Criss-crossing France

Since buying the second garage in Bordeaux I’ve been driving around France building the funds and I’m now getting close to the amount needed to get our second truck for our company. This post is going to be less reading and more images because you hopefully know all you need to take jobs and deliver them 😉

In the Garage Dilema post I mentioned the A89 and linked to an external website about the ‘autoroute of the presidents’ or the ‘Transeuropean’ as it is known. At the time I promised we’d revisit in daylight to show some of the structures on the A89. Ironically my first job out of Bordeaux was delivering a tanker of LPG to Lyon which put us straight back out on the A89 going east and presented the opportunity to catch the Viaduc du Chavanon in the evening light…The A89 is such an important east-west connection that we’ll be visiting this bridge again! From close to Lyon we picked up an item of drilling equipment from a quarry. A little tip – climbing out of a quarry can be very difficult with a heavy load. You have to take things very slowly in first gear to make it out! Fortunately this driller is a light load so no issues on this occasion…The load was going to Poissy on the outskirts of Paris affording a view of Chateauneuf near Dijon as we passed along the A6 ‘AutoRoute du Soliel’…Now for a long run south! A quick drive round Paris to Charles De Gaulle airport to pick up the load of Medical Vaccines. Then we were off on our way to Montpellier. Quite early in the journey we cross the Loire on the outskirts of Orléans…The saving grace of this trip is that only two tolls impede our run the second of which guards access to le Viaduc de Millau. This is a truly magnificent bridge even in the confines of a computer game. I recommend a quick trip to Wikipedia to read about it. After an overnight rest stop we crossed it in the early morning with the sun just creeping over the horizon…Our next delivery was a short trip across to Marseille because I wanted to check out the truck dealer there. This time it was a load of medical equipment and I couldn’t resist tonemapping the screenshot of us arriving at the old port area to make the delivery…Then, after checking out the dealer – confirmed as a MAN dealer – we were off north again with 22t of Aubergines which should come in handy for anyone in Dijon planning on making Ratatouille 😉 It was a day of sunshine and showers……which made that red coach behind us look really bright! ‘Whose is that?’ I was thinking……Ah! Bayern Munich team bus – must be one of Jazzycat’s offerings 🙂 I picked up a speeding fine on the outskirts of Lyon – caught out by the 22t load after two loads of 5t. I should have started slowing for the 50kmh limit a bit earlier 😦 From Dijon it was another load of vegetables going south to Toulouse – Carrots this time. We set out in the middle of the night with the rain still falling…The fuel price on the left will horrify my US readers – that’s €1.44 per litre which roughly equates to $6.40 per US Gallon for diesel! The current real world price in France is €1.244 – still horrific – and it’s worse in the UK! The route initially took us south on the A6 towards Mâcon (which is not represented in the game) before cutting across country and through some wooded terrain……and on to Vichy and a rest stop before picking up the A89 west to connect with the A20 south to Toulouse. Which meant crossing the Viaduc du Chavanon once more as the sun went down……and that’s where we came in! Next time I hope to be in a position to buy that second truck which will probably be a MAN TGX. Hope you enjoyed the screenshots from my trips.