Ah... The open road! Home may be where the heart is but there is something to be said for taking it with you and heading South. Add lots of cold winter days and that crippling East wind and I bet your suitcase is packed already?

Millau, France

The only real problem in heading for the southern sun in a motorhome when it's cold and snowy at home is that everything is freezing including the ferry and at least half of France! Travelling on the non toll roads is a bit slower but you get to see more of the country assuming that it is warm enough to warrant getting out of the cab.

Grand Viaduct Di Millau (one section of it)

We have travelled a fair bit of France already but to be honest we have yet to see it in it's full glory - the wine is good though. We are looking forward to a summer trip when it is inviting enough to stay rather than just transit through to somewhere else.
Only on the third day was it warm enough 15 - 20C to begin to explore. However, being the Easter Bank holiday it did rain a little just to make us feel at home. We found ourselves in Millau a typically French motorhome friendly town. Millau is a pretty place about 100 miles from the Med coast with one of the world most amazing bridges spanning it's valley... 7 sections, 326m high with the huge towers often sticking through the low cloud. This stylish structure was designed by an Englishman (yes!) and built by a Frenchman...

Good Friday - Tapas and bad hair day :-) 

Millau is famous for glove making and we saw some being made and some fantastic examples but at £80+ it will come as no surprise that we didn't buy any or that the industry has suffered at the hands of cheap imports.

One observation (for Mitch) - FREE WiFi? - like most free things in life it is seldom free and if it is - it tends not to work Many town have 'free' WiFi zones often near the Tourist Information office but once again this is often more PR than IT. Millau was no exception! However most pay camping sites had WiFi pay options normally E2 - 5 per day and some have a 10 min FREE trial period, long enough to check your emails?

Divine intervention in Narbonne... or sunshine?

With the weather getting warmer we camped in Narbonne just about on the Med coast. Everything here was automated with lots of push buttons and credit card payments. These machines always makes us a bit nervous since the time we had to extract our card from the grips of a faulty machine with a pair of long nosed pliers. In this case it was a blessing as being Easter Sunday there was no one around. A short,  sunny walk along the river into the old centre of Narbonne and some running repairs (a bit of soldering) to the radio and the day was done... It rained... and we headed south, as it is written, Rule One in 'Jane's Book of Motorhoming'!

Narbonne old town

We will be in Spain for the next posting.

Our route through France;

Cleres,     Porcacin Sur Sioule,
Millau (2nights),    Narbonne

Den and Jane X    Take care :-)