....continued from #MP40.
These five pages of My Pics feature photos from Reflexia's unplanned road trip around France and Spain in 2008. The full story appears in the Articles section for ease of reading. It contains all the same pictures as displayed on these pages, but with a comprehensive write-up.
Click here to read the full article, or here for a PDF version that may be more easily viewed / printed.
After a couple of nights in Toulouse, I continued my journey east towards Montpellier, but got lost on the way and found myself climbing remote hills in a region known as the Montagne Noire. I ploughed through snowy pine forests before emerging onto an open plain, on a stereotypical French road lined with equidistant trees (above).
In plotting a path back towards the place I should have been aiming at originally, I plunged deeper into the Black Mountain, ascending deserted, icy roads such as the one here at Lespinassière (below).
From this point on, the road became very narrow, and I could just feel the wheels on my R4 almost starting to give a few times when I strayed off any previous tyre tracks and over the icier strips. This was now starting to get dodgy and the steep drops at the side of the road were not always protected by a barrier. One false move here and I'd have been a snowball. I dropped down into second and then into first gear, noticing that five, ten, fifteen or more minutes had now passed since anybody dared meet me in the opposite direction.
When I stopped to take the pictures displayed here, I crossed to the verge on the other side of the road and my leg sunk down in the snow beyond the knee.
Within half an hour I was back on the main road and would never have known what conditions I'd been in before from looking at the view around me (below).
There followed a long, enjoyable descent towards the town of Béziers, populated by more and more Renault 4s both at the roadside and in motion. Whilst passing through one town, an F4 van came into sight ahead of me and another saloon pulled out behind, creating a coincidental convoy of three Renault 4s in succession. I muttered something to myself about Renault 4s ruling the world and sat at the wheel with satisfaction, whereupon a fourth came past us in the opposite direction and another was parked alongside. For other drivers and pedestrians we must have looked like a bunch of stubborn, unyielding owners who outright refused to move with the times and replace our cars with something more modern. Or perhaps we just looked French.
The route then swung north-eastwards towards Montpellier, first diverting to the coastal town of Mèze, where there were many more R4s to be seen, more than in any other slice of the country I was to pass through. I reached Montpellier at dusk, and bedded down for another night.
Pictures from this trip continue in the next entry, #MP42.