France 7, Le Coup de Grace!

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Friday arrived, our last day in the Cevennes. We planned to move on in the morning, head for the Loire region and stay for four nights there. A quiet, restful day was planned before the long day of travel. Ha, ha, ha! During the afternoon a live band could be heard tuning up and trying out it's sound equipment from the direction of the field by the river. Groan, we thought we were in for a disco that night and hoped it would stop about midnight, they usually do.
About 8.00 p.m. it started, heavy metal, head banging music plus vocals at earsplitting decibels. Sleep would be impossible until it stopped. About 11.00 p.m. we lay down hoping for peace soon, my earplugs were in but it made little difference. 12.00 came and went, 1.00 came and went, and so it went on, they played ALL NIGHT! My non-violent husband was fit to kill someone by the morning and was uttering some very choice language. He decided we would have to stay another day as he was in no fit state to drive all day. After lunch we couldn't stay awake any longer and collapsed on the bed for some shut-eye. About thirty minutes later - DEJA VU!!! the music started tuning up again! Chris charged up to the reception to ask if there was another concert that night. YES! The manager was very sorry but there was nothing they could do about it, every year, the last weekend in June, the whole area was taken over for a rally and music festival for all the Young Communists in France! That was it! Back he came shouting out to me to get out of the tent, we were moving on. Well, in under an hour we had dismantled and packed everything and were hi-tailing it up the road and out of the Cevenne. We made it as far as the Massif Central again and booked into an hotel where it rained, thundered and blew a gale and we had the worse meal in years. So, nothing changed there then! French cooking, its highly overrated in my experience. Bon nuit!

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