Changed wet Spain for snowy France

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Packing up to leave our sodden campsite at Roses was quite traumatic and best forgotten if we ever want to visit the Bay of Roses again.

Let's just say it involved putting blue plastic carrier bags round our feet to traverse the ground between the van and more solid stretches of ground. A collection of mucky towel-wrapped things stored away in the shower we set off to Roses. Bob in the van and me behind in the car as had to hand it back to the hire place, albeit a day early. First time I've driven on the right for a lot of years but an automatic Fiat 500 was not a challenge and we left it outside Autohire, popped key in the key safe, sent photo of car to car hire to let them know we had left it and went on our way.

I should mention that the rain had mainly stopped for a couple of hours which was a little blessing but I had seen forecast to say it would which is why we got going as early as we could as forecast for later was dire again.

First couple of hours driving weather was not too bad though we could see the rain clouds were building again to the East... the way we were heading. Motorway all the way out of Spain and into France. Just not worth using the windy local roads in this area especially in bad weather. We have done them on sunnier trips.

I was concerned that the way we were going was straight into a major storm according to my Ventusky weather map which has proved remarkably accurate while we have been away. We were going up through the midi-Pyrenees, over the Millau Bridge to a stopping point some way north of there.

First thing we started to see as we got further along into France were the floods. Mile after mile of underwater vineyards. Photos don't do them justice as by this point weather was worsening again and most windows I took photos through were getting wet. Cannot believe how much rain has fallen on this whole area and must have been days of it to flood so exensively. Definitely a good decision to move on early as forecast, once away from the south and out from under the massive cloud, was for pretty dry.


I was absolutely right about the weather gettting worse the higher we climbed to the Millau Bridge and we did get up to 1000m++. First of all the driving rain, incessant but fortunately we were on a motorway and the trucks were not as it was Sunday. Then we saw a sign warning of gritters. Then Bob spotted a car coming towards us covered in snow. EEK.


A bit of snow at first then more and more and the motorway pretty well reduced to a single lane as nobody wanted to go into the other lane which was getting very white. Then it started to snow properly and we came to a junction and the motorhome we had been following for a while indicated to go off, so we did too heading for an aire I had quickly found as we were driving along. Big mistake. The motorway was gritted and full of moving vehicles. The village road to the aire was not. We took one look at the aire and decided if we entered we would not be leaving in a hurry. Had to drive several miles along a rapidly snow covered road before we could turn round and return to the motorway.

I was still really concerned about crossing the Millau Bridge in such obviously bad weather as the further we went along the higher we got. Actually felt safer on the motorway. At least it was moving and gritted and we saw quite a lot of snow plows. So Millau Bridge it would have to be and in the event it was absolutely fine. There was no snow on the road surface at all and we concluded it must have under surface heating to protect it being so high and exposed.

I could see from the weather map that the storm was to the East and not much further to the North so we plodded on, slowly, past a few minor prangs but still moving until we got to some services at Severac le Chateau. Police car across the road in front of us and signals to everyone Get Off. Bob had been wanting fuel so we would have stopped there for some anyway but this was total chaos as the content of the motorway was now gathered together in the service area. Once we had the fuel we couldn't have parked up if we had wanted to.

Fortunately the services were also at a cross roads... left to Rodez, right to higher ground, more snow..... We went left. I found us an aire and we headed for it. As we dropped down into the valley the snow turned to sleet and then drizzle and Bob's final complaint before we arrived at our aire was he couldn't see for the sun in his eyes. Sun which had fortunately melted most of the snow away.

A nice little Aire at Onet-le-Chateau overlooking fields on the edge of a leisure area near the river Lot (a very dirty brown and overfull river Lot) just outside Rodez.. We were really rather relieved to stop after quite a dramatic, prefer not to repeat in a motorhome without snow-tyres, long drive.

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