No ill effects from last night’s meal. After breakfast in two adjacent cafés in St-Paul’ (one sold coffee but no pasties, the other sold croissants etc but no coffee), set off east through St-Julien and Montmeyan and stopped, after a relatively short ride at the small town of Régusse where we found a Chambre d’hôte. Gradually increased height along the way (net gain of around 1,500ft), as we make our way towards the Gorges du Verdon in the National Par...

A decent ‘real’ Chinese meal last night. Sat next to a young woman from mainland China (near HK) who was happy to explain, in good English, a lot about Chinese cooking. Aix was very busy on Saturday night. Despite having many many restaurants, it was surprising just how many were full. This morning, on another stiflingly hot day, we headed north to Pertuis. From there we wanted to follow the river La Durance east to Mirabeau. Our satnav indicated that it wa...

Another warm day - just touching 30 by noon. Having been ejected from the ferry at the unearthly hour of 05.30am (having been subjected to reveille at 04.30am), we hung around in the terminal for a couple of hours, waiting for it to become light enough to set off. We cycled up from Toulon to Aix-en-Province - a distance of some 80k. There were two hill/mountain ranges to cross (which involved around 3,500ft of climbing). It was good to be back on the safer road...

Ferry from Ajaccio. Disembarked at 0530!

Bought some stuff for breakfast this morning from a nearby mini market (we’d been getting a little tired of the 2* hotel’s version of petit dejeuner, where the only surprise is what flavour jam they give you to spread on your crusty white pain). Talking of ‘pain’ - Spent the morning on the beach at Propriana. That, combined with a good dollop of strategically-applied Savlon, should help relieve some of the trauma that has arisen, ‘down there’, over ...