Allons enfants de la Patrie . . .

Happy 'Quatorze Juillet' to any French readers!

For any film buffs, French readers or francophiles, here's a rather appropriate film clip considering today's date. Feel free to sing along!

We're off for a little outing tomorrow ....

Yes, we're off for a little trip to France tomorrow with some very good friends. Just staying overnight but it'll be a lovely break, I'm sure. Something about the name of the place - Le Touquet - conjures up all sorts of delightful images.

It makes me think of the 'idle rich' sauntering around this little French sea-side town in the 1920's with nothing more to worry about than where their next cocktail was coming from!

We can but dream! It'll be nice to play the part for a few hours, anyway! Will let you know how we got on once we get back.

And finally ...

Just a few more photos before I finally 'put the topic to bed'.

The Pieta outside the church at the top of the Sainte Baume mountain.

I particularly like this shot of the men putting the cover on the swimming pool. 'Heave ho, lads'

Finally reached the end of our journey in France. Relieved to find the tunnel terminal very quiet and have a relaxed half an hour before we caught the shuttle.

A just making sure he doesn't get hungry between France and England!

Just one more photo then, before we put the camera away.

More on France ...

Our friends took a lot of trouble to take us out and show us the local sights and spectacular scenery. I won't say much, but let the photos give you an idea of what we did and saw with them.

One of many colourful stalls in the local market.

A beautiful day to see a beautiful sight - Le Lac in the Gorge de Verdon

A sitting precariously near the edge of the gorge to give you some idea of the depth of it.

More of the lake. It was so beautiful it was difficult not to take too many shots!

A bit of a muddle ...

Monday morning and just about to go into the office to face the backlog of mail etc. I'm looking forward to clearing my desk and getting back to normal.

We've got so many photos of our trip to France it's taking a while to sort them all out. I'm afraid my postings in the next few days will all be out of sequence. I'd like to share some of our photos and experiences without making you sift through the blogging equivalent of hours of home videos! Just a few shots today before I leave.

The Sainte Baume mountain which we could see from our friends' house and which we climbed on our first full day with them.

Tired but happy as we come to the end of the path back down the mountain after a beautiful Mass in the grotto at the top celebrated by the Dominicans who live there. (Weather quite cool and windy at the top as you can see by my gear.)

What a welcome!

We had a very good run down to Besançon where we stayed overnight before continuing our journey on Sunday morning after a super breakfast at the Campanile hotel. We spent a very frustrating couple of hours trying to find a Catholic church locally for Sunday Mass, either on Saturday evening or Sunday morning. We eventually found the local church but Mass is only celebrated there on alternate Sundays and, as luck would have it, we had arrived on the 'wrong' Sunday! We asked several people but no one had any ideas so we drove into town but just couldn't find a Catholic church - quite unexpected really. We have always been able to find a church for Sunday Mass whenever we've been away from home.

We decided to go to the local church near our friends' house as we knew we would arrive in good time on the following day.

We arrived at our friends' house to a very warm welcome and after a drink and settling in we set off to church as we were in plenty of time for Mass at the Basilica of Mary Magdalene in St Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. We had a very good look around the beautiful building and went into the crypt to see the relics of St Mary Magdalene held there and say a prayer or two but alas, no Mass - every evening at 6pm except Sunday, apparently!

Our friends took us around 'their' village and the photo shows us in front of the cloister of the old 'Couvente' which is now an hotel.



Another shot of the beautiful convent and you can see the tables set out for dinner within the cloister.

Holiday - day one ...

We had a really good journey. Made the tunnel in good time and, as usual, the French motorways are a dream compared to ours.

The picture was taken at the services early on in the journey where we stopped to fill up with petrol full of 'Brits'. We didn't linger! We stopped later for a drink and a snack in a much quieter area in which we felt that we were in France not some strange suburb of Folkestone!

Too much excitement in one day ....

Tomorrow we're off to France to see visit some friends who have a holiday home in Provence. After a fairly busy day I arrived home to find a note from the postman saying I had missed a parcel delivery. I had expected this, but what I hadn't expected was that my very kind next-door-neighbour had taken delivery of the parcel for me. And the timing couldn't have been better! I had treated myself to a super new mini notebook and here it is. It's fantastic, really does work straight from the box and comes loaded with all the things that I wanted it for. The main advantage is the size and portability so I can blog when we're on holiday now.

I literally took it out of the box and plugged it in and up on the screen popped Skype, wi-fi access, Messenger, Google and loads more! It's just a little bit bigger than a DVD in a box.

I had to take this shot just so that you can see the lovely shade of blue!

I was so busy playing with my new 'toy' I was nearly late for our Teams' girls' night out. Here you can see the whole bunch of us having a lovely evening in a nearly pub. Food was delicious, service excellent and the company fantastic.

Roll on France! More photos as soon as I can find somewhere with wi-fi access in France.

Lunch in Tadworth, supper in Boulogne

We had a lovely day yesterday. For some time we've been intending to have another short trip to France. We're so fortunate where we live that we can be at the tunnel terminal in about an hour's drive from home. Luckily traffic was good yesterday and we even had a bit of sunshine on the journey to Folkestone. We even had time for a relaxed coffee before we boarded the shuttle.

35 minutes later and we were in 'la belle France' - amazing! This picture was taken outside Carrefour after having stocked up with a few bottles from another supermarket. I think Mark's wondering, 'how long till supper?'

A slight hitch for the gentlemen! Never mind, after a moment's hesitation, A and M trooped into the 'Dames' - biological necessity having taken precedence over any sense of lack of propriety!

Proof that I can enjoy 'moules marinieres' with the best of them.

Someone suggested stopping off for a 'digestif' at a lovely little bar further up the road called 'The Vole in the Hole' before we made our way back to the tunnel terminal at Les Coquelles.

I was very amused by the 'wall art' in the bar. I wonder whether they had all been 'acquired' by the proprietor or donated by some of his patrons!

A good journey back and we were home by 11pm and tucked up in bed well before midnight after a very enjoyable day. Looking forward to the next trip now.