The school year is finally over and this weekend marks that of the first departures on post-health crisis holidays. But in stations as on motorway service areas, if tourists are there, the crowds are still far from that of previous years. Report at the Gare de Lyon and on the A10 motorway.

REPORTAGE

Orange on Saturday on the roads of France in the direction of departure, and the SNCF which expects more than 800,000 travelers for this first weekend of departure on vacation ... It is the first great weekend of departure on state holidays, but the health crisis is still being felt on the roads as on the trains even if many French people have chosen French-French destinations: the SNCF has not filled its trains, far from it, and the motorway areas usually very busy have not yet filled all their places. In the Gare de Lyon, in Paris, on Saturday morning, and on the A10 motorway south west of Paris, Europe 1 went alongside the first travelers on the departure ...

Calm Gare de Lyon

There were a lot of people for the departure of the first Ouigo around 5am, and since then, the Gare de Lyon is much quieter, with a few families with children, comforters and straw hats, but we do not feel the crowds of adults departures on summer vacation. According to SNCF trains are 80% full, trains which are also reopening their catering service.

>> Watch Bernard Poirette's morning show in replay and podcast here

Everyone has their mask, with varying apprehensions: "Completely serene, I'm not afraid", says for example Catherine, delighted to go aboard direction Nice. "I put on my mask, the product, everyone is responsible for themselves!", She believes. We feel a little more stress in this mother who goes to the mountains with her two sons, and has asked them to stay away from the other passengers: "We are not going to be psychotic either, but we must not forget that we have not yet come to the end of the crisis! We are going to cross our fingers. "

Traffic is increasing, holidaymakers are coping with the crisis

On the A10 motorway south west of Paris which leads to the Atlantic coast, in the area of ​​Janvry-Limours, traffic intensifies but we are far from the affluence of previous summers, observes our reporter on the spot. Normally, in the middle of summer, this highway area receives 30,000 vacationers every day, but we are not there yet. However, the parking spaces fill up, chests installed on the roof, bikes attached to the rear.

Many vacationers had to improvise with the health crisis like Pascal and his daughter Elodie, who came from the Paris region, who decided at the last minute for Mimizan in the Landes: "It's a bit of deliverance. It was hard for everyone confinement! We fell back on a lot of consolation we will say, "says Pascal, who was to go to Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. "And finally we did not take the risk of booking because the European area was still closed."

LIVE - Coronavirus: follow the situation on Saturday, July 4

Foreign tourists at the rendezvous

For their part, Simon and Noémie arrive from Antwerp in Belgium, direction the gorges of the Ardèche to "go camping for a few weeks in France. We were a bit slow in preparing our bags, so we took more than what we needs, but it's better than too little. Normally we went to Portugal, but Lisbon was closed again, so we changed direction. "

Read also : Departures on vacation: how to avoid motion sickness?

The big question for those responsible for this area was precisely whether foreign tourists would be present on the roads of France, but to see the license plates, Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourgish, and German, they are there. you.