France - Summer Driving

Driving, in France, during Summer vacation - are we nuts? 

Yes.

And stressed.

Yesterday, we left Sète (practically on time!) at a little after 9am, heading to Nantes. Normally, during the week, that's 7-8 hours of driving, plus a couple of hours for breaks. We left a day early, just to make sure to miss the summer crunch. We expected to get there by 6pm - plenty of time to get settled in, have a relaxed dinner, and a pleasant evening.

But no!

The traffic gods were clearly angry, and looking for a way to make everyone pay! 

*Right* before we get there, the section of the A83 freeway we needed was closed - completely closed! But because we were there, it was too late to re-plan. So, we waited. And waited. ("I'll never get out of Casablanca"). Some unspecified, but loooong time later, we started to move. The police had worked out a route for us - go through this aire (rest stop), cross over the freeway, go back to the next exit, then take the back roads till you can rejoin the freeway. Everyone and his dog was having to do that, so of course it was clogged the whole way. We stopped at the aire for a much needed break, then stayed on the back roads longer than many. 

Section still closed at 10pm

At least it was less stressful. But. Our gas level was now screeching at us that it was in the danger zone. 

We pressed on. (No, we did not run out of gas - what a nightmare that would have been!)

We finally arrive at 9pm! Two totally frazzled people hobbled into the hotel and collapsed!

~~~

UPDATE From Ouest France news

Yesterday, Thursday, August 1, 2024, a 10 km traffic jam formed on the A83 motorway between Niort (Deux-Sèvres) and Nantes. The cause: a fire in a timber truck, which took the firefighters several hours to extinguish.

It was only last night, at 1:20 in the morning, that a lane of the A83 motorway was reopened to traffic, near Sainte-Hermine, in Vendée. The day before, Thursday 1 August 2024, in the middle of the afternoon, a fire broke out in the load of a truck transporting logs and spread to around 3,500 m² of surrounding vegetation. The motorway was closed to traffic and a traffic jam formed, soon reaching 10 km.