April 23 - They say you should never go back but like all rules of life it is proven in the breach. Our return to the Gorges of the Tarn river has been wonderful. It is some 17 years since we were here. Much has changed but muchg remains the same. The road here from Clermon Ferrand has indeed changed. When we last drove it was the RN9. It was my first taste of such a road with a caravan on the hook, albeit a light and easy Lynton of the 80s. It then ran from mountain top to valley bottom in a series of hard climbs and dives of two-lane follow my leader torture. Our carburettor aspirated Nissan Bluebird was 1.8 and automatic! It and we did OK.
Today it is the A75, four lanes of high level motorway that varies only between 800 metres and 1100 metres for the entire 125 or so kilometres. There are long ascents and descents but they are easy meat by olden standards, with slow vehicle lanes going up and down the worst inclines. You seel of France but about as much of the wonderful countryside.
And in our time it ended with an 800 metre descent into the valley of the Tarn, Aveyron and Jonte rivers at Millau. Followed by the 800 metres ascent up the rightly labelled Le Escalier pass into the region of Herault. Today it is the Millau Viaduct, French inspoired, English architected and geniusely engineered to carry the traffic from Causse top at about 800 metres to Hirault plateua at about the same. Gosh and wow are n ot enough.
When back in the day we heard they planned to cross the valley with a huge bridge we were a bit fhorrified. It is a superb place. How could it not be a blot on this landscape? Well it is not. It genius in concrete and steel. The piers that carry it are huge uop close but slender from a distance. And they are double with ba window gap between – it aids wind pressure problems but also diminishes their impact. And the bridge? A bold but slight blade of lights across the gap carried on gossamer wingers of suspension wires. It shimmers against the bright blue skies of the Midi. It is awesomely lovely.
And little else has changed. The Tarn has less water I think than before but the gorge is immense – even more than we remembered. The clifs are amazing, the cirques sensational and the stunning little houses, hamlets and villages that hang precariously below threatening rocks and above precipitous drops are charming beyond words. And some are on the wrtong bank because when built they did not go by horse and cart but by boat and a bridge was an unnecessary expense. Today some are even served by breeches buoys across the chasm.
You descend into and climb out of this 4-500 metres deep gorge by roads that spiral like spagehtti, forcing smart gear work out of lazy drivers. And rob the driver of his wits as he balances risk against pleasure to enjoy at least some of the view. Even down in the gorge this only just 100 years old clif-cut road snakes frighteningly along gthe noirthern bank, here in a tunnel overhung at 3.5 metres, there between blasted cliff borders with little but inches between passing mirrors. Along the weay are a myriad stopping places where eager fingers press shutter releases to pruduce trillions of pixels of identical pictures. But we all do it. Back in the day this was an expensive holiday – two weeks of 35 mm films was about 12x36 rolls at about £4 a roll; followed bgy dev and print at about £6 a shot. There was no change out of £125 and you had yet to mount or store them! Today I take that many in a few hours. I shall junk 60plus per cent and store about 10 per cent on a Picasso! Cost? Well zero really since the Canon cost no more today than the Ricoh that did the job back then. Except of clopurse some thieving git has my Canon and I was using a Lumix smaller than my fag packet in 1993 with a wider and longer lens and able to hold 1300 images at 8-12 meg!
No, nothing has changed. Oh, except the prices. Lunch back then would have cost about the same as a coffee today.
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