Well, I thought no comments meant no-one was reading these blogs, but having had a few emails along the lines of 'are you OK, you've stopped blogging', think it's time to fill in the details. We're both fine, thanks for asking!

We left Les Trois Vallees in pouring rain for the descent of the Col. We could have made a small detour via Italy, but decided to save our planned itinerary of northern Italy for later, preferably when the sun is out. The tight hairpin bends were interesting, especially in the wet with limited visibility due to low cloud, and there were several fresh rockfalls, only small fortunately.

At one point we swung round a right hand hairpin and found a traingular sign in the road, 'road closed'. With no detour signposted, we continued along the road for another couple of miles - cars were coming up the hill, we reasoned they'd come from somewhere - until we found the road completely blocked by a landslip, diggers parked ready to start clearing it presumably. Feeling a bit foolish, we retraced our route and noticed a small road just before the 'road closed' sign. We took this, despite the protests of TomTom, who kept telling us to 'turn around when possible'. It wouldn't have been possible to turn round!! Well, it would have been a 21-point turn - but this road wound along the other side of the valley, and would have been very picturesque in the dry.

Due to our detour, and the weather, we didn't get to the motorway until gone midday, and it was a fairly unpleasant drive with masses of spray, torrential rain and low cloud, but we kept going until we reached Montpellier, where we stopped for the night.

It wasn't a photogenic trip, but we did get a photo of the Devil's Bridge. It's said that the Devil helped build it in return for the soul of the first to travel over it - the cunning architect sent a goat over first, which is why the devil is portrayed as a goat! How many thousands of Devil's bridges, Devil's dykes and Devil's punchbowls are there in the world? Have to say, it's still standing 6 centuries on, so someone got something right.

We set off at 8.30 am the following day, still in teeming rain, and 12 hours later arrived at our house in sunshine. It was raining right up until we crossed into Murcia, and Camposol had had recent rain, but having seen the weather reports for central Europe and Italy, we feel we made the right decision.