November 16th Barcelona to Narbonne (France)
Ohhh a whole day has elapsed and there are NO PHOTOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We had decided last night that we would let the gods decide
our travel plans for today. If it were a nice day in Barcelona we would stay a
bit longer, not necessarily the whole day, but certainly long enough to do a
few shopping things and say goodbye to the city and spain, as once we left
Barcelona we would be leaving Spain, for France.
The Gods made sure we moved in. It was another very cold,
bleak, wet and wild day, so once we had repacked the bikes, secured everything
and had another cup of tea we headed for the main drag north. We had decided it
would be worth taking the AP7 even though it is a toll road, just because it is
so much more direct, and we had avoided the toll roads on our way down this way
by taking the coastal route, but it was very slow with constant towns and
narrow roads. The first few kms were very congested, it took a good half to
three quarters of an hour to get the 6kms or so onto the motorway but then it
was plain sailing. It was nice to drive
on the wider straighter road than the coastal road, especially in the
wet, and with quite a bit of wind around. I admit that having had my crash a
week ago I was a lot more aware/tense driving than I had been prior to my
altercation with a barrier, and very conscious of how the rain and weight of
the truck combined to make it a lumbering missile when I was going faster than
I should have been. I kept my speed down, and was very watchful for any road
works signs, some of which I noted were rather ambiguous and not always clear
about what they are cautioning for.
In amongst the cloud shrouded paddocks were glimpses of
beautiful autumn colour, mostly golden coloured trees but also at times row
upon row of golden/red/brown grape vines against the terracotta coloured soil
at their feet. It really is beautiful and such a change has come over the land
from when we were here 3 months ago. The rivers are running wild and deep with
torrents of brown water, some paddocks have become lakes, and the grass where
it is above water is bright green, whereas when we were here in the height of
summer the land was parched and the sun glaringly bright and hot.
It was strange coming over the border from Spain back into
France, it was sad to be leaving Spain, we have loved it there, it is a
beautiful country, the people are very friendly, helpful, obliging and laid
back, and yet driving into France it felt almost like coming home. I said
something to that effect to Diana and she too had had that sense and yet France
isn’t at all home, the people are generally ruder, less tolerant, and don’t
have that same warmth of the Spanish. In fact it was only a kilometre or so
over “the frontier” (That’s what it says on the road signs!!) before I was
swearing at the drivers (French I’m sure), who wouldn’t let me into the traffic
flow to get into the correct lane for a turn-off, or telling someone to keep
their hair on when they were rudely tooting their horn for some very minor
misdemeanour on my behalf. I had obviously become used to the Spanish drivers
who on the whole are much more accommodating (even though we have French number
plates) and smile rather than glare.
Anyway, enough of that, we are here in France at a very
nice, quiet and cheap (well free actually at this stage as the ticket dispenser
isn’t functioning) aire, with a dozen or so other campers parked around us
keeping us company. We aren’t sure what there is to do here, we plan to chill
out for a day or so and wait for the weather to improve before heading up to
Carcassonne and across towards Bordeaux. After a month nearly of crappy weather
we have had enough, we didn’t come all this way for rain and cold, that wasn’t
part of the deal at all, so we will have to try to find a solution.
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