Having driven in Europe twice now, not counting when I lived in Germany, I do find it somewhat amusing when people say they want to drive the backroads and see the quaint villages. In France at least, if you aren't on an autoroute, you are automatically on a backroad and can't avoid small towns and quaint villages.
To start this off, this is a picture of a street in St. Remy where the cathedral was near Reims. Trout wanted me to take it because to him it is a quintessential image of small town France.
These are some shots of the backroads we took from our lodgings near Lac de Madine to the Verdun Battlefields. Yeah, it was green and wet. BTW, we never drove down to the lake. You can see how congested the road was.
This is one of the towns we passed through. The sign on the right was a common one we saw in this part of France. It would light up and tell you if you were going too fast. My favorite one had smiley and frowny faces along with the numbers. I was sorry I didn't get a picture of it because it was the only one we saw like that.
There's construction in the small towns, too, regardless of the weather.
This is a very wet, dark and blurry picture of this small town, but I like it, so I left it in.
This was a different route to our hotel. It wasn't marked at all, but it seemed to be going the right direction -- and it was.
The weather did clear up a bit as we headed west toward Paris and Giverny. We saw few examples of the mega-wind farms you see here. More likely were these smaller numbers of wind turbines on farm land.
Not all divided highways are autoroutes, but many can have construction.
If you clicked on the Driving in France link in the former post and went to the bottom, you found a sign like this. It tells you how fast you should be going and that there is a speed check ahead. The drivers in front of you may slow down considerably. We didn't get the hint and Trout got 2 speeding tickets while we were there, at least one of which was when he passed a slow moving car. Thank goodness they weren't very expensive. Our car rental agency just charged them to my Visa.
This is a pretty readable sign. The A26 is an autoroute. If an autoroute is also a Euroroute, it will have an E and usually a different number that is carried through all the countries it crosses.
I was smitten by the poppies in green fields, big farm fields and the poppies next to almost ripe fields of grain.
Then we saw purple. It was too far north for lavendar. I think this was flax.
Grain elevators are pretty much the same anywhere.
Trout loved driving down these alleys of trees. You'll see more examples later. This was a pretty big road. It has a dividing line and fog lines.
This motocycle did pass okay. It was a good thing because we didn't have much of anyplace to go.
Now for a rural traffic circle.
And a D road, one of the smaller types.
This is a little blurry, but I think you can make it out if you click on it.
Here's a good sign. It tells us we can go faster than 70KPH now.
Even with all the farmland, most of the farm houses are very close to the road.
This is a very small town. The houses look like fixer-uppers from the outside, but they may be gorgeous on the inside.
I took this for our son-in-law, Phillip. I thought he and his kids would find the sign amusing.
Now just get in the passenger seat and enjoy the scenery for awhile. Farmhouses, fields, little towns.
Most of those pictures above were near Belleme where we stayed for access to Le Mans. These below are in the Loire Valley. These are a couple of bigger towns with impressive chateaus.
I'm not big on fancy chateaus. I was more interested in this airplane hanger.
There was a reason for it. It was some kind of military installation.
Close by were more wind turbines in fields.
And ripening grains or hay.
As we got farther south, we saw more harvested hay. I have no idea why some bales are wrapped in black and some in white.
This is near the town of Puy en Velay. It is in the largest natural reserve in France. The area has more than 80 extinct volcanoes. It is part of the Massif Central and puy is a term used in the area for a volcanic hill. We only spent one night here enroute to Provence. I wouldn't mind going back to spend more time exploring, but I don't see a pilgrimage on foot from there to Santiago de Compostela in my future.
We did get stuck behind a hay trailer.
Finally, it was our turn to pass.
This area is famous for its green lentils.
Trout liked its wrecking yards.
And stone houses.
And stone walled stone gardens.
I finally caught a tractor working with the hay bales.
We saw two of these while driving. We assumed they indicated deaths at that place on that road. Down here family members create memorials along the roads. This seemed more macabre to me.
Wouldn't you know. There just had to be Scotch broom for my benefit.
This was a steep and winding road down from the mountains. This is the guard rail.
How steep you ask? Try a 10% grade for 3KM.
There's always a village to pass through.
And a castle ruin.
And a small road with trees on both sides.
And more twisty parts for Trout.
And an old bridge.
And a town or two in the mist.
And a tunnel to go through.
And a bridge to go over.
Now we're getting into Provence, with its limestone hills.
Another bridge. This one is over the Rhone River.
A typical nuclear power plant with wind turbines adjacent.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. It is a small town near the Mediterranean where we stopped for me to hit an ATM for cash.
A winery on the way to the Camargue.
And a dam that holds the river that feeds into the fresh water lake below.
I couldn't escape the Scotch broom and I couldn't escape the blackberries.
Trout wanted to be sure I got pictures of these very small roads that usually had no center lines.
They ran along fields and often led to small towns like this.
Frequently you could barely see the cars in the shade.
Or in the sun.
But he still loved driving through them.
I hope you enjoyed our little drive around France. When we go somewhere by car or by the train, a major point of the trip is the going part. I know that's nuts to those of you who care only about the destination and nothing for what you see on the way. All I can say is, regardless of the country, road trips are cool.
