{"id":5080,"date":"2024-06-05T15:07:06","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T15:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=5080"},"modified":"2025-12-24T22:26:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:26:47","slug":"5-motorway-mayhem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=5080","title":{"rendered":"5. MOTORWAY MAYHEM!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leaving Sunbilla was “downhill” all the way.\u00a0 Decrease in altitude, increase in traffic, increase in the price of fuel … and toll roads!\u00a0 Toll roads!\u00a0 I said last time we drove into France from Spain on the ordinary roads (through Urrugne, St Jean de Luz, Bidart, Biarritz and Bayonne), that I’d never do that again while towing a caravan.\u00a0 Far too many roundabouts, traffic lights, speed bumps, traffic calming measures AND just too much traffic.\u00a0 It’s the motorway and payage for us.\u00a0 It’ll save hours!<\/p>\n

We turn onto the motorway – and immediately hit the first toll station.\u00a0 On the border with France.\u00a0 We haven’t used any road yet and we are being asked to pay!\u00a0 So we shuffle forwards with the traffic and select a wide-looking lane.\u00a0 Wishful thinking – they are all the same width.\u00a0 Just wide enough for a truck – so that will be just over 8 feet (2.5 m).\u00a0 We select “English” as our language of choice.\u00a0 Seems a good plan.\u00a0 Instructions flash up on the screen.\u00a0 1 to 5.<\/p>\n

1. Insert card.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a02. Enter PIN.\u00a0 3. Retrieve card\u00a0 4.\u00a0 Take receipt\u00a0 5. Drive off!<\/p>\n

… we didn’t get to “2”!<\/p>\n

The machine swallowed the card and shut down.<\/p>\n

Nowhere to enter a pin or to cancel the transaction.\u00a0 No-one to assist.\u00a0 Just us and a growing queue of traffic behind.\u00a0 The red emergency button eventually connected us with a distant voice.\u00a0 “Use another card – that one is ‘in opposition’???”\u00a0 There’s no way we are going to lose another card.\u00a0 “It’s our only card, we want it back!”\u00a0 “It’ll be sent to your bank in England!”\u00a0 “No thanks, please come and retrieve it now.”\u00a0 There’s no one here that can do that!”\u00a0 Twenty minutes have past by now.<\/p>\n

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The traffic mayhem behind is growing.\u00a0 Coaches are reversing.\u00a0 Lorries are swerving.\u00a0 The queue has extended out of sight.\u00a0 Then a lorry next to us gets stuck.\u00a0 That REALLY helps the situation behind!\u00a0 I put a bollard behind us as a warning.\u00a0 The swerving and reversing gets more extreme.\u00a0 The queue presumably is reaching back well into Spain, although, of course we can’t see that far back.<\/p>\n

Our “helpful” (not very) “assistant” comes back on the blower to say that someone from Paris is on the way with keys.\u00a0 He’ll be with you in 30 minutes.\u00a0 OK, he’s coming from Biarritz not Paris.\u00a0 15 minutes later, a lady appears with a bunch of keys.\u00a0 She sounds VERY like the lady we have been conversing with for the last 40 minutes.\u00a0 Certainly not a man from Biarritz!<\/p>\n

She’s brought the wrong bloody keys!<\/p>\n

By now three campervans have parked behind us, put up their awnings and got a brew going.\u00a0 A dozen customs officers parading in front of the toll boothes looking for smugglers (presumably) drop by, one by one, for a chat with ‘les Anglais strand\u00e9s’.\u00a0 All very entertaining, but what about the smugglers?<\/p>\n

Our ‘charming non-man from Biarritz’ reappears out of the rabbit hole beside us.\u00a0 Right keys!\u00a0 Gets to work extracting our card.\u00a0 “Ahh!\u00a0 Mastercard.\u00a0 They don’t work in France!”\u00a0 “Cobblers”.\u00a0 “It’s in opposition (no credit).”\u00a0 “Still more cobblers!”<\/p>\n

“We’ve changed the system in France.\u00a0 No more PIN codes needed.\u00a0 Just use contact-less.\u00a0 Like this.”\u00a0 She waves our card at the machine.\u00a0 Beep.\u00a0 Out comes a receipt.\u00a0 Up goes the barrier.\u00a0 “So why are the instructions wrong?”\u00a0 “No one has got round to changing them yet.\u00a0 I see your card is not in opposition and Mastercard DOES work in France after all.\u00a0 Off you go.\u00a0 Have a nice day!”<\/p>\n

By this time our friendly campers behind us have got their barbecues going.\u00a0 We left the lorry driver eating his packed lunch.\u00a0 We exchanged contact details with the border guards and moved off into France.\u00a0 We also left the bollard behind, blocking access to what we now think of as OUR booth.\u00a0 Maybe it’s still there!<\/p>\n

Toll roads quicker?\u00a0 Not always!<\/p>\n

The next ‘difficulty’ occurred half an hour later when we pulled into the driveway of the campsite we had selected for the night.\u00a0 Gate closed.\u00a0 Locked tight shut.\u00a0 Nobody about.\u00a0 Closed.\u00a0 Ferm\u00e9e!<\/p>\n

