Day 4 - Nancy to Montpellier

Day 4 Nancy to Montpellier

Up & Down bar and Louie, the excellent owner.

Right! So the morning was the first of the bigger drives, 7 hours 30 in one day. We have have driven longer on other tours, but with more drivers and not on 4 hours sleep.  Due to these facts we opted to bite the bullet and take the toll road over driving the extra 3 to 4 hours. We managed to get up and out without disturbing the Germans, the French and the Englishman. The previous night we were well informed that on our route we would be driving though Lyon, which is famous for having tons of traffic so we were pretty eager to get rolling.

The day was lovely but the drive was so boring, nice road and impressive service stations though, but it's to be expected on a toll road. The toilets even had showers! Now that's classy, if we had time we definitely would've scrubbed up as we haven't had a shower in a couple of days. Thus It was not to be so we ate our cheese, salad and ham baguette with the new addition of some squirty mustard (it really made the sandwich). We've started to get trucker's tans and slightly pink noses from being in the car for so long, so that's a nice perk? Typically British. Mike's hair is apparently getting lighter… so i guess it's more blond? Who's to say.

Today is a bank holiday in France and the beginning of a 4 day weekend for most residents. This seemed to work in our favour as the anticipated Lyon and it's terrible traffic proved no problem at all for the 'Cardis'. Montpellier is an attractive looking town with really old architecture and small streets you can't gain access to, which is where we needed to be. We finally found the Up and Down Bar where a local chap was sat who'd been fishing and drinking all day and kindly informed us, with a cheeky grin, that Montpellier has 'much sluts.' Wonderful!  

Up and Down Bar - it's a bloody pirate ship!

Louie, the owner of the bar, is a kind and generous man. Another bad dude. His bar is a small pirate themed bar and feels quite homely… like you could be on a ship say! Where we played would be tiny for most 'bands' but for us two lads it was a perfect size. Cherry But No Cake, Illness, Yokozuna and Grande Duke should all be familiar with Louie's bar as they have all played there.

Louis sent us next door to a burger place to eat dinner, all the burgers were named after rock songs and were massive were massive. As I write this at 5.30pm, we are driving through the amazing South French back roads over looking giant hills and we still haven't eaten, it was that filling!  It was the beginning of the bank holiday so people were all over the place and we only played to handful of funny, nice French men.  The saying 'quality not quantity' definitely applies to these guys. We had a lot of fun playing to the very enthusiastic happy dudes, leaving wide smiles on our faces.

Montpellier accomplished!

The lovely views we drove through.