Thanks again to all. Just got back this morning after 8 days on the road. First Reims, then Frejus (the town), over to Villach and back to Mezin, which is to the SW of Agen.
So, routiers. The first night was spent at Chateauroux, L’Escale, because it is open on Saturdays and just cuts the journey down to my next rest to a manageable degree. This one was a BP Truckstop at Sennece les Macons, just north of that town, because it is open Sundays. In the more than 15 years I have lived in France I have never heard so many English voices, I thought you had all disappeared from the continent. 
Despite a later French driver turning his nose up at the place, the food wasn’t at all bad and the English and Dutch company, good.
After delivering my Dobermann girl to Frejus, and clearing up her diaorrhea 
I headed via Nice north to the Col de Lombarde and the Sunset Routier at St. Jeannet. I saw the trucks from the road but had to ask in the parking where the resto was. 
Turned out to be a few portakabins stuck together and was surprisingly very good inside. So was the food and the, French, company.
Sadly during the night I was overcome with diaorrhea and sickness myself (caught from the Dobie rather than the food?) but had recovered by morning, though I didn’t eat again for the rest of that day apart from a snack and a couple of beers in a bar that evening. No routier this but a friendly face speaking both English and French and a quiet place to park for the night. I think this was between Vicenzo and Treviso. Surprisingly to me they were open from 4am to 11pm though I had to leave earlier in the morning to keep my 8am rdv at Villach on Wednesday. Running low on fuel and trying to avoid high Italian prices I made it over the border at Cocchio and straight into a Shell autohof. I was so pleased to see the comparatively low price of diesel there that I filled up instead of putting 10 litres in before checking the rest of the territory. Big mistake, down the road it was €0.99/litre, if only I’d followed my usual cautious practice. 
Didn’t see the Arnoldstein place, Newmercman, but then I wasn’t looking for a stopover at that point. Collected Buffy, my Bearded Collie passenger for France. She was very calm and friendly, a perfect travelling companion despite her horrendous story. Travelling with her owner and his girfriend in a '60s Alvis they had been driving in a club rally and then went over the edge and rolled several times into the valley below. He was killed instantly and the girlfriend very badly injured (she is still in hospital there more than 3 weeks later). Buffy was thrown clear and picked up quivering next to the river into which the car had fallen, and then collected by the Villach refuge some 75 kms away.
Not such a rush on the way back so I didn’t bother to go all the way to Pavia. as previously planned, but stopped at a routier between Cremona and there. Lucky the food was good because everybody in the place was miserable as sin, drivers and staff, all the drivers sitting apart in silence. 
A French driver the next night commented ‘Italiens, un mentalite different’.
Checked out the resto in Susa Skorpio but couldn’t find it but did see a routier a few kms east of the town on the SP 25. Nearly got wiped out by a wagon and drag driver, heavily laden and dropping almost to a stop on the hairpins when changing down, because he didn’t see me and thus give me room when I overtook on a straight stretch, almost pushing me into the oncoming traffic. He vented his spleen by blowing his horns and flashing his lights instead of driving a little closer to the wall. I think I frightened him as we were only a couple of inches apart when I suddenly appeared alongside his door, pity he wasn’t as proficient with his mirrors as he was with other things.
Safely over the Col de Genevre after asking for 10 litres on the card at a garage to get me back to cheaperfuelland. He said I could only have €30 worth on the card, so I gave him the cash and took just 5 litres. 
The routier I was heading for at Chorges, just to the east of Gap, did not appear to be there anymore, so I carried on to one I know 150 kms further one at Bagnols sur Ceze on the N86. There a scruffy and eccentric couple gave me a very good meal and, back in France, back in good company again. 
At least that little bit of extra distance made Friday a really easy run and I rolled in at destination just as the church was striking 4pm, right on time. Parked up in the street outside in this old medeval town with its narrow streets and ancient buildings, but dined and spent the evening with Buffy’s new owner and others of her late master’s friends.
Thanks again for all the info and, if anyone else is making a similar trip (don’t try Lombarde in a lorry though, worse than Cenis and you won’t make it, I was down to 1st on many of the hairpins) I’ll be glad to pass on the little routier info that I gleaned.