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The sign says “Come back in 90 minutes after we finish our lunch!”\u00a0 Blow that for a game of soldiers.\u00a0 So we leave a rude message on their answerphone, reverse back out onto the main road and head onwards to Rivi\u00e8re-Sass-et-Gourby.\u00a0 We stayed here last year in the front garden of a little rural house.\u00a0 Quick phone call to make sure they have space.\u00a0 No English spoken here by Patron Edith and daughter Sylvie.<\/p>\n

We parked exactly where we did last year!<\/p>\n

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Very peaceful except when Sylvie started pressure washing round the pool, and Farmer Giles moved in to harrow the field behind …<\/p>\n

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… and Farmer Giles’ son started turning the hay in front of us!<\/p>\n

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When Edith’s gardener started cutting the hedge we left for a walk along the Ardour River at Saubusse.<\/p>\n

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Not sure how I got the river looking so.blue.\u00a0 A more realistic colour was a dilicate shade of brown!<\/p>\n

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Glenda spots the first stork of the trip:<\/p>\n

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Driving around the country roads we see quite a number of village name signs turned upside down.<\/p>\n

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The crossing out is normal – that just tells you that you have left town.\u00a0 But why are town names upside down?<\/p>\n

Apparently, and we haven’t seen this, they are sometimes accompanied by the slogan ‘Nous marchons sur la t\u00eate’ (we’re walking on our heads) to signal a world turned upside down or a policy that makes no sense.\u00a0 The reason for these strange happenings?\u00a0 It’s a protest, largely orchestrated by the farming union that represents young agricultural workers.\u00a0 French farmers do like a protest!<\/p>\n

While we are on the subject of road signs, there is an interesting anachronism.\u00a0 If you remember the Moroccan stop sign looked like a sleigh…<\/p>\n

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Well, the French signs look just like proper Stop signs:<\/p>\n

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Curiously, stop signs in France use only the English word “STOP,” an artifact of European Union standardisation<\/p>\n

We totally failed to find anywhere of quality to book for Sunday lunch.\u00a0 So we sulked and had it a day early at the Gn\u00e0c et Pause restaurant in St-Lon-les-Mines<\/p>\n

Travelling South towards Salies-de-B\u00e9arn we passed the smelliest wall in this part of France.<\/p>\n

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Totally covered in Jasmin.\u00a0 You could smell it a mile away – well, at least 50 m away!<\/p>\n

Salies, as it’s name suggests, sits on a saline spring.\u00a0 Water ten times saltier than seawater emerges in a crypt under what is now the Place du Baya\u00e0.\u00a0 There are, apparently, a lot of rules (well, this is France!) dictating who can extract the “white gold”.\u00a0 Evidence shows the salt from this source was used to preserve food at least as long ago as the 11th century BC.\u00a0 How on earth do they find such “evidence”!<\/p>\n

According to legend, a wild boar wounded by medieval hunters had the bright idea of hiding in muddy marshland.<\/p>\n

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He was found dead but covered in salt crystals. It was then that people realised that under Salies-de-B\u00e9arn ran a spring of salt water.<\/p>\n

Before dying, the boar uttered these words: \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t died, no one would live here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, that is just a legend.\u00a0 A bit like parts of this blog!\u00a0 Clearly, boars can’t really talk.<\/p>\n

The town is very lovely.\u00a0 Well worth the visit!<\/p>\n

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Heading further South, we arrived at Sauveterre-de-B\u00e9arn.\u00a0 By then we were half way back to the Pyrenees!<\/p>\n

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The Eglise-Saint-Andr\u00e9 and, opposite that, the town hall with it’s neatly tended garden:<\/p>\n

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Down by the Gave d’Oloron, a tributary of the River Adour, there’s a small campsite and a riverside walk to the Pont de la L\u00e9gende.<\/p>\n

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Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed it’s actually only half a bridge.\u00a0 In fact, the river has split into two streams here.\u00a0 So the bridge would only have got to an island.\u00a0 Really, it’s only a quarter of a bridge!\u00a0 It was originally constructed between the 12th and 13th century.\u00a0 An arch and a fortified gate are still standing, the rest was destroyed by a flood in the 18th century.<\/p>\n

As far as I can see, there are two legends that appear to be connected with this bridge.<\/p>\n

According to one, the original bridge was built by the very Devil himself, as it was too difficult for mortals to build.\u00a0 Apparently, this story is attached to a number of bridges which are lnown collectively as “Devil Bridges”.<\/p>\n

The second story is more tragic!\u00a0 It’s also a long story.\u00a0 But in short…<\/p>\n

In 1169, Gaston V, viscount of B\u00e9arn married Sancie of Navarre.\u00a0 Gaston got sent off to war.\u00a0 Sancie was already pregnant.\u00a0 Her child was born really ugly.\u00a0 The locals all thought she had been at it with the devil.\u00a0 Tried by being bound and chucked off the bridge.\u00a0 Found not guilty by surviving the “execution”.\u00a0 Totally vindicated and forgiven.\u00a0 Lived happily ever after.<\/p>\n

Your choice of Legend.\u00a0 Vote one or two with reasons by commenting on this post.<\/p>\n

I must remember to tell you about the break in at toilets in Spain!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaving Sunbilla was “downhill” all the way.\u00a0 Decrease in altitude, increase in traffic, increase in the price of fuel … and toll roads!\u00a0 Toll roads!\u00a0 I said last time we drove into France from Spain on the ordinary roads (through… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain-and-france-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5080"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5434,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080\/revisions\/5434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}