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Published: August 5th 2009
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We woke mid morning with the increasing temperature in the tent from the morning sun, we figured it was time we got on our way as we had a considerable distance to cover before our next camp. We made use of the clean & well kept shower facilities before collecting the coolblocks from the freezer in reception and asking for directions to the nearset supermarket. We were told of one called
ocean just the other side of the main road to Lyon. We headed off looking for the place to find out it's spelt
Auchen and almost missed the hypermarket totally. As we'd had a good look round
Lyon the previous evening we decided to head off south with an aim of reaching the historic landmark of
Carcassonne for early afternoon.
After doing a bit of reading up prior to leaving, I had seen some amazing images of the viaduct at
Millau, so we attempted to fit this into our route down. It ended up being a fair detour to venture out onto the autoroute that passes over the bridge but we figured we had time. What we hadn't banked on was the route the sat-nav had decided would be
View entering the Millau Valley
Spot the viaduct in the distance on the right of the photo. Also worth noting the altitude of the autoroute on the sign in the left of the photo. the quickest way out to the highway. It obviously has been influenced by the sort of roads I like to take my motorbike down. We ended up on some narrow & awesomely twisty back roads weaving our way accross the country side to join the autoroute a few kilometers up from the viaduct. We stopped along our route for some lunch and found a picnic area at
Puys-en-Valey. We thought it time to eat the
camembert we had bought the day before as it smelt like it would be making a break for freedom sometime soon. We found a shady table and tucked in, enjoying another day of mid 30's heat without a cloud to be seen. We ventured back to the cool air-conditioning of the car and headed for
Millau. Soon after getting on the autoroute we passed into the same valley as the viaduct, spotting it from some distance away. Another 15mins of driving and still nowhere near we began to feel the scale of this structure. As we closed in on the bridge we came to the toll, Anna leapt in action remembering she was on the side of the car for sorting out money, we paid
the E7,70 and headed for the rest area for the best views of the bridge. After a look round the visitor center we opted to give the slog to the top of the hill next to the bridge a miss & instead found a viewpoint just above the road in & took some photo's of the valley & bridge. Following some light refreshment & a visit to the typically French facilities we got back on the road. As we passed over the viaduct Anna managed to get some arty type photo's.
Travelling on the autoroute gave us time to discuss our progress south & take stock of how long we had left to reach Spain. It was at this point we realised in our now relaxed holiday way that we were a day ahead of plan. After much chuckling at our over-eagerness to get as far south as we had, we decided we'd earned a break so decided to find a beach to stop at for Friday night. We left the autoroute soon after and returned to winding our way thru country side villages where people stared at us driving past on the wrong side of the car. We
arrived in
Carcassonne in just enough time to find our first choice of campsite had put out a full sign. We ventured back toward the imposing castle as we'd spotted a sign for an alternative campsite. Following the signs lead us out of town and into the next village. We found the site at the end of a dusty side road and muddled thru with our ever increasing but still very limited French to book a pitch. We unpacked the tent on the pitch and began construction as we realised that it may have been easier to get pegs into a concrete hardstanding than the ground of the pitch. Luckly for us the previous tenants had left behind a broken rock that looked as though it had been used as a makeshift hammer. After using it put the minimum amount of pegs in I wrapped some bodge tape round one end to protect my computer softened hands from the bare rock and pegged the rest out. We had a relaxing evening working our way thru a large container of cheap wine while planning the next day of our journey, a welcome end to the large distance we'd covered. To round
the day off we watched an awesome sunset over the village before retiring for the night.
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