Holiday traffic led to crowding across France on Saturday, especially on motorways heading towards the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic coast.
Around noon (1000 GMT), cars were backed up nationwide for more than 800 kilometres, the responsible authority announced on its website.
On motorway 7, which leads south through the Rhône valley, drivers had to allow more than five hours for the journey from Lyon to Orange instead of about an hour and a half, according to the operator Vinci.
The weekend between the two holiday months of July and August is traditionally very busy on the major traffic routes in France. This is because many holidaymakers leave for the holiday resorts in the south of the country at the same time, while others return home after their holidays.
The French even have a nickname for this phenomenon: "le grand chassé-croisé," which roughly translates as the great coming and going.
However, this time there was slightly less congestion registered at midday on Saturday than on the last Saturday in July last year, when traffic was gridlocked on more than 1,000 kilometres at the peak.
