Sunshine and Blue Skies

La Pachacaid was all that it had promised, the warm air of the Cote d'azur was there morning to late evening; it felt very strange to be in short sleeves at 11pm at night, and to have to use the air-conditioning in the caravans to keep cool. The view from the caravan was over the hills towards the sea (not that we could see it from our location, but it was beautiful).

What you can't see in this view of our caravan was how steep the ground was sloping; very kindly Tony and Sue opposite let me keep Max over there and you can see how flat this was. This was also where we had most of our meals as Sue was Mum in charge of us and concocted some great meals which included breakfast.

I volunteered to be up at 8.30am when the shop opened so we could have fresh croissants and bread for the day ahead, breakfast was when I got back up the hill; if nothing else I should have been fitter when I got home, but I guess the diet of bread, cheese and steak probably didn't help me much.

Apart from SOH going shopping, with two other members of our group, I stayed behind to do some much needed washing (which meant I didn't have to get dressed up again), we didn't leave the campsite. A couple of our group decided to have a day out in St Tropez, another went to Monaco to ride the grand prix circuit and a couple more decided to take in the Verdon Gorge.

SOH and I discussed what we wanted to do, but given we were planning to take 4 1/2 days home we figured we should just chill out and relax; I didn't take much convincing, the pool was good and the jacuzzi above it helped to take out all the kinks that still niggled from days on the bike.

Early one evening, we heard what sounded like cowbells, and they were going up the slope opposite our caravan. I got the camera out and about 200 goats went scrambling up the slope the bells ringing out as they made their way up the hills to forage.

Then all too soon it was the last night, and we were packing to leave early the following morning. Neither of us regretted leaving a day early as we were looking forward to the journey home.