Driving Miss Daisy in holiday season

So were we quite masochistic when deciding to get a french 'fix' during August ? Answer at the half way point is; YES.

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.

 

 

We were about 800 at the local night market last night eating paella, sieche or sausage and ailligot or frites and quaffing the rose. So it is not all bad times. And we just missed the local 'run of the bulls' as we pulled into Pignan on Saturday evening. Yvonne has been there done that a few years ago at St Remy de Provence where the rogue bull came looking for her during their 'celebrations! So we don't need to experience that again.

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.