revue: last of the great rains?

       

We arrived a bit early in Millau, coming over the hills after overnighting in Périgueux and accompanied by some inclemency: I remember being confined to the motor for our sandwich stop (chicken-salad-mayo), vivid lightning illuminating Rodez prior to that, plus accompanying precipitation of commensurate weight and wetness thereabouts, we almost had to pull over. So then, on arrival we went straightway and fuelled up the wheels and, for the second time this year, took our summer passenger to inspect the Viaduc de Millau, from underneath. It's quite high y'see; still the tallest bridge in the world at the time of writing, I am given to believe. I expect the Chinese are working on changing that. 

The sky was darkening to a gun-metal grey as we drove up and under the bridge and a brisk wind was beginning to bluster as T and I alighted to admire the boiling sky overall: air prickly with electricity, whilst a continuous drum-roll of thunder overhead added to the general ambience. A wall of rain arrived at pace – we fled back into the horseless carriage to dodge the fiercest and heaviest downpour I've experienced in France (and we've had a few). The viaduc de Millau almost disappeared. The motor was rocking! Impressive hail too: Mme Melling was fearful that we might be sustaining dent damage to roof/bonnet, the windscreen could be at risk… luckily these fears proved to be groundless but clearly the viaduct was not a structuree  affording any shelter whatsoever. We wondered what it was like crossing the bridge on the A75 through all that, up there, several dozen metres above us. 

Anyway, we enjoyed the experience (I think); when the perturbation had mostly passed we went on to visit the base of the highest viaduct tower which now shone like polished steel (but is concrete) while the river revealed so much H2O had just been dumped on the area that it washed out a sewage treatment works up-stream, hence the uncharacteristic tint of the mighty Tarn waters. Plus a bit of a whiff – luckily (thankfully) not extending to the town of Millau itself.

We eventually located our recently upgraded out-of-town hotel (after quite a lot of confusion, dissension, and even one or more unkind words) which proved to be, we thought, rather good (previously we've stayed in Millau centre but that hotel proved to be unavailable this time). 

Apart from another downpour while we ate evening-pizza in town, that was it. Until the next day, that is…

Our progress through the Cevennes, on roads we haven't graced since the last century (mostly the D999 and MM reminds me we were on some of these roads when we holidayed in Vissec back in 2010) was punctuated by a moderately aggressive thunderstorm; we had to don waterproofs to get to where we took our breakfast, in the shelter of the ancient market colonnade in Nant. It was raining and thundering last time we were here, way back, when the son-and-heir was but knee-high-to-a-grasshopper…… we were camping! Honest! 

Once satiated by the consumption of good croissants and coffee, we returned to the business of driving on, gaining more and more sunshine as we twisted through the hills – but always ahead of us was that pewter coloured storm complex, moving east. We never caught it up again but witnessed roads fringed with hail drifts, roads deep in stripped off leaves and huddles/collections of anxious growers reviewing the damage to the vine crop and (Mme Melling opined) working out what their compensation chances would be from the Fr. Govt. 

We got a good sit-down lunch at St Victor (see snap below) and noted the restaurant's Routard 2022 approval addition since last we patronised the place. . .  that's brother T in the blue shirt in the picture below, by the way. St Victor features elsewhere in this blog of course… but then you'll know that won't you?

Sorry, no pictures of the hail drifts, leaf strip etc etc, I didn't think you'd be interested really… you aren't are you?  Well, if you are, below is the route we took from Millau to Sablet . . . You'll need your Michelin Road Atlas to make sense of it of course, but you'll have that to hand no doubt…… Note that our breakfast at Nant doesn't feature: that was one of Mme Melling's diversionary delights where she takes us off piste. Usually with most positive outcomes, I have to say…