Goodbye Italy – hello France.
Today we travelled from Pisa to our next campsite which is in Villeneuve Loubet in the south of France. Before we went into Italy we were a little anxious about driving amongst Italians whilst towing a caravan and thought that things might be much more expensive than in other European countries, but we needn’t have worried. The Italians were hospitable, warm and generous hosts and, barring a couple of incidents, there was no problem with the driving and everything was reasonably priced so, ten out of ten from these tourists and a heartfelt “grazie” to all our Italian hosts.
Having left Italy on a high, we spent a day being totally traumatised by French toll stations. We have encountered many toll stations in several countries without any serious difficulties, but French toll stations were a whole new experience. Firstly, there were more of them. Whereas in Croatia and Italy where we got a ticket as we entered the motorway and simply paid on exit,even if we’d switched to various other motorways on our journey, we paid just by distance. Today we got tickets and paid four or five times, sometimes for just small stretches of road. The running costs must be high percentage of the revenue it raises. We have also been used to signs well before each station giving lane instructions for either automatic payment, credit/bank card payment and/or cash payment lanes, and again on the approach, and very clear signs over the lanes at toll stations. But this wasn’t the case today At the first toll station we were left stationary with our hazard lights on trying to discern which lane we should go in with the caravan and only a card to pay make payment, having already being told to reverse out of one we didn’t want to make the same mistake. Eventually, Angela had to get out with a fluorescent jacket on, risking life and limb in fast moving traffic, and actually go to the booth to see what they accept and whether we could get through with the caravan (amid much blaring of lorry and car horns and and frantic arm waving from French drivers). If it hadn’t been for a friendly French coach driver taking pity on us, we’d probably still be there, scratching our heads. The next station was different again. We got really close and found the correct lane for cars paying by card but for the first and only time, the car lanes had a height restriction which the bikes on top of the car didn’t quite make. Arghh!!! We had to reverse down a long, narrow, concrete lined lane to get out. At another station when we went to collect a ticket it came out of a slot above the car, presumably because it detected the bikes and thought we were a lorry. We want to go back to Italy, now!
At the end of the day we had experienced enough different tolls to make us old hands at choosing a lane (we hope). Once we’d made it safely to our campsite, and having had several very stiff drinks, we felt much better and ready to explore our new environs.
We have arrived to a beautifully warm and sunny south of France. We wandered down to the beach and took a few few photos.
VILLENEUVE LOUBET
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to Grandma and Grandad
ReplyDeleteWow you must of had fun trying to get the ticket!
The pictures of the beach look awesome!['~']
from
William xx
Yes William, the beaches were lovely but mainly pebbles not sand. When we went to Nice there was lots of sand and a man making giant sand sculptures on the beach. They were really awesome but we had to pay to take photos and we were too mean. :-)
ReplyDeleteLove From Grandad and Grandma