We had realised late in the week that our trip through France to Switzerland was going to take place on Bastille Day, at the beginning of the French summer holidays. Not a good recipe for a quick trip, given our experience on the freeway down the Rhone Valley in 2011. So we decided to take the back roads, and stay overnight somewhere on Saturday night. I had always wanted to see the bridge at Millau over the River Tarn, so that was where we headed for.

From Moissac, we drove to Montauban, then went cross-country along the Tarn Gorges route through Albi and then towards Millau. Along the way we stopped to make lunch in the town of Ambialet, which had some spectacular views of the Tarn from the churchyard on top of a rock outcrop (our hire car was the red Toyota at the bottom of the picture).

We then followed the Tarn Gorge through the Parc Natural Regional du Grands-Causses, eventually approaching the Millau Viaduct along route D992 from the west. This is the best way to see and appreciate the scale of the bridge, as shown below.

The bridge deck is about 300m above the Tarn River when it crosses it near the pylon second from the left. The total height of that pylon (343m) is greater than the height of the Eiffel Tower, and is the tallest structure in all of France.

After Millau, we continued along the Tarn through the Cevennes National Park, and eventually arrived at our interim destination of Bagnols-sur-Ceze, just west of Orange. Along the way we passed lots of beautiful river scenery, often populated by canoeists and kayakers. As we entered Bagnols, we noticed lots of barricades along the edges of the roads. We later learnt that we had missed the Tour de France by about 3 hours. That night we stayed at an old Chateau, the Hotel Chateau du Val de Ceze, where we heard and saw some of the fireworks for Bastille Day.