...not a bad ride down as far as the Auvergne, where we are in our usual digs for the night. A few spots of rain in the north; otherwise it has been a fine day with a lot of sun. Glad we were travelling south, though: it's the day of the grand retour of Parisians who have spent their holidays in the southern sun, and the roads were busy: an accident south of Orléans had provoked several miles of tail-back. I remember all too clearly the appalling driving in Paris on the first working day of each September when everyone seemed to be pissed off to the point of homicidal at being back at work. They weren't a lot better today on that dreadful eight-lane viaduct over the Seine at Gennevilliers, where the high-speed weaving is terrifying.
Some interesting vehicles on the road and on the shuttle. Someone had parked a Renault 17 (anyone remember them?) in a layby near Ashford and pitched his tent next to it, sensibly hanging a reflective triangle on it to dissuade other drivers from flattening him as he slept. On our shuttle there was a couple in an elderly Morgan, complete with a leather trunk strapped to the back, and on the A16 we passed an open two-seat Allard, the driver attired in leather flying helmet and jacket. Otherwise, it was the usual mixture of awful driving: speeding Swiss, dithery Belgians, fishtailing Dutch caravans and a lot of French registered cars in which rear view mirrors were obviously declined optional extras.
Most of the crops have now been harvested, though a few fields of sunflowers and maize remain at higher altitudes. This isn't really the time of year for wild flowers by the roadside, though there's a lot of some pale yellow subject that I don't recognise. The day was clear, so we had some good long views in the centre of the country. Here in the Auvergne it is a little hazy, but we got a good, if blued-out, view of the chain of volcanic plugs north of Clermont Ferrand. Looking forward to good views as we scramble up into the hills tomorrow.
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