Where do you hail from?

Written 4^th May 2012

I'm sorry but I really love silly puns. I'm not sure if the one in the post title even works but it seems to fit so I'm leaving it there. This morning we awoke to slightly soggy laundry (and sopping in the case of the few things I hung on the hedge.) 

The sky was a boiling cloudy blue when we got up but soon burnt off into sunny blue sky. We let the washing dry a little and had breakfast before packing up camp (“Take 2”) and hitting the road. 

Here is another cereal - not as nice as the first ones.

We decided to head towards the French coast just above the Spanish boarder on the Mediterranean side. We drove on the Peage (Pay motorway) until we got past Bayonne (back in France) and then cruised along some free roads admiring the pretty country side.

For lunch we stopped for a picnic in one of those side of the road picnic spots and were dripped on by a few big fat rain drops. We drove on a while and then decided to jump back on the Peage to try and burn a few Kilometers. Not long after we began driving we came suddenly upon a bunch of cars all with their hazards on blocking up half the motorway and the side of it too. Then we realised the road was covered in white. We would have spun out and probably crashed in the slippery, slushy and thick coating of hail but Steve managed to somehow keep the car under control. It was amazing how thick the hail was on the road. In some places it would have been at least 10cm thick!

We drove through it slowly with our hazard lights going. Water and slush and big clumps of hail was splashing up from our tires. Meanwhile the sky was putting on a show of big inky clouds, fork lightning and a bit of sheet lightning for good measure. We drove past a car that had crashed and was sitting of it's roof. There were lots of other cars around it too. After driving some more it started hailing even heavier. It was so loud on the roof. We were a bit worried the windscreen might get cracked! All the cars were trying to hide under the bridges. The hail was icy balls as big as marbles! I've never seen hail that big before. It really was amazing. Here is a video but it really doesn't show how loud and stuff it was.

This is supposed to be another video

Here you can see what the side of the road looked like.

We hopped off the Peage and got back on the free rout. There were lots of lovely scenes to admire out the window. There was this one crazy cliff mountain with a castle perched right up on the edge. The silhouette looked very precarious balance up there like a wobbly old tooth. There were some other cool castles too. We kept driving and driving and began searching for campsites but they were all closed. We were beginning to think we would free camp but still thinking it would be good to find a room. Just when we had nearly given up hope we drove into a little town called Puivert and saw a sign saying Chambres (it means rooms – like chambers.) We nearly drove past cause it looked closed but as we went by I said to Steve I saw some lights inside so he turned the car around and I went in to check and now we have a lovely room in a hostel type place. The people who own it a really super nice and they make puppets! Cool! 

And there were even 2 English books in the bookshelf so we asked if we could swap 2 of our books for them and the lady said we could just have them but we said we would leave them anyway for some other traveller to find. So that is exciting because we have been book-less for a bit. I better go to sleep. There is a church here and it dings the hour and the half hour and it just dinged for midnight. Hopefully I can put this on the blog soon so you can all read it.

Xoxo Au revoir, aimer, Amy.

(That means goodbye love Amy. And you say it “o re-vwar”, “ey-mey” - like my name.)