Two weeks ago we entered
France from Italy onto the autoroute system along the French Riveria.
We stopped a night just outside Arles on our way to St Andre de
Cubzac just off the junction of the Gironde and Dordorgne Rivers and
the Atlantic Ocean. After having to constantly find coins for each
section of the autoroute along the way.
Our original reasoning/guess
is that some French head off for their holidays from National day 14
July and the rest head off at the start of August. We had therefore
anticipated a tough day on the autoroutes a fortnight ago with some
leaving home and others returning. And we got that; officially
declared BLACK by authorities and we had about one and half hours of
start/stop along the system together with most of France. We
declared that was a good cultural experience of M Hulot's holiday
time and just part of 'being French'. Having had that experience
once, that would be enough and things would be different later when
we moved South to the Montpellier area. We would enjoy the South
with maybe the last of the French on holidays, a few remaining Dutch
and German tourists and the inevitable clans of English in
some,selected villages.
So this last weekend French
TV was on the job and Saturday was to be day Orange over most of
France but RED along the very South (especially Riveria and Spanish
borders) and around Lyons where major systems meet, leading back to
Paris. We were comfortable with that.
But both the French road
planners and us were wrong. Saturday ended up BLACK Plus. A record
877 kms of bouchons; enough to go from Paris to Perpignan at the
Spanish border. And we were part of it!
Impressionable as we are, we
have been very impressed with the car GPS. Constant live traffic
updates have turned out to be very accurate and the sometimes more
than slightly anal Yvonne has had a field day re-interpreting Tom Tom
to advise me on traffic ahead, radars ahead, speed limit changes,
roundabout entry/exit points, the pace of slower trucks/caravans and
especially BMW and Mercedes fliers down the outside lanes. Not to
forget 'Can you please slow down? My arms are aching from hanging
on'.
Randall trying to retain a
balance between these two, sometimes independent, sources of advice.
So we arrived at our
residence at Pignan just outside Montpellier early evening Saturday
having left the autoroute system just after Carcassone and before
hitting Spanish border traffic, therefore avoiding Narbonne and
Bezier areas.
Our 'normal' practice when
changing gites is to have a relaxing Sunday just regrouping our ideas
for the coming week in the new area. But one of us wanted to walk in
the mid to late afternoon heat and the immediate surrounds of Pignan
are not that picturesque so I thought we could head to somewhere
along the coastal area around Montpellier for a better walk.
We grinned as we took the
flyover over the autoroute as traffic was quite slow, almost
stopped-thinking these people were those coming home after holidays
late Sunday.
Traffic heading back towards
us from coastal Sete was also very heavy but the penny had yet to
drop. Then we turned past the local gaol heading for almost off the
map and unheard of (for us) Palavas-les-flots. And there we found
the rest of France!!!
It was total gridlock on
this small reclaimed island. As it is in France, no one was looking
after local traffic so it took us about ¾ of an hour just to follow
the mob along an ever narrowing road, past a small city of beach
cabins and into the paid car park where the design was such that few
could get in or out. There was not the remotest chance of turning
around and even those on bicycles were stuck as there was no space
between us cars.
Eventually we parked in the
disabled area, others were leaving their cars wherever and we started
off to enjoy our walk. Now after 6pm so we decided that perhaps we
would walk for a while along the beach areas then leave around 8pm as
surely the day trippers would have gone home and the heaving masses
on the beach and in the camping area would be at least thinking about
evening meals etc. Some were enjoying a picnic on the beach and we
felt that would be quite pleasant for them. However others, like us,
were standing on the higher points watching the maze of traffic try
to move. We staggered out of there and arrived home refreshed and
invigorated at 9.30 pm and just in time for our planned magret de
canard a la Yvonne dinner!
So we were wrong. France is
still on holiday and sitting on the beaches down here. On the TV we
have seen where the Paris purpose built beach was taken up on Monday
as were the other 16 or so in the Paris area. The politicians are
back at 'work'. But down here, we are moving with the masses.
So we are now wondering how many holiday people we are going to find around this area as we return to places we like including Pezenas, Sete and Meze.
We heard that from the start
of July, 91 people had drowned during July and that 22 had drowned in France on the first weekend of
August alone and 15 more this last weekend. Summer seems to be just one water accident after
another. At La Roque Gageac on the Dordogne where a few of us have
been visiting over the years, the canoes are so thick on the river
over summer that the Gendarmes are out on the Dordorgne sorting out
the traffic and sorting out those who are not wearing life vests.
Some say one in 5 people
here cannot swim.
But it seems they can all
drive, en masse.
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