Journey to France

Rijsbergen, Netherlands to Braugnac, France - 12 hour journey instead of 8½

On Saturday morning we hit the road, heading to France.  The 8½  hour journey took us 12 hours because we were towing a trailer and also traffic near Antwerp was bad.  We ended up taking an alternative route around Antwerp - distance-wise it was longer but at least we kept moving.  We stopped to stretch our legs a few times along the way and then pressed on.

I almost 'flashed' some cars at the toll gates along the way.  I had to lean quite far out of the window to get a toll ticket or put the credit card in the tollbooth pay machine because Paul couldn't get any closer to the machines because of the width of the trailer.  I forgot I had an elasticated boob tube dress on and as I leaned out of the window - the dress would inch right down!  Fortunately the dress didn't make it all the way down past the looking point, leaving my dignity only just intact.

It was very hot during the day so we were very grateful for the air conditioner in the car.  Every time we opened the doors we felt a heatwave blast through.  As we headed south there were dark rain clouds on the horizon and there was a downpour before we reached Angoulême.  Paul had to drive much more carefully due to the rain and the fact that it was difficult to see the road a few times.  It was interesting to see the dark clouds building up and then suddenly the torrent was on us. Afterwards there was a complete beautiful rainbow. The rain brought some lovely cool air with it and the temperature outside plunged from over 30C down to 17C but it soon climbed again afterwards.

After the rain the clouds lifted

During the drive we saw a spider in the corner of the windscreen on the driver's side.  The tiny thing had spun a web and was waiting for a nice juicy meal.  Unfortunately it was inside the car so there wasn't too much hope.  Fortunately dinner came in the form of a small fly that had flown into the car when we were getting in/out of the car.  Every time the spider felt the fly on the web it would quickly make an appearance but the fly managed to get away a number of times until the spider made some amendments to its web and finally caught its hapless victim.  That was about the only 'entertainment' along the route!

We sunk a few energy drinks during the journey so it had helped to 'perk' us up a bit.

We arrived in Braugnac,Teyjat, around 10:30pm.  Although we were a bit tired it was good to see our friend Jo again.  After a bit of a catch-up and something cool to drink we headed upstairs for a cool shower.  We brought our fan along with us just in case the room was hot due to the day's sweltering heat but we discovered that Jo, bless her, had rustled up 2 fans for us, one on each side of the bed.

Time for a cool shower and then bed.