Monday 14 March - Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon

Where’s Bertie? He’s in a commercial Aire at Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon. It costs €9.50 to stay here, including electricity, showers, toilets, wifi and a service point. Exact location: 43.98521, 3.13897.

Weather: Wet and increasingly windy.

The plan: drive to Carcassonne and spend two nights. That plan fell due to this chart of French weather warnings:

Rain plus 70km/h winds is not conducive to sightseeing, and if we were going to drive out of our way and spend €15 per night on a basic Aire, then we wanted the trip to be worthwhile. So, like Roses, Carcassonne has waited since 2016, and will have to wait some more.

After far too long spent staring at a screen, combing various resources and frustratingly failing to find an obvious answer as to where to go (stay in Spain for an extra day? Nope, weather’s wet and windy there too, so we may as well make headway into the 1225km we need to drive by Thursday evening), I finally settled on La Couvertoirade where for €4 we could park in a car park adjacent to a medieval walled village.

First, though we had to exit Spain, via the cheapest fuel station I could find (via komparing.com) – a 2km detour from the motorway for fuel at €1.76/litre (versus the general prices of €1.90/litre plus or minus 5c).

Next came the French border. Had we crossed on the motorway, I’m sure we would have driven straight through. As it was, we got stopped and a man bearing a machine gun stood next to Bertie’s window and requested to see various documents. One of those was my driving licence, which I keep it in my wallet. As I never carry my wallet with me (money and cards sit loose in a pocket), I keep it secreted in a safe place. It was so safely secreted that even though I knew where it was, it took what felt like an age to locate it – the pressure of an official bearing a massive firearm!

They inspected in detail my driving licence and the stamps in our passports, scanned our Covid passes (lucky we both had a good phone signal, as we’d not thought to download them in advance), asked us we had any cannabis or firearms on board, and finally requested details of our itinerary for the next few days. We were then waved on.

A few minutes later I pulled over to let Mick drive whilst I contemplated the road atlas. The result of those contemplations (combined with the information gleaned by taking a photo of the toll chart as we entered the motorway) was that we stayed on the toll road all the way to Beziers (from where our route was a free motorway). It cost €18.10, but when you take into account the slightly shorter distance and the extra fuel efficiency the real cost was, I reckon, somewhere between €13 and €15 for an easy drive and the saving of an hour.

It was around 1330 when we left the motorway for our night-stop, towards which we proceeded for all of 200m before I called for an about turn. We were in dense fog and there was snow lying at the side of the road* – what was the point paying €4 for a car park without services if we weren’t going to be able to see anything, were going to be cold, and were going to fill disinclined to spend time looking around the place? We retreated to the service station we’d just passed for a bite to eat and to consider some more. Within minutes it was raining too.

So, here we are, in an Aire with electricity, next to a walled mediaeval village.

It rather blends into the background, doesn’t it? I’ve manipulated this snap to make it stand out more

Here’s a zoom shot

Once the rain let up mid-afternoon, we grabbed the opportunity for a look around. Donning a ridiculous amount of clothing, including full waterproofs, hats and gloves, to the village we went. It’s a perfect place for these weather conditions, in that we’d walked all of its streets, and read all of the information signs we spotted, within 15-20 minutes. We then walked some roads outside of the walls, and made it back to Bertie just as the rain started in earnest again.

We’ve visited a lot of historic French towns and villages, many of which come across as a bit Disney. This one just felt like we’d stepped back in time (except for the cars in the main square!)

Per the forecast, the wind has picked up too (with some gusts alarming enough to suggest a poor night’s sleep), although it’s not forecast to be as bad here as further west.  

I’d also read on Meteo France that there’s a flooding incident ongoing near Beziers. We bore witness to great swathes of flood water both sides of the motorway as we passed through. 

(*The problem with looking at Google maps or the road atlas is that you can't see the contours of the land, so it's not obvious when I've picked a destination that's at altitude. It turns out that our original intended nightstop was at 750m. The next couple of places I looked at as options were at 900m and 1050m. The place we ended up is only just over 500m, but most of the descent was after we left the motorway, so Bertie will have to haul us back up there tomorrow.)