Spain via France

Sunday 28th August
Up bright and early, managed to leave the house by 3.30am. Sunday at this time of day is certainly the best time to drive anywhere, the roads are really quiet. Two and a half hours [via a detour as the M20 was closed] we arrive at the Eurotunnel for a train at 6.50am under the Thames to France. Clocks forward one hour and we are back on the road at 8.35am.
Northern France on the autoroute is rather boring until we hit Paris, but even driving around the Periphique went okay. This was the only photo I managed to get from the car, the Eiffel Tower painted on the side of a house!

Entering Paris

Eiffel Tower mural

Picnic time and the sun is shining

A few stops for fuel and food from our trusty picnic bag we arrived at the Kyriad Hotel Clemont Ferrand 4.15pm for our first over night. 588 miles

A short walk from the Hotel and its steak for him and ribs for me at the Hollywood Diner.

lovely hearing the old rock n roll songs while eating our dinner.

Picnic bag breakfast and we are on the road again just after 7.30am heading for the famous Millau Viaduct. The road is full of twists and turns and ear popping ups and downs as we reach over 1000ft altitude. Chris choose the route as he had seen the TV programme about the building of this amazing structure. We stopped at the visitors centre to learn it took 3 years to the day to build. 

343m high, 2460m long designed by Lord Norman Foster it is an amazing sight. We paid the toll and drove over the bridge and then doubled back on ourselves to drive down into the valley to see the structure from below.

photo taken on approach road

i took a lot of photos of the road before I managed to get one of the altitude markers!

There are many tunnels cut into the hills

The speedo reached 1000 miles as we arrived at the Campanile Barcelona for our second night, a bit run down but clean and near a huge shopping complex where we had a Burger King meal. No photo you've all seen a Burger King!!

7.15am and again we have had a picnic breakfast and are on our way to San Javier for our Spanish holiday. A few spots of rain turn into 31 degree heat as the sun rises. We pass through four toll booths in Spain so I am reaching out of the window to pay as Chris is on the wrong side of the car! Before leaving home Chris had purchased a gadget from Sanef that enables you to drive straight through the French toll booths at 30kph and the charges go straight to our bank account, a huge time saver as some of the tolls booths had very long queues of vehicles waiting to pay.

we were joined by a couple from Holland while we had lunch

Arrived after three days on the road, 1378 miles 2pm and 29.5 degrees temperature