Wednesday 18th MayWe left our hotel at 10am. We started to backtrack on ourselves and breakfast was served at a services overlooking Monaco with the most uneven car park in the world. As we neared Italy we soon turned off towards the town of Sospel and the windy road up to the Col de Turini. At this stage we were lucky to have a local in a Dacia Sandero (Matt really wants one, but he'd prefer a Duster even more!) who led the way taking the racing line, neither slowing us up or disappearing into the distance. When we reached Sospel, the sat nav made it's first error, sending us up a cobbled street to nowhere.


Wrong turn in Sospel

We came back down and drove through the village centre, soon to be overtaken by Sebastien Loeb in a Renault Traffic. And then we were on the Turini proper The road was dead. We saw two, maybe three cars coming down towards us and some guy at the top doing roadworks! Some sections were a little bumpy whereas some were fresh and smooth but on the whole it was a great road.

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On the way to Turini


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We stopped at the top in one of the 3 restaurants and just about managed to order something edible.

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The trio at the Turini

The decent over the Turini was a little of the same, hairpin switchbacks down through the forest, mixed with ten or so minutes of hail.

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And then as we went back towards Nice we hit a stumbling block. The route planner that James had been using had massively underestimated the toll fees for the motorways. In a desperate bid to be cheap, we found our way almost into Cannes before deciding 10 minutes later that we'd rather pay! Making up for lost time we put my foot down and we did a legal 125kph for the next couple of hours. Around Marseille we made another stop and the route was remapped avoiding the remaining 30 miles of toll motorway and instead taking a 20 minute longer detour thorugh the scenic Camargue national park. We found every caravan in France also on this route, but James soon gave them some 8v powah and Ed gave them some boost. Before long we arrived in Montpellier and found an Etap, slightly more upmarket than the F1s we had used. We now have a shower and bath in the rooms and Ed and Zoe have a door through to mine and Mark's room. Dodgy!

Our evening was spent with a casual drive into the centre ville and a lovely meal in a slightly posh outdoor restaurant (we didn't really fit in with our shorts on, typical tourists).

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After steaks, milkshakes and ice cream and some laughter at changing the sat nav voices, we headed back without Jane (English) but with Kathy (Irish) who took us for a nice tour of Montpellier's roadworks and the most un-street-like street ever. We finished off with a small detour over a zebra crossing, across the pavement and back to our hotel.