Parc Beaumont Pau

Considered having one last night on the road, cracking our bottle or 9.99 Lidl champers (premier cru!). In the end, we opt to do the big dash & head for home. You reach that point where you just feel ready. Tedious... especially as the winds that blight SE France are blowing in full glory! However, the point has come, we decide, where there isn't much to be gained by staying out any longer. Feels good to be back on 'home' turf - but, as familiar ground ...

A brief stop over so that Mike could revisit Pau where he spent a month on a French exchange more than 50 years ago!
First we thought we should have a look at Lourdes as it was very near. It was difficult for us as dedicated athiests to understand the place. It is full of pilgrims but there did not seem to be any sense of joy. The buildings were magnificent and impressive,but the surrounding streets were full of very tacky souvenir shops all ...

... no introduction. After a bit of

souvenir shopping at the top (where there is also a great café with some interesting Tour de

France artefacts), we descend to St Marie De Campan, and from here to our hotel in Campan.

WHAT I EXPERIENCED:

We had just climbed the Col d'Aubisque and I was almost at the bottom of the Col behind my friend, Paul Middlemiss, when the ...

WHAT THE BROCHURE SAID: After a group dipping of our toes in the Atlantic, we depart at 09.00am and head up the coast road for a while before turning inland on a selection of beautifully quiet roads.

Today we pass through the Basque heartland with distinctive burgundy and white buildings, bullrings and pelot courts. Unfortunately we will not have much time for sightseeing as we undulate our way over the Col De St ...

So, nearly ready for the off! Thankfully, false alarm about arrival of guests to take over house in absence means we have one more day in which to prepare... much needed!
We will just about get there - I think.
Round about now it occurs to us we really ought to have assembled scooter on trailer and gone for little spin to test strapping arrangement, etc... just to make sure it all holds up. Oh well, the road will be a good test of all that... I guess.

... going to happen, what was the group going to be like? First of all the host - Adrian - seemed really nice and spoke excellent English. After dumping our bags we headed to the living room where everyone was gathered. I will not lie, my first impressions were that it was an odd group - Andrei who I had heard so much about was dressed as a cow, a romanian guy who I would say seemed eccentric and a German couple who I just wasn't sure about - but thankfully my ...

... Seigneur, ouvre mon coeur, Seigneur! Saynnnn yerrrrr." So, I'm going to be living in a closet next semester. Lately, I've been thinking about decorating it in all orange, filling it with a oranges, and calling it the Orange Room. I'm simply thinking about my guests. It sounds a lot more appealing to come over and hang out in the Orange Room than the basement closet.

... of the night itself. By the end of the evening, Anthony and I had had a rather enjoyable conversation with the French girls. It was completely en français, which had to be worth something, and while we didn't come up with a whole lot of slang terms for "making a good meal", I learned a lot of great French expressions that weren't even a part of the assignment. Not only that, but certainly the greatest triumph of the night was being ...

... eighth century, the French ruler sought to reintroduce the pure Latin form into the language. Cela dit, you can trace back to Latin French words that barely resemble their roots, while you can also find words that are much more distinctly Latin. For example, the French word for brother, frère, is evolved from the Latin word, fraternus. However, since the eighth century, the language has also bore the ...

... t already know, even in dream-world. So what Soline was teaching me was pure nonsense. The word was "turdur," which perhaps bears some resemblance to the word for turtle, "tortue", which I just recently learned. It's too bad that I spent so much time in my dream practicing the pronunciation of a fake word. If I'm going to spend both my entire waking and sleeping hours studying French, then I might as well practice something useful, like the pronunciations of "bonne ...