Saturday 22nd September- The drive home

Saturday 22nd September- The drive home
Left Orange after breakfast to be at home before nightfall.
Drove up the old highway to Pont de Esprit and then on the minor roads through the countryside. Winding narrow roads with stony, rocky fields all around us. Then the odd winery with vines and cultivated areas.
Went into the old medieval village of Aiqueze. This is where the crusaders lived before venturing off on their travels fighting wars in the name of Christianity and civilisation. We enjoyed our usual morning cup of coffee in the local bar come coffee shop, before looking for the tourist bureau. No luck as it didn’t open until 2pm and then it was for only a couple of hours. Being a small village we did our own tour up and down the narrow cobbled streets. Very old buildings dating back many centuries still being maintained as they have been for years. Not many people about, however we found a cleaner mopping the floor in the church and then bumped into a group of German tourists doing much as we were walking around and about.
It was time to hit the road and seek out the autoroute that would get us up north and through Lyon to Auxerre and home to Les Toulerons.
The only heavy traffic we encountered was as we went through the centre of Lyon. Stopped off for a rest every through hours for a drink and a sandwich and ran into rain as we entered Auxerre. We thought we knew the way through here as we had visited there previously, however in the rain we have to confess we became hopelessly lost and drove around in circles until we finally spotted a sign to Toucy which we swung around to join. Recognizing more familiar sights we knew we were nearing the areas we knew better.
Despite some of our mistakes, taking wrong turns and sometimes going in the wrong direction, we felt very satisfied that we had travelled some 1700 klms without any major problems as we pulled up in front of Les Toulerons.
In general we have found the French drivers are very tolerant and will happily wait for you without honking their car horns or giving out any abuse. They do park very badly; don’t stop for you at any of the white painted crossings and speed on the open roads. In fact the only time we did hear car horns was when there was a complete mix up as hundreds of cars lined up to go through the toll booths to pay on the autoroute and were pushing in trying to cross over the lanes in front of others. It all got sorted out though as soon as they opened up a few more booths.
Unloading the car in the rain we dropped our bags down in the bedroom to unpack in the morning, poured ourselves a drink and had something to eat before falling into bed exhausted. Being a tourist is really tiring!