Holiday: France

I won't say too much about the holiday, as it's the same place we went to for the first half of our honeymoon (yup, we liked it that much). We spent two weeks out there, the first week was overcast and on some days downright rainy, which meant that I read a lot of books, and sat around doing not much. Which at the time was annoying, but meant that the holiday actually felt like more than two weeks! In the second week another couple came out to join us, so it became more of a whirlwind tour then, and the sun came out and we basked in it.

I ate a lot of croissants, rhubarb jam, cheese, and managed to cobble together a respectable potatoes boulanger.

We went on a 'velo rail' (platform mounted bikes on a disused railway high over viaducts and through tunnels) saw amazing butterflies, and several vultures.

We drove the tarn gorge, where many moons ago my mother studied geology on a field trip from uni.

(there are 5 vultures flying in this photo if you blow it up super big, promise!)

We found a campsite by the river, surrounded by mountains, where you could hire canoes, and so we spent happy hours with the men on the water, and the ladies with their feet blissfully cool in the river, reading books lying on the riverbank.

I found out that I quite enjoyed being in the canoe myself, and James and I spent an hour paddling off, going under a waterfall on beautiful aquamarine water, and came back to find a friendly face swimming out towards us in the river.

I discovered that when pressed I can hold a simple conversation en francais (turns out I've not forgotten all of my French a-level), and that I really want to move there. We ogled vegetable gardens, immaculate and so productive.

We drank homemade walnut wine and pastis, and played scrabble by jam-jar candlelight on the terrace til late. James is now obsessed with scrabble.