: far from desirable. He ought to fix his eye on a distant point and walk towards it. The technologically adept sojourner may “set his Jane” on a particular target, as well, to avoid the effect of multiple “ronds-points” from sending him around the ringroad. A suburb on the other side of town, maybe 1.5km from the centre will do nicely as a first target. There he can breakfast after his 100-mile run and plan his attack where parking restrictions are not yet an issue.
- Locating appropriate parking places is the true black art. The optimal parking space; the holy grail of in-car living would be a quiet, one-way side street, within a 10-minute walk to the town centre and a 5-minute walk to a good bakery. The perfect space would be halfway down the quiet road, not on the ends where the occupant can be readily observed. It would not be opposite any windows, and would not require parking half on the pavement. The street would be at best completely unlit (they do exist in villages), or at least the street lights would be spaced to allow for parking between them, such that the seats and tailgate of the vehicle cast a shadow over the interior. I use the following technique with great success.
Finding “that” space
- From your suburbian perch, point your Jane in the direction of a tight network of roads about 500 to 600m outside the dead-centre of the town, or 800-900m in the case of a city. This is the beginning of the quieter residential quarters (I find this to be almost uniformly correct.
- As you approach this point (within 250m or so – consult the Jane), survey the roads. Be opportunistic, but never stop driving: that is, always ensure that driving consumes the bulk of your mental effort. French drivers are somewhat compromising, but suffer no fools.
- Look down roads as you pass them and check for spaces and the nature of the restrictions.
- On espying a possible place, turn down immediately if possible, or Jane it and go around if you think it worth it. Alternatively, continue to the pre-selected point.
- If your destination doesn’t please you (too noisy, too bright, too overlooked), take heart and Satnav yourself to the next group of dense narrow roads, surveying all the time.
- Within only a few iterations, a good spot will appear.
Please feel free to comment on my approach. This seems to work for me, but I will refine it as I think necessary.