It rained heavily throughout the day as we travelled down the A7 and then the A9 motorways towards the Spanish border. These sections of motorway seem to be managed by a different company and in general the road, and facilities were in poorer condition than those of the first few days.

The country side is becoming more hilly, presumably because we are approaching the Pyrenees Mountains, and hence we found ourselves (along with all the other traffic) climbing hills today. After a while we noted that the French have an interesting way of handling the slow vehicle lane problem. Unlike the US (and Australia) they add the extra up hill lane on the left so that the faster traffic moves into the temporary lane while trucks and other slow vehicles simply continue in the right hand most lane without having to change lanes. This makes for much safer transitions.

Our plan for the night was to make use of another one of the aires, this time in the village of Le Boulou just north of the Spanish border. According to our guide book there were 21 places for motorhomes on a narrow roadway behind the local cemetery and near a football stadium. We were a bit surprised to find the place almost full when we finally got there. Of the 21 places officially marked on the ground 2 were unusable (power poles in the middle) and there were only a few un-occupied and all of those were on a noticeable side slope. But since we had no other options we squeezed into one of the spots. Throughout the remainder of the afternoon and evening there was a steady stream of other motorhomes arriving. Some looked and left while others improvised by squeezing into various un-marked spots.