We had heavy overnight rain and a wild lightning storm last night. The evidence in the morning was that the Rhone had changed colour to brown, as the upstream runoff entered the river. Today was the last day of our campervan trip as we headed home to Auxonne.

We left Tournon-sur-Rhone about 1130h, and got back on the A7 motorway, headed north. The rain had eased, but was still coming down, but it was still an easy drive. Until, as we appoached the outskirts of Lyon, a light truck attempted to overtake us. He had drawn level with me, when I heard a loud BANG! His front tyre had blown. The truck veered towards me, and then turned sharply left away from me. We were on a three lane highway, I was in the slow right-most lane, and he was in the middle lane. But now he was heading left towards the guardrail down the median strip. He hit the railing with an almighty crash, and then he started heading back across the 3 lanes. As I looked in my side-mirror, I saw him crossing my lane behind me, and then I heard another load crash as he ploughed into the guardrail on the outer edge of the road.  Luckily, my instincts told me to speed up, rather than slow down, when the action started happening, or he would have collected us on his way back across the lanes. By the time I realised fully what had just happened, we were well down the highway and unable to turn back to provide assistance. But I was sure there would now be plenty of vehicles stopped upstream of the accident, who could provide assistance, if necessary.

We were both pretty shaken up by the incident, but there was nothing to do but drive on to the next service centre, where we pulled over and had the chance to relax and calm down. We turned on the FM107 Highway Radio, and listened for any report of an accident on the A7 south of Lyon. And within 5 minutes they were reporting that there had been an accident on the A7, with no injuries, and that traffic was now banked up for 4 kilometres. Perhaps he had also bounced off the outer guardrail and blocked more than one lane. After a while we continued our journey, and drove on, counting our blessings and realising how lucky we had been. Strangely, I have not thought about that incident again until I sit here writing it up (6 months later), even though the details are still sharp in my mind.

The rain continued until we were approaching Auxonne, whereupon it cleared up and the sun appreared. However, as we came to the bridge over the Saone entering Auxonne, we saw that there were major delays, as roadworks were happening on the city side of the bridge. Thirty minutes later, we arrived at Port Royal (just 1km away from the bridge), to find that a favourite tree in the port had been blown down in recent storms. This tree was the only source of shade on the really hot summer days we have been having, and will be sadly missed by ex-Capitaine John Stevenson who enjoyed the shade with a book and a cool drink.

We unpacked the van into the Scenic and then drove the Scenic closer to the boat to unload everything onto the boat. After a few back and forths, everything that was meant to be on the boat was on the boat. Then it was time to relax, sit down on the rear deck with a drink, and watch another Auxonne sunset.