Monday 9th November. The plan was to drive to Franschhoek in the centre of the wine region (see map) to visit a family friend from my days in Botswana. Pam (the friend) had moved to Cape Town in the late 1990s and had originally lived in the City itself; but she missed the countryside and had chosen to move to Franschhoek - great choice. A beautiful little town surrounded by towering mountains. It’s where many Huguenots settled in the late seventeenth century, and therefore many of the streets and the wineries still have French names. Pam took us to lunch at [View Full Entry]

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Saturday 7th November An overcast day, windy but dry. The previous day we’d decided to go and look at the Winelands, and in particular the Fairview Winery where I’d been in 2006 on the cricket tour. Not so much for the wine tasting but because I’d recalled that the Winery also sold very tasty cheeses. So we set off north up the N1 Motorway following the signs for Paarl about 35 miles north of Cape Town. The motorway was in excellent condition and if the weather had been better it would have been a great drive. However, the very strong crosswind [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 5th November Got up and looked out the window at……….. RAIN! Just what we’d come here to avoid. Luckily it started to clear later in the morning so we headed off towards False Bay on the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula. Conveniently the motorway out of Cape Town begins close to our hotel (the downside being that the traffic noise can be a bit loud in the mornings), so it was an easy drive through the leafy suburbs of Constantia (the prime real estate in Cape Town) and along to False Bay. The East coast of the Cape Peninsula [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 1st November Cardiff to Cape Town Having decided to head for the sun the only fly in the ointment was that Jane’s ticket was a standby one and standby seats can only be made available on a first-come, first-served basis just prior to the flight. The flight that I was confirmed on was filling up rapidly; with only 11 seats available and 18 standby requests. However Virgin’s flight to Johannesburg had plenty of available seats and not many standby requests. So we decided that to be on the safe side Jane would fly to Johannesburg 3 hours prior to my [View Full Entry]

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Blogday 16 Thursday 1 October Biarritz A decent night's sleep....sort of. The truck traffic still woke me while it was still dark and I think that I've figured out what's going on. There's a Museum of the Sea on the headland opposite the hotel and they're excavating an enormous cavity there; presumably some sort of fish tank. It turned out to be another lazy day mainly because the weather was not very good, cloudy and humid. A quite heavy shower of rain occurred later in the morning which put the block on any plan to head down the coast and have [View Full Entry]

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Blogday 14 Tuesday 29th September en route to Biarritz Up quite early as a long drive was facing us. Helpfully the Chev was parked very close to the hotel so loading the baggage didn’t take too long. Then out of Nimes with a brief diversion to top up the fuel, and so avoid the iniquitous prices at the autoroute fuel stops, and we were heading west towards Toulouse. The traffic was quite heavy up to the point where the A9 autoroute divides at Narbonne, with the A9 continuing south towards Perpignan and Spain while we swung west towards Carcassonne and Toulouse [View Full Entry]

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Blogday 11 Saturday 26th September The plan for the day was to visit the medieval Cité: the original Carcassonne. It’s a walled town on a hill overlooking the River Aude, while the modern town lies on the opposite bank of the river: laid out in a gridiron fashion that should make it easy to find one’s way around, which it is on foot; but not in a car because of the one-way system. We walked the mile to the Cité from our hotel in the new town along a pedestrians-only street, across the Aude over an ancient bridge and then up [View Full Entry]

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Blogday 9 Thursday 24th September Rocamadour, Padirac and Figeac An early start to the day. A quick breakfast in the room, packed the baggage into the Chev, checked out of the hotel and headed out of Sarlat for the last time, planning to end up in Figeac by way of two well known tourist destinations. First of all we went to Rocamadour, a popular pilgrimage destination since the Middle Ages on account of the statue of the Black Madonna in a sanctuary there. It also has a charming medieval village (another one) seemingly super-glued to the side of a 300 foot [View Full Entry]

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Blogday 7 Tuesday 22nd September still in Sarlat Disaster in the Dordogne! A really bad start to the day. I was driving the Chev out of the car park behind our hotel intending to turn right and, despite a warning from Jane, I misjudged the width of the archway linking the car park to the road. Result: one scratched Chev. So after committing Hari Kari three times (the two encores being to make sure that I’d got it right the first time): flagellating myself unmercifully then deeding all my worldly possessions to the Chevrolet Camaro Owners’ Club by way of atoning [View Full Entry]

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Blogday 5 Sunday 20th September La Rochelle to Sarlat in the Dordogne via much of Burgundy; by reason of getting lost a few times. This on account of my Michelin Road Atlas being somewhat out of date, like 8 years, and not showing recently constructed autoroutes. This is what happens when a boy from Cardiganshire goes on holiday (for the information of those readers who come from beyond the Welsh borders, Cardiganshire natives are famously tough when it comes to spending money.....folks from other areas of Wales describe us in rather less fulsome terms (the spendthrift peasants!). Meanwh [View Full Entry]

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