Hotel La Chapelle St-Martin Nieul

Stayed last night in a pretty little medieval village of Solignac, right on the town square next to the villages 11th century church, which is on the pilgirmage route - Santiago de Compostela. It had rained last night and was still raining so our wander around was brief! Our plan today was to stop at several little villages in the area, of which they got progressively prettier.

... were all crammed inside the church. Around 4 pm, a German soldier, brought into the nave, close to the choir. A large kind of box, from which hung strings, which trailed the ground. Between 4 & 5 pm, the woman remained in the church, no doubt hearing all of the noise of the gunfire, explosions, and flames. At 5 pm, the trailing strings were lit, and the device exploded. Those that survived the ...

... haughty French. These are genuinely open, friendly people who have given my folks a huge amount of practical help in setting themselves up and are great craic into the bargain- Jean Louis, for example, fond of dragging my dad out of bed at an unearthly hour to take him fishing in the lakes, sneaked over on the sly and painted a prominent tomato yellow, to confuse ...

... out that this nerd palace holds days where nerd meet up and play 'real life' games (they all had pretend shotguns and machine guns). Whats worse is that they walked around with such confidence it would seem that they actually thought they were mercenaries........ it made me sympathetic towards bullies.

After leaving nerd palace we sat outside for lunch and observed a young 'gangster' type character leave a ...

Distance covered: 35 miles cycle and 15 car

So we woke up early for the first time and set off in the blazing sun with high spirits. We were absolutely destroying the miles and there was even talk of getting a record (70+ in a day!!). But then an absoulte disaster occurred. About 15 miles away from a city my rear wheel disintegrated. It would be impossible to walk it. Maybe a hitch from a ...

Yesterday was a good day. Although it rained in the morning, we were only on straight roads at the time. A strong breeze in the afternoon helped dry us out. Last night we enjoyed some well deserved downtime; an excellent 4 course meal al fresco washed down with a local red wine; a few games of petanque & pool, loud music & chat. :-)

... very small, with only a few tables. It's hard to describe except to tell you that it was incredibly quaint, posh, and French. It was wonderful. I did try some Fois Gras here, which is a duck dish typical of the region, and I thought it was incredibly incredibly delicious. So, moving on to Oradour. The story of Oradour is such: On June 10, 1944 approximately 200 SS Nazi soldiers entered Oradour without any kind of warning. The commander ...

Ahh, first full day of driving. Which meant that we were running out of gas! First time driving in France, don't speak the language, don't know what kind of gas this rental car uses, plus it's getting late and we're driving in the countryside (lovely farms I might add). And we have no idea where we're going to sleep! And we're getting hungry ...

... life, it was such a pleasure to get to spend time with my entire family. We had a couple of late nights, just enjoying each other's company, singing, dancing, and simply being as happy as a family should be. We even "did the gym" together with the girls in the family. We stayed a couple of days on the beach next to Bordeaux and really, even after the beautiful beaches that I have seen all over South East Asia, this French Atlantic coast still deserves one ...

... LANGUEDOC From Grotte Font-de-Gaume we drove to Albi to see the 13th century Ste. Cecil Cathedral then on to the double-walled city of Carcassonne. Albi is a fairly large town, but the cathedral still seems too large for the city. It has a beautiful ceiling and choir and a huge painting of the Last Judgement - which had to be partially cut out to make room for a new organ. Although Albi was a difficult city to ...