XCRacer - On Tour: Day Two, French Motorways

We have finally arrived at Finale. I am writing this at midnight on Sunday. We have been here for about half an hour and have just climbed into bed. The sound of rain is now drumming on the roof of the van, this wasn’t in the plan at all, this is Italy, it is supposed to be warm and sunny. Well, maybe not sunny at midnight, but you what I mean, not raining.

Most of today has been spent on a French motorway, which hasn’t been a lot of fun. We started north of Dijon and headed south from there. We had a brief lunch stop in a little village somewhere near Macon, sitting in the grounds of a Roman church eating our baguettes and cheese, before hitting the road again.

Believe it or not I have never been caught by a speed camera in the UK but have already been caught twice by French ones. Last time I was in France I was caught doing 110 in a 90 zone (kms, not miles!) but never heard anything about it, it’s probably not worth their while pursuing foreign drivers. This time I was doing 95 in a 90 zone and 90 in a 70 zone in a tunnel. Hopefully they will again deem me not worth chasing, but I am back here in July for the Megavelanche, so if I get arrested at Dunkirk and sent home you know what’s happened. I’m going to blame inadequate signage rather than a particularly heavy right foot.

Other than that the journey has been pretty uneventful, apart from the incident with the toll booth and the wing mirror but we won’t go into that.

 French motorways are like British ones but with more mountains 

and less traffic. And you drive on the wrong side.

I also failed to impress with my lack of knowledge about road racing.  We went passed the Col de Galabier, a name which meant absolutely nothing to me, and which I have just had to ask how spell in order to write this. I have ridden the Col de Torrini before but that is significant to me as a stage of the Monte Carlo rally rather than anything to do with road racing. 

I have also decided that I quite like Italian drivers. I may be in a minority here given their reputation, yes I know they all do daft things pretty much all of the time, but nothing unexpected or unpredictable. On motorways their lane discipline is much better than ones finds in the UK, I haven’t seen a single middle-lane hogger since I’ve been here.