Yesterday we spent the day driving to small villages in the Allier River valley, even visiting a cool church with fantastic medieval wall paintings but the scariest faces on angels and Jesus that I’ve ever seen!!, but I have to say I’m not massively impressed by French villages. In general, they are pretty but not wow-pretty, some places have had quite nice locations, but amazingly so many towns seem incredibly run down. We’ve seen this all across France actually – in Britain the prettiest and well-looked after places are the small towns but not here. So many buildings seem to be entirely neglected and badly in need of repair (not just a paint job!). I’ve got more of a feel for the architecture now – houses are very block-like, usually 2 or 3 stories high, and the fronts (at least) are covered in windows. The windows have traditional wooden shutters on them, and more often than not (in larger towns at least but not so much on road-front houses), the window ledges are covered with planters full of flowers, making them very colourful. However, I can’t really say I find it an attractive architecture and find it difficult to photograph except when there are flowers! We’re also getting a feel for shop hours, which are very different to what we are used to - shops close for lunch or don’t even re-open in small towns, and pretty much everything is closed on Sunday (except maybe early morning for bread). This is making us think hard about when we buy food and how far ahead we have to plan!The weather is becoming hotter, and yesterday’s trip was pretty warm, so we’re getting a feeling for what it is going to be like once we reach southern Spain and Africa. Last night we took another swim back in the campground and treated ourselves to a seafood salad and a cou
ple of beers to deal with the heat. Today we had a lovely drive into the hills to Auvers to see the la Bete sculpture (of a girl who fought la Bete), but the museum was closed. Unfortunately it wouldn’t have been that useful to us (all French) but did get confirmation while staring through the windows that one of our favourite movies is loosely based on the legend – Brotherhood of the Wolf – if you haven’t seen it, it’s really worth it. An information sign at a roadside toilet stop gave us a good English version of the legend and filled in some missing details.
The beautiful valley scenery continued on our way down to the A75 motorway and almost all the way to Montpellier on the French coast. We paid an expensive 7.70 euros to cross the Millau Viaduct (something I really wanted to do), a big fancy bridge over a very deep valley, but the problem was we couldn’t see anything below the bridge as it was so well protected on the edges! However, we could see the valleys well up from viaduct and these were really beautiful.After the viaduct, the scenery almost immediately changed to really cool knobbly rock formations, then rapidly became desert-like (one town even had desert in its name). It would have been great to do some exploring here, but we really needed to get to Montpellier. We had decided that the best thing to do with the bike was get to Montpellier and see if we could get the chain changed, as it seemed to be the only problem that could easily be dealt with. The rear tyre had unfortunately worn more than we’d hoped – we’d sent a new tyre to contacts in Malaga, Spain, but we really needed a new one now plus Xander was concerned that if we go to a mechanic they wouldn’t let us out without a new tyre. Basically a cheap tyre to get us through the next month is all that is needed! He was also undecided about changing the sprockets (the cogs connected to the chain) as he didn’t think they needed doing but as it’s recommended to do chain and sprockets together and they usually come in a kit, we would look at the price and then decide.
We got to Montpellier and it was very very hot by this stage, having seen one sign telling us it was 36 degrees and maybe a road sign saying it was 39! After lobbing into Montpellier with no more plan than trying to see a mechanic shop, or asking the tourist info centre for advice or a phonebook, we filled the tank as the *$$^(%&^ trip computer died again (we’ve decided it’s best to go fuel up so we have the mileage reading to tell us how much fuel we’ve used!) While at the fuel station, we saw a shop we thought was advertising motorcycle repairs and figured it they didn’t then maybe they could direct us to someone who did. By this stage it was about 3.30pm and we thought we might have to book the bike in for a couple of days and stay in a hotel, of which several were nearby. Anyway, the very nice guy in garage directed us to place where he takes his bike, and we eventually found it after stumbling across some other bike stores including Honda – nothing in stock, Honda would take 2 days and no tyres and nearby tyre shop motorbike guy was on holiday till next Tuesday!! We eventually got to recommended bike shop, Moto Expert, who provided fantastic service, got us in straight away and replaced the tyre and the broken inner tube, supplied a new spare tube, and changed the chain and sprockets (only cost a little more). And voila, no more clunking noise!! It turns out the front sprocket was badly worn, which Xander says may have happened because of the bad link in the chain.
So we’re all happy now, though it has cost us a packet (over 300 euros)!! On top of that, we’ve only lost a few hours and were out of the shop at 6.30pm. Our guidebook noted there was a campground only 4km away and we actually managed to make our way here fairly easily!! It’s also costing us a packet (28 euros for the night and another 4.60 euros for the washing machine) as we are near the beaches and there’s tourists all over the place – the campground has something like 300 places in it (inc. static caravans, campers, tent, etc and there’s at least 4 other nearby campgrounds) so I guess it’s not surprising. We don’t care, we’re happy, we’re settled for the night, there’s an on-site grocery store (expensive but better than restaurant), we’ve got our laundry done in a proper machine (important as Xander’s clothes are covered in grease!!!). Even better, it is warm and dry here for almost th first time in the trip, and there’s also free wi-fi internet that we hope to make use in the morning as it’s too late and we’re too busy! I’m also happy because there has been a great show of bats over our site :-)
Tomorrow we plan to head into the Pyrenees Mountains, although we may detour to Carcassonne, a restored medieval walled city that was recommended by a friend, and sounds pretty, if not entirely original.