Francophile and frequent France visitor Katja Gaskell takes a road trip from the north of France to the south using a carpooling app for the first time. She finds out why this mode of travel has become so popular—and what it’s really like to use one.
“I’ll meet you at the McDonald’s car park,” reads the text message. It’s not the most glamorous of rendezvous locations, but this is where the carpooling app I’m using has told me to meet my driver. Ten minutes later I’m safely buckled into the back seat of a black Peugeot 308, and ready to go.
I love spending time in France. I lived in Normandy growing up, I speak French, and I travel here as often as possible, typically by car, my own or a rental. But recently, I’d been hearing people talk about traveling by BlaBlaCar, saying it’s cheaper and more convenient.
Launched in France in 2006, BlaBlaCar is a ride-sharing service that connects drivers and passengers traveling in the same direction. A cross between ride-hailing apps, such as Uber or Lyft, and traditional hitchhiking, it’s now in more than 20 countries with over 100 million registered users.
Curious to discover how it worked, I downloaded the app, created a profile, and set myself the challenge of traveling from Lens in the north of France to Narbonne in the south, stopping at new-to-me destinations along the way—and relying solely on the app to get around.
I had arrived in France a couple of days prior to my date in the McDonalds car park. My original plan had been to catch a BlaBlaCar ride from the Lille Eurostar terminal to Lens but I quickly discovered that the app does not operate on-demand in the way that traditional ride-hailing apps do; instead, you’re dependent on drivers and their travel plans and no-one was heading in the direction I wanted to go at a convenient time.
Seemingly thwarted at the first hurdle, I caught a local train instead for the 40-minute journey west and arrive in Lens in time for lunch at L’ Atelier du Cerisier where I consoled myself with the three-course menu du jour and an indulgently gooey éclair for dessert.
As a solo female traveler, I’d purposefully chosen female drivers for my first couple of journeys, safety being a concern … But truthfully, I find that BlaBlaCar has good safety measures in place: All users must upload an official ID when registering, all payments are made via the app, and drivers and passengers rate one another post-journey.
This shiny circular restaurant sits on the grounds of the equally glossy Louvre-Lens Museum, an outpost of the celebrated museum in Paris. For nearly 300 years, life in Lens and the surrounding Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin was focused entirely on coal, but ever since ‘Gallery of Time‘ opened at the Louvre-Lens, the town has become and art and culture hub with half-a-million visitors annually flocking to see works by the likes of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Theodore Rousseau.
I stay the night at the Louvre-Lens Hotel, created from a row of old miner’s houses, and spend much of the evening trying to book a ride to my next destination, Troyes in the Grand Est region. There’s nothing going the full distance and so I book two separate lifts; the first from the McDonalds car park in Lens to the town of Reims in the heart of Champagne country, and a second ride leaving Reims and going towards Troyes. It seems that flexibility—and an element of creativity—are essential.
Back in the Peugeot 308, I chat to the driver, 20-year-old Maeliss who’s currently studying in Lille. With us are two other passengers, student Agathe and 32-year-old Emeric, a car transporter for Renault. All three are heading home to Reims and they’re all regular BlaBlaCar users.
“I use it all the time,” Maeliss tells me. “If you want to travel by train from Lille to Reims, you have to go via Paris first. So not only is the journey longer, but it can cost up to EUR€100.” By contrast, my trip costs just EUR€17.
Over the course of our 90-minute journey, we chat about everything from the Paris Olympic Games to Agathe’s American boyfriend and how challenging she finds his father’s New Jersey accent. They also share some fun travel facts, finding it amusing that the route we are taking to Reims, along Autoroute Number 26, is more commonly known as the Autoroute des Anglais (the English Highway) owing to its popularity with Brits eager to reach the sun and sand in the South of France.
The journey passes quickly, and we soon arrive in Reims at another car park, this time in a branch of the French supermarket, Carrefour. It’s the app that suggests the meeting and drop-off points, although some drivers are flexible. Later in my trip across France, two rides drop me at my hotel door.
In Reims, it’s a short walk to my next meeting point where I catch a lift with 56-year-old Sandrine. Also in the car is 24-year-old Emma, recently returned from seven months’ traveling around Southeast Asia, who’s heading to Troyes to visit her brothers at university.
As a solo female traveler, I’d purposefully chosen female drivers for my first couple of journeys, safety being a concern. In fact, halfway through my trip, my mum even messages me—a 50-year-old woman with three kids of my own—to say that she’s worried about me traveling with strangers.
But truthfully, I find that BlaBlaCar has good safety measures in place: All users must upload an official ID when registering, all payments are made via the app, and drivers and passengers rate one another post-journey.
