Monday 30th January
We woke up to sunshine which was streaming into our room. We had our breakfast and set off about
9.30am. We had a quickly nosey at the beach which looked lovely.
We were soon back on the motorway and watching the miles
disappear. We were listening to The
World According to Bob (the sequel to A Street Cat Named Bob) and I was busy
crocheting too. It was a fascinating
journey with some of the mountains jagged, others smooth and the distant ones
covered in snow. The crops were now
olive and almond trees with the odd orange tree thrown in for good luck. On the other side of the road we could see
the snow topped mountains of the Pyrenees.
Signs for the French border started to appear and before we knew where
we were it was goodbye Spain and hello France.
We stopped at an Aire to buy a sandwich and I so nearly said
"hola" to the woman at the cash desk!
The scenery was lovely all the way until we went into a long tunnel at
the end of what looked like a huge gorge - as we came out the weather changed
and from then on we didn't really see anything.
I had been so looking forward to going over the magnificent MillauViaduct but it was raining so hard and was also very misty so we couldn't
really see anything. The viaduct holds
the world record for the tallest bridge, culminating at 343 metres (higher than
the Eiffel tower), 2460 metres long and touching the bottom of the Tarn valley
in only 9 places.
 |
| I’ve pinched this photo off the internet so you can see what the bridge should look like |
The rotten weather was with us all the way to Clermont-Ferrand where
our hotel for the night was. Richard had
to negotiate the Clermont-Fernand roads in the rain, in the dark, in the rush
hour and on the wrong side of the road - he only swore once!
We stayed at the Campanile Hotel or at least one of three in the
area. It was the most expensive hotel of
the trip at €79. It was very nice and
had a lovely bathroom but it wasn't worth the money. I guess it was because the hotel is in the
town - we will stay out of town next year.
We couldn't decide whether to eat in the restaurant and put Muffin in
the car with the risk of him complaining or whether to get a takeaway. We chose the latter and set off to find a
McDonalds I had seen on our way in. By this
stage the rain was bucketing down and we got soaked just going into the
restaurant. Muffin appeared to be quiet
so we ate our burgers in the restaurant.
We watched another film back in our room and drank the last of the
Baileys.
445 miles today.
Tuesday 31st January
The rain had finally stopped when we peered out of the window this
morning. We packed up ate our instant
porridge and set off - it was only 8.30am.
As we left Clermont-Ferrand we saw this electric car charging centre –
I wonder if we have anything like this in the UK.
The scenery was pretty boring so I concentrated on my crochet and got
on a lot quicker than trying to do that and look out of the window at the same
time.
The satnav wanted to take us too close to Paris for Richard's liking so
we took a slightly longer route round Chartres and Rouen. Chartres was a nightmare. The road was a ring round the city/town and
consisted of more roundabouts than road or so it seemed - eat your heart out
Milton Keynes! It will Paris next year.
We stopped for a sandwich - we had hoped for a proper meal but of
course the Aire we stopped at didn't have a restaurant.
We soon started to see signs for Le Havre and a black cloud settled
over my head. Our lovely month in Spain,
that I had so lovingly planned for, was over and we were going back to grey,
wet England. I realised that I had
sometimes moaned about the weather in Mojacar when I really shouldn't have done
so.
We crossed the Seine over the Tancarville Bridge. The bridge was completed in 1959 at a cost of
9 billion francs.
We got to the ferry port about 2 hours early - the check-in wasn't even
open! However, we didn't have to wait
long before we were through and queuing up to get on the ship. We were the only
car in the "dog" lane and in fact there were only 12 cars going on
the ferry though there were about 40 to 50 lorries.
We settled down in our cabin but there was no doggie bag and I was just
thinking that an email to a Brittany Ferries was in order when there was a
knock on the door and a lovely Frenchman said that he had a gift for ze dog :-)
The crossing was a bit choppy but I didn’t feel sick though I knew if I
moved I might do! It didn’t really seem
to be too long and before we knew where we were we were we reversing into our
dock. With only 12 cars onboard we were
soon off loaded and on our way home. The
great thing about living so close to Portsmouth we were home in 20 minutes!
We had travelled 359 miles today.
A total of 1212 miles. Now the
strange part of this is that that is the exactly the same mileage as going down
to Mojacar but we did two very different journeys! Our total mileage for the month was 3277.
We had a wonderful time in Mojacar and are really looking forward to
our return in January 2018 – however we have a full summer of canal cruising in
front of us plus a different kind of cruise in May but you will have to log
into the blog in the early summer for more details!
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