I only ever seem to write blogs when I travel to France, but here we are.

Last week I travelled to Rodez – a small French city located in the South, about two hours from Toulouse.

In usual tennis player fashion, the travel wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Despite there being a direct flight from London to Toulouse on Saturday morning, once I touched down in France I had 60 minutes to get from tarmac to train station, which was a 20 minute Uber drive away…

Luckily for me I was travelling from Toulouse with Charlie and he had already arrived at the train station from his tournament in Orléans the week before. He was providing me with updates about which platform our train was arriving at, where I needed to go when I got there, and he had also managed to secure two seats next to the toilet on what turned out to be a packed train.

I rushed off the plane and got through passport control in record time, but when I arrived at the luggage belts I was met with the worst possible sight – the sign said “baggage delayed”.

I was already beginning to look at which hotel in Toulouse I was going to have to stay at for the night as the train I was trying to catch was the last one to Rodez that day, but by some miracle my bag was the first to emerge onto the belt and I somehow made the train with 4 minutes to spare. First obstacle of the week overcome.

There were a few things that were different about this week. The first being that this was one of the only tournaments in years that I have turned up to without already having a doubles partner sorted. I think I had messaged every single player on the tournament entry list to no avail, and so I was almost resigned to having a week off doubles. But luckily I was eventually able to find someone (more about that in a minute).

Another thing that was different about Rodez was that despite it being a $25k event, it was also a ‘+H’ tournament which meant that hospitality was included for the week. This is a very rare occurrence on the ITF tour but I thought I would mention it to demonstrate that there are some reasonably well-organised tournaments at this level.

Now, the final, but the most strikingly different thing about this week was the horrific state of the events that were unfolding in Israel while I was travelling. While I’m not going to write about anything specific to do with the attacks in Israel and the retaliation by Israel in Gaza in this blog, these events actually had a huge impact on my week in Rodez both physically and mentally.

My best friend Max, who I was at school with since I was 7, had travelled to Meitar in Southern Israel for a $25k event the same week as Rodez. 

Meitar is less than an hour away from the Gaza Strip.

From Saturday morning for the next few days, Max wasn’t able to leave the Kibbutz where he was staying. There was huge uncertainty about whether terrorists were still roaming Southern Israel and with most commercial flights from Tel Aviv cancelled, it didn’t look like there was any way he would be able to get home.

It goes without saying that his tournament, as well as the following few weeks of tournaments set to be held in Israel, were all cancelled. It was also quite numbing to remember that I had been competing in Israel just a couple of months ago and it seems like this conflict could have easily escalated at any point. I didn’t realise how lucky I was that I remained safe during my time there and it really put life into perspective.

I was absolutely terrified for Max, I can only begin to imagine how he felt being trapped there or how his family felt watching the events unfold from home. Luckily after four or five days of being in lockdown in his accommodation, Max was able to make his way to the airport and fly home to London.

In ironic fashion though, the conflict in Israel helped me secure a doubles partner in Rodez. My friend Josh was in Malaga and was meant to play a Challenger doubles event there with his Israeli partner, Daniel. But when Daniel woke up to the news on Saturday morning, he didn’t feel he was able to play in Malaga and returned home to his family Israel.

This meant that Josh ended up flying from Malaga to France to play doubles with me.

The free hospitality definitely played a key role in Josh’s decision to come to France. When he asked me what the hotel was like, I replied, “it’s not great, it’s not terrible, it’s fine”. I don’t think the Hotel Deltour in Rodez will be hiring me as their marketing manager any time soon, but what sealed the deal for Josh was when I told him there was a Spar next to the hotel…

Josh thought I said “spa”, and so he was disappointed when he turned up and found a small French supermarket that sells jambon fromage sandwiches and not a David Lloyd-esque spa where he could swim and get a massage. Sorry, Josh.

After dinner one night, myself, Josh and Charlie spent about an hour in the hotel lobby competing to see who could draw the perfect circle. I can reluctantly announce that Josh won with a score of 97.9%. Tennis tournament trips are full of dead time, so it is super important to find things to do to pass the time, whether it’s playing cards, watching Netflix or trying to draw perfect circles…

The funniest statistic to come out of my week in Rodez was the fact that I think Josh broke a world record during his travel from Spain to France. Our first round match was scheduled for not before 4pm on Tuesday and there was a walkover on our court so we were going to be playing at 4pm on the dot. Josh walked into the tennis club for the first time at 3:14pm for our warm up hit at 3:30pm and therefore, I believe he broke the world record for the latest arrival at a professional tennis tournament before playing a match – he turned up 46 minutes before we played. I’ve never seen anything like it.

On Tuesday morning at the club, Aidan and I were talking about Josh’s travel plans and Aidan predicted what Josh would say when he turned up. There are a few common Josh Paris-isms that are difficult to convey over text, but anyone reading this who has met him will know exactly the tone and cadence he speaks with. Aidan predicted that after hitting one or two balls on the courts in Rodez, Josh would say, “sorry? How quick are these courts?”

At 3:30pm, I fed the first ball in to Josh in our hit and he started the practice with a shank forehand, which landed in to be fair to him, and followed this up with one of the latest backhands I have ever seen. It almost hit the side wall.

“How quick are these courts? These are the fastest courts I’ve ever hit on”, Josh said.

I couldn’t help but start almost crying with laughter after this. Aidan was spot on.

Despite Josh’s world record and us not having a rally over three shots in our warmup on day one, we ended up having a pretty successful week and we played well. We made the final where we lost tightly to a Swiss-French pair. Josh and I are still searching for our maiden title together.

It was cool that after the final, all four of us hopped onto the same bus to the train station, where myself, Josh and Arthur (the French boy we lost to in the final) caught the two hour train back to Toulouse. There is a sense and feeling of camaraderie amongst all of us players, and this was summed up by Arthur inviting Josh and I on his night out in Toulouse that evening. 

Unfortunately, we had an 11pm flight home to catch…