Day One...

I'm more zen now. After the whole Easyjet Ritual (featuring 'being charged £10 for being less than a kilo overweight' (bags, not me), plus uberhectic game of sardines to get onto plane), I arrived in Toulouse marginally frazzled, but up for ACTION.

Any whining I could have mustered as a result of left-hand-drive and 30 degree heat dissipated as I passed through knockout scenery. I've missed sunflower season... They now look like they're amassing to join a funeral - field upon field of muted colour and hung heads. But, glossing over that, the countryside is quite something. I bothered to lug proper camera over, so photos shall commence manana.

Arrived at Gramont in hire car. Moment of high drama in placid French idyll featured a reverse up a slope that Tour riders would baulk at, with accidental handbrake and clutch over-ride. Parking to the smell of cooking polystyrene missed the mark.

Over aperatif, I met Kate (kiwi), Nick (hubbie, manchester), Phil-head-teacher from Cambridge, and nice japanese lady, whose name I shall master. Plus owners Nikki and David...and their son Sam. Plus Bernard, his daughter, plus the neighbours, plus any other random that happened upon us. It's v v French!

Dinner - after great canapes and armagnac liqueur - was foie gras, pan fried with apple. Then duck with potato rosti. Apres: comte, roquefort and briemendous. Finishing with pain perdu....I'm in heartburn heaven!

 (the ubiquitous armagnac..)

Tomorrow starts with knife skills. With anticipated mild hangover, what could possibly go wrong?