No breakfast at the hotel, although it has a dining room. The restaurants were setting up, but none was open, even for coffee. It was eerily quiet on a Sunday morning. We intended to head for Millau today, but since we were down to about 145km of fuel, decided to go to Albi first, and fill up. We checked out of the hotel. The wiffee password was RAYMOND7. I had tried Raymond7, close.
In Albi, although many filling stations were open on Sunday, they were all credit card only. We tried 4 places, following Google Maps all over town. All 4 cards we had were rejected. We had about 110km left. Options seemed to be to head toward Toulouse on the A68 and hope there was an Aire (filling station and rest stop) that would take one of our cards. At worst, we would end up at the BnB Hotel in Toulouse again, about 78km away, a somewhat dispiriting prospect.
Or head for Castre, which looked like an attractive town 37km away, with some prospect of having a personed station open on a Sunday. The 24 x 7 stations were going to be no use. We opted for Toulouse as the safer option, but almost as soon as we merged onto the A68, the distance to empty fell to 60km, not enough to get to Toulouse. We hadn’t been able to find any info on fuel availability on the A68. Of course, there would be more in reserve than the Citroen was telling us, but this wasn’t the time to measure it. So we got off and headed for Castres, 37km away, with the low fuel warning light on.
In a small village on the way we tried another Intermarche (supermarket chain that sells petrol, like Carrefours). Same, all cards rejected. This is a problem that even cash won’t fix. In Italy the self serve stations take cash. I don’t know if there is some card a foreigner can obtain that will work, but this is a real issue in France, and no other country that I have been.
We could go to Castre, get some accommodation and wait for Monday. If we could not buy fuel there we would be stuck. We can check out any time we like, but we can never leave.
The other option was to beg. We decided to try that.
Our first target was a couple with the woman driving, perfect. She spoke English! She came from the area, but picked up her American accent during two years in the UK. She agreed, and after she filled her car, appeared at ours. I handed her €100 cash and she used her card to enable the pump. I filled up to €80 with Gazole to give her a €20 profit. We waved away the proffered change and thanked her for her kindness. Cash did work after all.
Mobile again! The tank was virtually full. The distance to empty changed from 60km to 1060km. We parked in Castre and walked toward the old centre near the river to buy some lunch and use an ATM to replenish our cash. Never go without cash.
In Castres we went by a filling station that looked open. It probably would have solved our problem. Then we drove about 100km through the Parc Naturel Regional du Haute Languedoc on the D612 and D908 to near Brignac. We stopped for an hour to see Olargues, another officially beautiful Medieval village, then another 80km on the A75 to within 20km of Millau. Finally, down into the valley on the D809, stopping to admire the Millau Bridge from a viewpoint.
Dinner in the old part of Millau a few hundred metres from the hotel. All in French again, though the Moroccan waiter could speak English. I got my phone out to check something. Anne reminded me yet again that the French do not use phones at mealtime. We never see anyone with their phone at restaurants.