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| Morning markets in Annecy |
Lazy morning wandering around the lake and town. The clouds gave some welcome cover to the warmth of the sun. On the lakes edge vintage boat club members were proudly displaying their craft. Somewhere on the othe side of the world, a young man enjoys a birthday breakfast with his girlfriend with nine assigments and looming exams on his mind – Happy Birthday and “bon chance”.
The river through Annecy
The morning markets filled the tiny streets and alleyways and we found a pancake place with a little side lane by a garden – a nice sanctuary from the crowds. They also had buckwheat (GF) pancakes and we chowed down on pancakes with banana, home made caramel source and chantilly cream, nutella and chantilly cream with homemade caramel source and roasted almonds (after last night potatoes we didn’t want to go too hard 🙂 ).
Boats on the lake
A last stroll by the lake before hitting the road. We planned for a bit of a haul today to get us to the Loire valley and roughly halfway back to Paris. Sometime in the afternoon a black SUV zoomed past us (we’re already at 130km), and slowly veered toward the concrete barricade to our left. About 50m in front of us it glanced the concrete. It was hard to tell whether the driver then over reacted or whether the wheel was hooked out by the concrete but in any event, with us breaking hard, the SUV fish tailed wildly to the right almost rolling, fished tailed wildly to the left and flew at high speed back into the concrete barricade hitting it at about 45 degrees.
A loud metallic crash preceded the shower of headlight glass, rubber and black plastic as white airbags exploded off the dash. At 130km vehicles come from nowhere quickly and in the rearview a veritable flotilla of cars and vans were doing their best to pull up behind us, fronts ends down, breaking heavily.
The SUV, slower now and with a stoved in front-end and no stearing veered right again crunching through the mess of scattered glass and plastic and drove off the road down into a grassy ditch.
We pulled up some 50m up the road and ran back to help. In seconds there were four or five cars pulled up. It was hard to tell in the small crowd that had gathered how many had been in the vehicle but they were all OK. The driver was easily identifiable – look of absolute shock and horror and sweat all over his face. I’m guessing the son of the vehicle owner was the one looking at the wreck in the ditch with an “oh gosh” look on his face. People running toward the accident were calling “ca va? ca va?”
We were so close as the accident unfolded that it was like we were in the camera truck in a movie right behind the scene. Had we not braked, assuming he’d pull the SUV back into control, he would have collected us while fish tailing back off the wall and the whole event could have been a lot worse for everyone. As it was we drove away with sphincters puckering a considerably heightened awareness!
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| Last night walking off the potatoes |
We stopped at a servo for fuel and a coffee sometime after passing through Lyon and watched a thunder storm pass through the Loire. It’s funny really. It’s an Australian car tour with good highways and truck stops everywhere except there’s forest, green, green valleys and castles and chateau’s.
Last night reducing the cheese load
Di finds a hotel that will see us pull up about 7:00pm, a reasonable haul we reckon. The place is your typical Best Western type motel in the back of an industrial estate in a small working town somewhere. Up the end of the road, unsurprisingly for us now, is a large castle. We find Le Liberty, an american steak house and enjoy a meal. We don’t see a soul in the hotel, the keys have been left out for us. The place is clean and comfortable and has an awesome shower. End of a long day for us and we crash.
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| Happy face before the potatoes |
Tomorrow through the Loire to Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte and thence to Charles De Gaull for a flight tomorrow sometime.