Traveling with us is Etienne, a shepherd who spends his winters foraging in the mountains while tending his flock of 200 sheep. Both Rolande and Etienne comment that it’s the people you meet when traveling this way that makes it such a fun way to travel.
In Troyes, Sandrine drops me at the train station, not far from my B&B, Maison M. Famous for its medieval old town, historic textile trade and stained glass windows, Troyes turns out to be a highlight of my trip. I spend an enjoyable day wandering among the crooked half-timbered houses, sampling the local sloe-based sweet liqueur, Prunelle de Troyes. and eating extraordinarily well.
Troyes is best known for its andouillette, a coarse-grained tripe sausage, but I steer clear of the offal and instead enjoy a plant-focused lunch at Vegetal followed by dinner at Chez Daniels. Run by the ebullient eponymous chef, the white-tablecloth restaurant focuses on fresh local produce and Daniel takes great pleasure telling me how the egg in my poached egg and lentil starter was collected fresh that morning.
If finding a ride from Lens to Troyes required some juggling, finding a ride from Troyes to my next destination, Clermont-Ferrand, is even more challenging. A five-hour drive south of Troyes, the birthplace of Michelin tires (and the Michelin Guide) in the heart of France surrounded by a chain of dormant volcanoes isn’t, I realize, a particularly popular ride-sharing destination.
But then I find Boris.
Semi-retired and with an impressive silver walrus moustache, Boris happens to be traveling home to Clermont-Ferrand after a few days’ work near Troyes. With over 40 BlaBlaCar rides under his belt, he’s achieved ‘Super Driver’ status, and our journey together is one of my favorites.
Part carpool driver, part-amateur tour guide, Boris spends the journey pointing out places of interest and regaling me with historical tidbits. I learn that the tiny town of Moulins has a world-famous museum dedicated theatrical costumes and that our route along the National 7 opened 90 years earlier to ensure a speedy route for Parisians heading to Marseilles and the coast. He even makes a detour, stopping at the Gergovie plateau, the site of an ancient battle between the Gauls and the Romans, on the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand.
Two days later, I meet Rolande for my final journey. Retired from the SNCF, France’s national rail company, Rolande is on his way home to Perpignan, but will drop me off in Narbonne, my final stop, along the way. Narbonne, 15 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast and once a key Roman seaport, is better known today as the location of Les Grands Buffet, the most popular all-you-can-eat buffet in Europe—with a six-month waiting list.
The restaurant, which can seat 600 diners at both lunch and dinner, specializes in traditional French cuisine from the 19th century including nine varieties of foie gras, a nine-tiered lobster tower and the Guinness World Record-holding cheese board, with 111 different varieties of cheese.
Traveling with us is Etienne, a shepherd who spends his winters foraging in the mountains while tending his flock of 200 sheep. Both Rolande and Etienne comment that it’s the people you meet when traveling this way that makes it such a fun way to travel. “I could write a book about the positive experiences I’ve had,” says Rolande. “I’ve even been invited to people’s houses for dinner, thanks to BlaBlaCar.”
My whole journey, from the lowlands of northern France through the Massif Central and down to the coast, covered over 1,100 kilometers. The total cost? EUR117 (USD$100)—far (far) cheaper than if I’d traveled by train or driven myself. For me, it was a reminder of a slower yet more spontaneous way of traveling, when the journey was as enriching as the destination.
But, as I left my final ride in Narbonne, I had to agree with my fellow carpooling passengers. Yes, BlaBlaCar is successful because it’s cheaper than public transport but it’s not always more convenient—odd pick-up and drop-off locations and a lack of control over timings mean that journeys can take longer.
But the real reason why it’s such a hit, and why I loved it, is because of the human connections. It was a reminder of a slower yet more spontaneous way of traveling, a way to see below the surface and better understand a destination and its people. As Boris says in the review that he leaves for me, “It’s precisely for these kinds of opportunities of meeting new people that I choose to share my car journeys.”
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The writer was a guest of Pas-de-Calais Tourisme, Troyes La Champagne Tourisme, Aube en Champagne Attractivité, Clermont Auvergne Volcans Office de Tourisme, Côte du Midi Office de Tourisme, Aude Tourisme, and Atout France.
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Katja Gaskell is a freelance journalist who writes about adventure, family travel and skiing for publications including The Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, National Geographic Traveller (UK), Wanderlust, and Lonely Planet. She is also the founder of globetotting.com, a website dedicated to adventurous family travel. Katja spent much of her life moving around, living in nine different countries, and now happily calls London, England home.
