little leila riding hood

well, because it's not every day i get lost in the forest, i thought it might be fun to share...

last weekend in an effort to breathe different air and let manteiga give in to his animal instincts i decided a little promenade in the forest was just what the doctor ordered.
so dog in car and off i go, i have to drive out of the Rouen valley and through some neigboring suburbs about fifteen minutes until i come to the emence forest called so fittingly, the green forest. wonder where they got that for a name?

so, there are oodles of niches to park a car or two and set off on some paths. park my car i did, and off we went.
it was fabulous i didn't see another human being for hours. and manteiga was absolutely nutty racing around and sniffing and chasing birds and splashing in puddles of mud and on and on.
so after a few hours i decide to retrace my steps, except at the beginning of the first path that i took there was a psycho-looking guy going that way. now i'm not the type of girl to follow a pycho-looking guy like that so i decided to keep going straight go down the long slope and walk parallel to the path.
this is where things go awry.
when i get to the bottom there is another path, well left or right? the choice is easy left of course to go in the same direction as before.
do i have a compass to ensure i'm going in the same direction? of course not, i'm no girl scout you know.
half an hour later at a rather brisk pace the scenery is lookin quite different, hummm i don't remember these kinds of tress........
a bit later i run into someone coming from the opposite direction and ask what is at the end of the path that i'm walking along.
"The next village" he says.
"Ah hah" i say. and he walks off, now the prudent question to ask would have been "how far?" but of course i didn't do that.
here i have two choices. understand now that it's three thirty, it gets dark at about quarter to five and i had been walking for about two and a half hours.
not enough time to retrace my path

- and when i took the 'parallel path' down the slope (to escape the scary guy) there was no path, so i wouldn't be so certain that i could find my way up it and end up in the right place-

and hopefully enough time to get to the next village. five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes go buy, acid butterflies rolling around in my stomach....wondering where the heck is the next village.....

hummmmmmmm

eventually out of the forest i come, i see a road and wonder which way my car would be. i stand by the side of the road asking myself "do i flag someone down or do i knock on a door?"

but here is where i had to stop, think about the very peculiar situation i had just found myself in, laugh, blame manteiga for not being a better guide dog, and flag the next car over.
well, a very nice young guy in a mini delivery truck that delivers frozen food stopped.
he was very civil when i explained that i was completely lost and had no way of knowing how to get back to my car. when i told him where it was he said that i was quite far away and no, it wouldn't be possible on foot to get anywhere before dark. and he wasn't about to send me back into the forest to try to find my way.
he proposed bringing me back after the delivery that he was scheduled to make.
so i waited, and hung out with three boy fouth graders who were having loads of fun spitting on each other and laughing.
he came back opened the passenger door and the next challenge was getting manteiga to jump into the footwell then onto the seat. no way no how buster. he is also phobic of footwells in trucks aparently.
well one good shove on the rump and up he went. a couple of kilometers later i was back at my car safe and sound.
ha! i'm still laughing at myself.
and thank god for nice young frozen food delivery men.

and people say the french aren't nice.......