We had set ourselves quite a goal today – driving nearly 600km through France to the Central Massif in the Auvergne region, mostly because its one of the few places we’ve never been & we fancied going. Driving on French autoroutes is a normally a pleasure as they are relatively empty compared to motorways in England, with very few holdups. Both those things applied but it was monotonous and pretty boring, mostly due to the weather.





We started in rain, finished in rain and had incessant rain in between; the sky was uniformly grey for the whole day and gave the whole (very long) journey a really morose feeling. You might gather from this that we didn’t really enjoy the trip! It was slightly enlivened by using the services on the A28, where the ladies toilets were beautifully decorated with huge flowery murals.





One other nice thing was that before leaving home I’d purchased a Toll Tag so we could sail through the toll barriers on the autoroutes. “Sail through” doesn’t really describe the actuality, as we had to come almost to a stop at the barrier before the tag activated it, but at least we didn’t have to queue (Hubby) or fumble about dropping the credit card (guess who). Cue smug expressions as we passed queueing Brits.



Fed up with the rain & grey skies, we stopped for lunch at a Flunch. The food was slightly indifferent but reasonably cheap; the drinks, however, caused a bit of a problem. I’m not too keen on coffee with a meal and prefer tea, but only straightforward tea, none of your herbal infusions; the server spoke no English, but I managed to ask for tea, whereon she gave me a box with a choice of flowery flavours. I rejected them all and asked for “petit dejéuner Anglaise” (English breakfast). Cue very puzzled looks & Gallic shrugs.....I had coffee.




The skies cleared a little as we approached the mountains and we got a view of Puy de Dome, the highest peak in the chain of the 80 Auvergne volcanoes. It became ominously dark as we got to the site – Camping de la Croze at Chatel Guyon – and I went into the office to book in, whereupon a virtual hurricane appeared, accompanied by torrential rain. So there we were, me trapped in the office with no coat and Hubby trapped in the car, with the wind roaring and the trees whipping about furiously throwing leaves at him. Monsieur and I just stood with open mouths as the water gathered in front of the office door and created a huge puddle in 2 minutes flat – as we agreed, “a piscine pour les canards” (swimming pool for ducks) indeed. It slackened eventually and Hubby & I were reunited under Monsieur’s huge umbrella.





The site is lovely, terraced at the top with pitches of bark chippings amongst many pine trees, and grassy ones in the lower part; these, however, had filled up with more piscines, so we opted for the higher section and pulled up the hill through the rivers created by the rain. After setting up, we hunkered down for the evening, just glad to be finally out of the rain.