We set off
early doors in the hope that we will beat the early morning market mayhem in
Uzes. Sadly we get snarled up anyway, so it’s a slow and not very zoomy start.
Finally we extricate ourselves and head on towards Ales and Anduze – which is
where we’ve earmarked our first evening. On arrival it transpires that the Aire
is somewhat shabby and a bit plein de chiens, so we go for a quick wander
around town – which is FILLED with Bikers – and zoom onwards to St Jean du
Gard.
St Jean du
Gard is a charming place, really easy access and a nice little parking spot,
which unfortunately is next to some serious maintenance works being carried
out, so we have a quick mooch around and move on.
Memorial
service in progress for French Armistice day with very imposing statue… viva la
france!
We take the
executive decision to attempt the Corniche de Cevennes. It looks fun, if a
little hilly on the map and there’s Florac at the end, which all the books of
fiction rave about. The reality is a little different. This Corniche thing is
MONSTROUS. We decide to take the low road and what we assume will be the easier
option. How high/hard can it be? It follows the river on the map and
everything. An hour or so later, knuckles somewhat white we find ourselves
somewhere near the roof of the world. The camera can’t cope with what it is
seeing, but if you look close enough you should see a tiny snaking road
somewhere far below…
Anyway,
finally we arrive at Florac. We find the aire and park up all set to enjoy a
cool beer and a wander around what promises to be a lovely place. DISASTRO STRIKES!!!! Some French woman
who we can only assume is bladdered cos not even women are that bad at driving,
manages to reverse into us and breaks Valerie’s bottom. Bearing in mind we are
stationary and there are witnesses and everything she initially beams up at us
and asks “are you sure it was me?”. One
of the French witnesses wades in on our behalf. In the midst of this Mr
Bladdered arrives and proceeds to kick off. Will this be the first ever aire
riot??? With all the formalities dealt with and details exchanged etc etc we
decide to leave rather than risk Mr Bladdered returning with whatever the French
equivalent of a baseball bat is and finishing Valerie off. We zoom to Mende.
Ahhh the irony.
Mende is a
haven and we park up and collapse. We have reached the top of our “operation balloon”
(which was our curvy excursion loop to go a bit inland and then back down to
the coast) somewhat sooner than expected and we’ve covered some hilly
kilometres. It’s time for some down time, so we pick a nice gentle route, via
Millau, to a very secluded aire by a lake in order to hole up and recover. We
are off to Camares.
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