A380 and the boulangerie

LEVIGNAC, France--The job of ferrying the major components for an Airbus A380--the largest passenger airplane in the world--is so big that France built a 124-mile-long road dedicated to the task.

While the final assembly of the A380 is done in Toulouse, France, the plane's major components--the wings, three sections of fuselage, the tail fins, and other parts--are built in Germany, England, Spain, and France. And in order to make it to Toulouse, they must first be shipped individually to Bordeaux, France, where they begin their final voyage as separate parts. First they are put on a barge, and then the 124-mile overland trip begins.

The road is called the Itineraire a Grand Gabarit, and every two or three weeks, one of the A380 convoys makes its way slowly down the route, which was created mainly with the idea of avoiding towns and bridges. It cuts through a lot of countryside, and can be seen carving paths through fields of crops.

But the route could not avoid all towns. And in Levignac, a tiny village not far from Toulouse, each of the convoys passes through--usually late in the evening, and usually accompanied by hundreds of people who come out to watch the gigantic airplane components as they are very, very carefully slipped through the town's narrow streets. It is, in short, a big party.

As part of CNET Road Trip 2011, reporter Daniel Terdiman dropped in on Levignac for the most recent convoy, and got a chance to see one of the oddest marriages ever: big, modern airplane components and old, small French village.

And it makes for some funny pictures, too, such as here, where we see one of the three fuselage sections passing within feet of a sign for the local boulangerie, or bakery.