Makes you deaf, you know!

One of the additional advantages of living near Avignon, is that we're pretty much based at a pan-European crossroads. Turin and Barcelona are both just over 3 hours drive away (in opposite directions!), Marseille is a major embarkation point for North Africa, Paris is 2 hours north by train, we're well linked for flights to most parts of the UK (and by train with Eurostar/TGV) and we're under 3 hours drive from the southern Alps!

So we're just back from a week's skiing in La Plagne at the centre of the Alps. And a great week it was too. La Plagne is where Lindsay and I first started to realise our escapist dreams when we chucked our jobs at the end of 1999 to go and work that winter running a ski chalet. Therefore this last week was a bit of a trip down Memory Lane (or Piste?), catching up with old friends, skiing favourite runs (and trying new, fast chair lifts) and visiting old haunts.



Just such an old haunt is La Bergerie - a mountain restaurant just above La Plagne and thus always a favourite stopping off spot for a Vin Chaud on our way home after a day's skiing. The photo above was taken from La Bergerie's terrace at the end of our last day skiing. The mountain in the background just catching the light of the setting sun is Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain - about 4,500m (from memory).

Skiing home after this, the pistes were suddenly deserted and silent - an eerie, beautiful feeling.

However, the end of the holiday was somewhat marred for me as I managed to catch a horrible cold that has dragged on for over a week now. And my top tip for catching a cold in a ski resort is... if you catch a cold up a mountain, avoid going down to the valley! Having got thoroughly bunged up on Friday, we left on Saturday and drove down from the ski resort, descending La Plagne's 21 hairpin bends and 2000m to the valley floor, during which descent I turned thoroughly deaf!

And about two days after we got home, as if not to be outdone by 'foreign parts', Provence threw us a fantastic sunset of it's own...

Busy, Busy, Busy

It's been a hectic few weeks to start July and my blogging has slipped as a result.

Week 1 was an all-catered, all-touring week at Mas des Grand' Terres. Looking after Rosemary and Owen and their friends is great fun and very rewarding but doesn't really leave time for very much else. I'll post the rest of the recipes from that week very soon. (As soon as I find the time!)

Week 2 then started with a trip to Italy to see some old college friends in Florence. Graeme now has a house on the hill overlooking Florence...


Unfortunately it doesn't have a view of the Duomo - that costs three times more - but it's a beautiful house in a converted 'limonaia' (whatever is the lemon equivalent of an orangery). Joanne very cleverly decided not to have her and husband Julian's joint 40th birthday in rainy old London, but to occupy Graeme's place and arrange a 'top night'. (I'm only just about over the hangover now.) Here they are having a laugh...


And to show that it run's in the family here's their baby, Georgie, following the family tradition...


Week 3: Anyway - real life has been back to Earth with a bump. Lindsay heading back to Brussels at 7 on the morning after our return from Florence and me returning home on my own to a filthy house, a filthy great pile of washing and a filthy headache!

Add to that a graphics pitch that I'm preparing for Benjamin and a trip back to Blighty tomorrow to see my parents and I hope you'll excuse the recent lack of activity.

I must be a better blogger. I must be a better blogger. I must be a better blogger. I must be a better blogger. I must be a better blogger. I must be a better blogger.......