Narrow Roads & Streets

Coming back to The House at Le Gros Chigy yesterday afternoon we came across this in the road.

photograph by ChigyTweet

published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

With a bit of maneuvering onto the grass we managed to pass each other and continue on our ways.

It did get me to thinking about the difficulties of driving on French rural roads, especially while focussing on driving on the right hand side. As one moves off the motorways onto the as and progressively less important roads they get narrower and narrower

kwintessential defines the roads as:

Autoroutes, are highways with many lanes and a divider. Most highways require you to pay a toll to drive on them. Autoroutes in France are given the designation A and are marked by blue road signs showing a divided highway. These open roads in France are designed for long distance high speed inter city driving in France and many of them have petrol stations and rest areas with restaurants on the way.

Routes Nationals: These open roads in France are given the designation N and are well signposted main highways equipped with reflectors to aid night driving.

Routes Departmentales: These are secondary and tertiary local roads which begin with a D. They are smaller and not suitable for open road high speed driving over long distances.

Routes Communales: These are minor rural roads, not designed for high speed driving, although the fact that there are very few cars on them means that high speed driving, while illegal, may be possible. These roads begin with a C and are maintained by local communes who are the local government authorities in France.

Many roads are of a width that both cars need to have their left wheels just on the edge of the tarred surface or just off. This means what normally happens is when you see a car you slow down and edge apart. However, there are always those who are in a rush and you tend to meet on the corner - this is rather worrying for someone battling to find their position on a narrow road.

Then there are the really narrow roads where there is only tar for one car and the verge to the hedge or wall is so small that you have to find a place to pull off, allow the other car to pass and then continue.

This is even more the norm in villages where buildings right on the road or parked cars reduce the road to a single lane.

photograph by ChigyTweet

published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.