More Aires Hunting - Day 9

A change of plans

Rather than a day off we decided to proceed south, our intial destination being on the Med coast but thinking about a long day we decided to split the journey with a night-stop about half way.

Before setting off properly we nipped about 15/20kms into the mountains for some scenic photos, at somewhere over 2000mtrs we found our spot. We would have used the Aire at Orcieres but at 10€ a stop (18€ in the ski season) we used a public car park for a brief stop.

While I fiddled about getting photos Caro decided to start walking back down and I had instructions to catch her up in about half an hour - fair enough!

Once reunited we continued our day's journey.

Nothing remarkable about the drive - its amazing how quickly you become familiar and complacent about the scenery... We did have a MacDonalds wifi stop but other than having a lunch break (not McD!) it was a waste of time - their signal, my laptop or aerial weren't playing so we (I) gave up.

Our destination was an Aire by an observatory in a small village - big mistake! Access appeared to only be via the village and its very lucky we didn't damage our van or any one else's property squeezing through the tiny streets, several locals came out to watch our progress...... Eventually we came across some roadworks and we abandoned our quest.

Exiting the village our satnav told us it would be another 18km before we could turn around and I believed her - that was the second mistake! She directed us through the most tortuous 18kms you could imagine, the only good thing is I now know exactly how small roads and gaps can be and still be passable!! After that 18km detour we were back towards the ridiculously small village on the same road that we had left it on - the air was fairly blue.....

We found another Aire a few kms away at Dauphin, another tiny village but easier to navigate. The Aire is as good as disused but as we had no need for services it was a nice place with a countryside view to park for the night.

Tomorrow it'll be the hustle and bustle of the coast