Poor old France. Not only did it miss out on the Olympics, not only did they lose to Argentina in the Rugby, but it has to be M & G's last country on their European tour so has the prospect of suffering us going North whinging all the way!

In fact, much as we might have anticipated this scenario, France has been a refreshing eye-opener. We'd been here for holidays lots of times and know it's nice but expected it to be a bit old hat and dull compared to all the other places we've been. However the Cote D'Azur was fabulous - bright blue sea and sky, great waves for jumping over when we went foir a dip, lovely hills and to our relief a really nice campsite just north of Nice next to a charming old town, Vence. The only negative there was going out for dinner in Vence without our French dictionary to a shell fish speciality restaurant when I don't like fish. No problem we thought, as the special of the day appeared to be rolled veal only to find that "Rognons" actually means kidneys. My usual ploy would be to immediately swap plates with G but as he had shellfish I was stuck. Still, the rice was nice!

After 3 days here we moved west to Avignon. The first evening there we walked around the city and got a good feel for the place which is still lived and worked in. It has a great atmosphere and doesn't come accross as a tourist trap. After 6 months of European food we decided to try something different and went to a Morrocan restaurant and had a lovely meal - not a kidney in sight! The second day we decided to explore the countryside and cycled upstream beside the Rhone, effectively into Provence. As you should see from the photos very picturesque! Then for the evenings entertainment we went to watch Ireland being gubbed by Italy at Rugby. I'd wanted to watch it at O'Neills pub but it was packed so we sat in an Italian filled bar to see it - probably just as well to be honest!

After that we moved even further west to Carcassonne, yet another old walled city though not before venturing to Vacqueyras after a plea from Christian, my French sort of brother in law to collect a few (66) bottles of wine for him! Just as well we weren't going through the Ardeche or we'd be clambering over them all!

We'd been told that Carcassonne is a beautiful town, and it is, absolutely. However the old city is completely full of tourists and tourist tat so it was a bit off-putting. We had a wander there and were a bit tired of it by lunchtime so went for a walk over to the "modern" part. Still about 600 years old so not that modern and in fact because it is lived in and a "real" town I at least preferred it.

Then back to the campsite in time to be depressed by Scotland's result against NZ. Definitely time to start heading North!