To the Tunnel

I took the slow but pretty no-toll route. The toll-roads are very good, but dealing with automatic tolls from a RHD drive car is difficult, especially for someone with walking problems.

At Parthenay it was time for a break, and I parked in the mediaeval town intending to get a drink and wander round the old buildings. The drink was duly drunk but I missed the old buildings, having been distracted by some vaguely musical noises. A big band (not a "large band", but a band comprising a particular range of instruments which plays mostly jazz-derived dance music) wandered up the hill and congregated outside the cafeé; they sounded... enthusiastic, but possibly not all playing the same tune. They looked even more enthusiastic, wearing assorted garments of yellow and black, with lots of stripes and even black-on-yellow leopard-pattern. More players, wearing red costumes, joined them, followed by people wearing fairly random things, and a group wearing standard-style royal-blue brass-band jackets with grey trousers, topped off with blue-and-grey hats of curiously huge construction. They mingled into a huge ensemble and began to play again (conducted by an extrovert of the blue and grey persuasion), well-drilled and in time and apparently playing any piece they individually fancied. I took some photos with camera-phone, of middle-aged men in t-shirts and tights and boots and pink tutus or long red cloaks, and girls in vivid yellow outfits, and managed to get one photo of the mad conductor in action. It's silly season in France, with the autumn festivals in all the towns :)

Driving past the chess-piece roundabouts of Alençon (a lovely place once you get through the industrial area) and the waterwheel roundabout at La Flèche, I decided there's a photographic book to be made of French roundabouts.

On one of the massive industrial complexes of Le Mans there was a large odd-shaped orange thing above the road ahead. I couldn't work out what it was for a while. It was the moon, gibbous.

I must remember to drive through Bernay centre if I take this route again. That stretch of road is almost Milton Keynesian; in the dark and feeling tired I started to wonder if I was hallucinating when, on one of the many roundabouts, I noticed a sign on the first exit saying "Bernay 2"... the third time Bernay had been on the right. The next two roundabouts also said "Bernay 2". I was relieved to see "Bernay 3" on the following roundabout.

Abbeville has a wonderful gothic church which I've looked at in daylight. This was the first time at night, resulting in a marvellous discovery: the roads in the town centre are sparkly!

For reference -
St Genis de Saintonge (outline of ship on the roundabout); past Pons (wave to the Donjon) and Saintes; St Jean d'Angelys; Loulay; Niort; Parthenay; Saumur; La Flèche; Le Mans; Alençon; Rouen; Abbeville; Saint-Saëns; Boulogne; La Coquelles.