France – seems like months ago…

11^th – 16^th June – Right back at the beginning we spent a week in SW France. My father has lived there for several years & C had not met him so we flew from Southampton, near Mum's to Bergerac, near Dad's. Picked up a car & had a couple of days touring around then stayed with him for a couple of days before returning to England.

We'd booked a gite called "Un Jardin dans la Falaise" (a garden in the cliffs) 'cos it had a nice website & we weren't disappointed. The place was a pile of rubble when Australian Simon & French wife Magali bought it. They met diving some years ago & settled here, way inland, to be near Magali's folks & the best cave diving in southern France (cave diving – work of the devil).

Simon's a carpenter (& now builder) & Magali's an ace cook so they built the three room gite & have found a life they love. The rooms are piled on top of each other, built into the cliff, & their house is topped by the communal dining room & verandah looking down the valley to the obligatory medieval church. Never stayed anywhere like it, a real treat.

We visited a stack of towns & villages, ate & drank our fill, life's good. For picturesqueness (?) there's nothing to top St Circque la Popie, a 100yr old town perched above the Lot river, a collision of 3 Musketeers, Hans Christian Andersen & W Disney. Here's some pix.