Avignon to Carcassonne

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Tuesday 3rd November
Avignon to Carcassonne
This hotel in Avignon might be a cheap one but it has been comfortable and quiet which was a pleasant to change to our stay in Trets with a couple of nights of boom boom music.
The weather looks like it’s going to be a changeable and we may get showers on our drive.At least for the present it looks OK and we plan to spend an hour or so in the old part of Avignon before heading for Carcassonne.
With a good distance ahead of us we hit the road early into the city and found a car park within the walls of the old city.We were quite surprised to see just how quiet the old city was and devoid of tourists although we guess that Avignon is more a summer destination than one for the autumn.
So with the place almost to ourselves we first checked out the square in which the Palais des Papes dominates.This huge building during the 14th century was a fortified palace for the papal court during its brief time as the centre of the RC world.We haven’t got time to do justice to a tour so we shall save our history lesson until we have a free day tomorrow in Carcassonne and take in the old city there.The building is reputed to be the largest Gothic palace in the world and it certainly does cover a large area of the old city.
Of more interest is the Pont St-Benezet a wooden bridge built out over the River Rhone,which runs through Avignon on its way to the sea.This bridge was completed in 1185 although a good part of it was washed away in the mid 1600’s and has been replaced by a more solid looking stone construction.The bridge of course is famous for the French nursery rhyme about it.Gretchen has a teddy bear from her youth that used to play the nursery rhyme.Unfortunately it no longer plays the tune!!
We concluded our short tour of the old city of Avignon with a stroll around some of the streets as we headed back to the car park.It is interesting that many of the buildings in the inner old city area have been preserved so well.
The weather had started to pack up on us as we returned to the car and drove off looking for the N100 which would carry us first to Nimes switching to the N113 and onto Montpellier.
HH is not a patch on RR and it didn’t take long once we were back on the road to begin to wonder whether he will make the distance with us.Although the car only has 21000km on the clock the clutch is stuffed with virtually no play which will make hill starts,when we have to do a serious one,interesting.!!
The secondary road we are on skirts the centre of the cities and towns we pass through which means we are still able to keep up a good pace in the over 200km journey to Carcassonne.
We took a break on the outskirts of Montpellier for a McD’s lunch enjoying a “mini moutade’which was a small hamburger with a French flavour mustard sauce and very tasty it was too.
The scenery from the road we are on is not particularly interesting although as we get closer to Carcassonne the colours of the vines in the vineyard add a little something to the view.
However the “scenery”did start to change a bit more and become more intriguing as we progressed on after Beziers on the N9.
We started to notice young women, on their own at first and then occasionally in two’s, standing looking like they were waiting for a bus in lay by areas off the road.Except we hadn’t spotted a public bus for many kilometres.!!
Generally they were dark skinned although we did see the odd fair skinned woman as well.
It didn’t take long to twig that these women appeared to be waiting to “service”passing drivers and in a couple of places we did notice trucks pulling out where the women were.Perhaps this had happened elsewhere in the 24500km we have driven around the UK and Europe but until now we hadn’t taken enough notice to realise what was going on!!
So what been a rather boring trip scenery wise did come to life if only for the different views from what we had seen on this adventure before!!!
After Narbonne the road turned more northerly and changed to the N113 and the women on the side of the road disappeared.
We switched to the A61 closer to Carcassonne as we didn’t have any instructions for the Fasthotel we were heading for but we had a good idea that it would be located close to the toll road as the one in Avignon was.
And sure enough as we came off the A61 we started to notice the billboards advertising the various chain hotels nearby including the Fasthotel.We knew what we would be getting at the Fasthotel and we weren’t disappointed.We are having two nights here so we will put the microwave to use.
As in Avignon there is a large area of shops near the hotel although the supermarket wasn’t anywhere near as big as the Auchan in Avignon.
The weather has become a lot cooler as the day had worn on and we needed to put on jackets to walk to the supermarket.Lets hope that tomorrow the weather is OK to explore the old city.
We will also seek out the Hertz agent at the airport which is close by and see if we can swap the car as we have doubts the HH would make it to our next stop of Andorra high in the Pyranees.

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Comments

[Christine]

your HH
Hi Graham and Gretchen - your new car - the HH sounds very similar to the one Kerrin and I have just used in Aussie and only for a couple of days. Your thoughts are correct in that Kerrin said he wouldn't have one of them as a 'wart on his bum' - even. Happy tripping :) Christine