Monday April 28th Albi to Routier via very inhospitable Lac des Montagnes nr Mazamet.

After our interlude in such a beautiful city we feel sufficiently restored to head back out to the wilds again. We earmark Lac des Montagnes near Mazamet. Apparently there is an aire there, it’s only 6km away from the town itself and the Lake looks beautiful.

Once again the weather is not on our side, neither are the French roads. Mazamet is a weird little place which we don’t particularly take to, but we find a LIDL and despite the sheeting rain and thick fog decide to head to the Lake anyway. Perhaps we’ll break through the cloud layer a little higher and emerge into glorious sunshine….?? So… the road we need to take is closed. There’s a diversion, we are heading towards Carcassonne ultimately over the next couple of days so we have no option but to take the diversion, even though they don’t say how long it is  - or where in fact it goes. A quick check on the map reveals that there isn’t another way around anyway, and the only road the diversion can follow doesn’t look too long at all. Oh how wrong we can be!

The diversion snakes up and and up into the never ending layer of fog. The roads get more narrow and more twisty and the drop into the gorge gets ever more hair raising. On we go. Couldn’t turn around even if we wanted to! For such a narrow road there are an enormous amount of old factories, some of which seem to still be in use. They predominantly seem to be tanneries of some description, specialising in leather and pelts. It is strange to see them looming out of the gorge, suspended over the river and seemingly completely inaccessible. Wouldn’t fancy being a trucker down these roads, perhaps they transport it all by river? 18 winding kilometres later we reach the lake. Or we think we do, can’t see hands in front of face at this point in time. 

One of the main reasons we chose here was because you can replenish with water – we are running low. However… we are slapped in the face with a big old hit of French Irony in that despite this lake being a reservoir the aire itself is seemingly defunct. It will not dispense any water. So, with water sheeting from the sky onto the reservoir in front of us we leave empty handed. We simply cannot stay with no water and to be honest, the weather is pretty prohibitive!

We scarper and try and find a back up aire that’s not too far. We land in Routier, which, thankfully is sunny and serene. There are 360 degree views from our little birds nest eyrie of an aire.

The water is free, there’s even free leccy but the plug is out-dated (beware campers) and ours won’t fit. Nonetheless we snuggle down, watching the black cloud bank we have just escaped move further away from us across the horizon. Thank you Routier.