Day 09 – Beziers to Brive

Welcome to Day 9 of the extended 2006 Tour.

The day started off like all holidays should; relaxed and calm… a leisurely breakfast at 9.45am, calmly packed up our stuff, checked out of the Hotel, gave the tyres and Oil a quick check, then set on our merry way.

The days first destination was Millau, to visit the new Bridge that has been talked so much about (well, it has by us and Top Gear, but perhaps no one else has even heard of it?)

We decided to start at the base of the Bridge to see the Town that this bridge was bypassing; and it was a really beautiful place…

..almost a shame they'd built a bridge to enable you to avoid it really…

On the way into Millau, there was a viewing area, so we pulled in and took a few quick shots on our approach..

..stopped for a Croque Monsiour and a Coke…

…then carried on up the other side, where there is an Information centre all about the Bridge and its construction.

On the way to it, we stopped and took a few more snaps (we did ask the car to get out of the frame in the first one, but it insisted it wanted to be included..)

..we threatened it with one of these if it didn't get out of the way for our next shot…

(it finally relented when it saw the propeller and allowed us to take this shot..)

Onwards to the base of the Bridge, and we got a few more pics like this…

…then wondered around the visitors centre and learnt some interesting information about the Bridge… like for example its height is 342m, which is 22m taller than the Eiffel Tower (and that includes the antenna!), it's 2.5km long, cost 320million euros to build, took a mere 4 years to complete the build and was designed by an Englishman by the name of Sir Norman Foster.

Over the last 9 days, we'd picked up quite a selection of these…

..so we decided what better place to wash the car than in the shadow of such a beautiful and impressive man-made object…

Proud once again to be in a clean automobile, we celebrated by having a few of these..

..then we retraced our steps slightly in order to get back up and drive across the Bridge…

An absolute bargain for €5.10; I wonder how long they're expecting to pay back the capital investment in, because the Toll booths probably weren't that cheap to build either…

After paying our money, we stopped at the next services for fuel and a spot of refreshment, as the whole bridge experience had left us feeling quite high…

Once we had calmed ourselves down, we got back on the road and headed North, passing plenty more stunning views like this one..

..and this one..

..and some not so stunning views like this one..

…and this one..

We even slowed down for some of these..

By 8pm we had reached Brive, found a hotel and checked in; quite an achievement as we had been following the fingers all day…

Our Kyriad Hotel doesn't have Wiff-eee alas, however, if we open the window and precariously balance the laptop on the window sill we can pick up the signal from the Etap hotel next door. (Full credit to Mike for booking us a room not only with-in wireless range of next door, but once again in visual of the car!)

After a most delightful Steak Frites in the Hotel restaurant, followed by a Pression (or 2), we are looking forward to a good nights sleep, hoping to wake refreshed for another day of fun and adventures.

Todays Auturoute map is below (now that we have 240v again..)

Until the next one,

Garry and Mike