The A75 runs from Paris to the sea at Montpelier, a fast motorway. It curves through the hills and plateaux of central France, leaping across the gorges and burrowing through the mountains to telescope the country into somewhere traversed in hours by impatient holiday-makers and truck-drivers fighting deadlines.
The deepest, longest gap is at Millau, a medium-size city sitting in its steep-sided valley. For centuries, they've made gloves and been a way-station on the weary trek to the south.
Now the motorway passes overhead on this magnificent suspension bridge. It is 270m above the Tarn River, but touches the earth at only nine points. The cable stays are in 11 pairs, suspended from the steel masts that stand 90m above the road. The bridge-deck is made of thermo-mechanical steel and weighs 36,000 tons. The whole thing cost ?'?400m. All that's from the guidebook, which also says that it's beautiful.
That's certainly true. The bridge curves across the valley, sloping itself as it glides south, its own strong bends echoing the titanic shapes of the hills and the clouds.
Bridges are often beautiful: there's the extraordinary lyre bridge in Seville, and the graceful suspension bridge at the mouth of the Guadiana River, joining Spain to Portugal. The Calatrava footbridge in Valencia and the lightness of the Millennium footbridge in London. This viaduct is monumental in its design and scope, but generous in its functionality and its ability to represent the ambition and innovation of the area. Well worth the stop in the local aire to take pictures and have a cup of coffee.