Bonjour France, Montpellier

Friday 10 June

We left our lovely country villa and set off for France.

We have loved Spain and all the wonderful experiences we had there. One thing we won't miss is the dog poop! It's everywhere! A lot of the Spanish people live in flats and they love their little dogs and they all walk them and don't pick up the poop....makes walking the pavements a precarious experience sometimes. In Barcelona a saw a very elegant lady with a spray bottle and after her precious wee pooch had lifted it's legs she very elegantly sprayed the post, nice one but this is the only time  we saw anyone attempt to clean up. 

Anyway enough about poop, we set off for the 'frontier' and were stopped on the Spanish side  by the Guarda Civilia who glanced at us and waved us on, they had a young man pulled over to the side and were searching his car.  At the French side again we were waved through without much of a glance. On either side of the border there is the biggest accumulation of trucks we have ever seen, an entire town for trucking business related activity.    

Wonderful road trip through little villages, fields and mountains.

Tunnels of trees and village folk just going about their day.

The odd industrial back road.

 Navigation challenge now and then

We stopped at Sete for a cuppa and ended up parking outside the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery so we walked through and it was sobering to see all the Graves so far from home.   Sete is on the seaside with waterways and channels like Venice. Guess what we found alongside the motorway....our lovely flamingos our bird of the trip.

Then on to Montpellier where we drove through  the old town with market stalls on street corners, crazy traffic and again amazing Roman ruins acting as traffic islands.

St Clement aquaduct from the 18th century, a great natural traffic flow stopper.

Found our hotel and had a quick dip in the pool. Bandito motorbikes in the carpark, apparentlly the national conference for bandito's is in Montpellier tomorrow and then there is euro football in Marseille, a busy time in this part of France!