I’m tempted to add “and good riddance” to that, in the time honoured fashion. Putting up with the noise of camping on what amounts to a construction site, really was the limit. Don’t do such extensive, disruptive and noisy work in tourist season, for pity’s sake.

Our pitch move did buy us some respite from the racing dumper truck and, of course, construction work stops for the weekend, so folks arriving on Friday late afternoon would wonder what all the fuss was about. Admittedly, the construction disruption is a temporary affair for this year but we have also discovered that the Clicochic camping chain is actually associated with the distressingly extensive Capfun chain, which is everything but fun. So, given all the water slide components that we saw ready for installation and our experience with Capfun, this is likely to become a no-go zone for us and other discerning couples looking for a peaceful break. Given this site’s history, it’s a sad loss to touring campers but I very much doubt that we’ll be back. We’ll need to find an alternative.

Our 350kms run to Neufchâtel-en-Bray took us about 5 hrs. The campsite reception opened at 13:30 but we called in to the extremely handily placed local Leclerc supermarket to fill up with fuel and Ricard, plus a few other essentials, before checking in. The campsite is an absolute goldmine but the owner, to his credit, does plough a lot of his money back into improvements and development, which happily do not include water slides. Since we have never witnessed ongoing changes, just noted them between visits, it can be assumed that development here is done out of season.

Here we spent out last night in France for this trip before heading for Le Shuttle on Sunday morning. The French side of the operation ran a lot more smoothly than did our outbound checking in and boarding on the English side. There was no repeat of multiple lanes merging/barging into one to get through passport control.

Once disembarking, there is no doubt that you are back in England with all the potholes and uneven road surfaces – you could detect it blindfold. Added to that is the weight of traffic, of course. Getting through the Dartford Tunnel took 30 minutes and, after 3 hours of the constantly appalling road surfaces, Francine’s nerves were jangling by the time we neared home.

Using Le Shuttle has some appeal. However, given the trauma of getting to and from Folkestone plus driving the extra distance on the French side through the Pas de Calais, we have to ask whether it’s worth it compared to a south coast ferry crossing.

I know Francine’s answer.

We’re not on a campsite, we’re on a construction site.

Yesterday we were subjected to a small JCB-like digger excavating what we think is destined to become part of a water park. The field where the digger is working has a large collection of what look like sections of water slides. At frequent intervals a dumper truck raced along the track beside our pitch, bumping and rattling, it’s bucket filled with spoil from the excavation work. Having dumped its contents on a spoil heap, it raced back again for another load.

After France’s violent storms of two days ago, looking for some respite from the construction noise yesterday, we had cycled first into Cheverny. Cheverny, however, was in the midst of setting up for some sort of jazz fest, so we moved on the short distance to Cour Cheverny which, in any case, is a slightly larger affair. The whole of Cour Cheverny was out of commission with a power cut from those storms – the shops were closed and the bar was closed. Arghh!

We returned to our construction site but the bar there was also closed due to a lack of power. It seems that the electricity supply for the camping pitches had been swiftly restored but not the electricity supply for the construction site offices or restaurant and bar. Curious.

To cap yesterday off in style, the almost inevitable campsite guitarist pitched a tent on our neighbouring emplacement and began strumming away, admittedly quite softly. It’s just irritating listening to someone else’s music even if it might be music that you would normally quite like. At 22:15 I went and asked him to stop. Mercifully he complied. What makes people think you want to listen to a guitar on a campsite?

Today the small JCB-thing made another appearance and clattered past us on its caterpillar tracks; it seemed to smooth down the spoil heap of yesterday a little. This turned out be be so that the dumper truck could resume racing past with more loads of spoil from somewhere else – we think from excavating foundations for the new cabins’ decking.

We had tried to move on to our last campsite a day earlier (i.e. today) before heading home but sadly that campsite is fully booked for Friday night, so we’ve sat it out. We have, however, moved to another pitch as far away as we can get from the dumper truck’s route. One trouble is, you never quite know where the construction work will move on to next, so it’s difficult to know precisely where to avoid.

We tried a second ride to Cour Cheverny which was happily back online. So was the bar. There was also a small market with a helpful cheese stall from which we supplemented our supplies.

We’ll see how our move away from the construction noise fares.

Our original plan today was to travel from Florac to Hérisson, which has to be my absolute favourite little camping municipal site. Hérisson itself has little but it does have the essential of a bar, together with a small food shop. The delight here is the idyllic river flowing beside the campsite itself.

The weather had other ideas. An orange warning of orages [storms] was issued covering most of the middle of France. At Hérisson the forecast included 100kph winds with grêle [hail]. Having very recently experienced marble-sized grêle on our first evening at Florac, we were keen not to subject Frodo to another potentially damaging battering, so we ended up travelling 500kms, driving straight past my beloved Hérisson at 350kms distance and onto Cheverny, which is where we had intended to continue onto the following day. Cheverny was nearer the edge of the storm warning and apparently was not expected to suffer French hailstones, which can get painfully large. Winds were expected to be lower, too, being a mere 75kph.

It all seemed a bit surreal. Our 6½-hour journey was made under consistently clear blue skies with the mercury reaching 37°C. We eventually arrived at Camping les Saules, just outside Cheverny, with the skies still clear and the temperature still at 36°C. Was this storm real? Where the hell was it?

We’d discovered this site last year, it being a decent journey back up to our favoured overnight stop at Neufchâtel-en-Bray before returning home. It had been an unexceptional but nonetheless very reasonable campsite. This year it looked very different. About half the site is being given over to the creeping scourge of cabins for rent; that section of the site was roped off and the development work was in progress. The staff were now wearing “uniforms” bearing the name “Clico Chic”, which is clearly some sort of a chain. Let’s hope that it isn’t as dire as Capfun, which we really cannot cope with, being a magnet for Satan’s Little Disciples and everything but fun.

Francine had bravely made an online reservation with her phone as we travelled so we were expected. There were still a good number of touring pitches left, though they were not particularly heavily used, so we selected one that appeared to have a little late afternoon shade from the continuing clear skies and heat  We got Frodo settled with his awning out to supplement the natural dappled shade. We plugged in, the electricity came on and we were set. Time for a couple of arrival beers.

The skies to the south began darkening at around 17:30. Shortly before 18:00, one of the staff rode in on his electric cart eyeing my awning and asked if I spoke French. “Oui, un peu”, I replied, “il y a un orage”, I continued. He nodded assent and added, “gros!”. I indicated that I would stow the awning but that was a bit of a stretch for my French. I wound everything in; the locals were also winding everything in. The storm was clearly real.

Exactly when METEO France had predicted, shortly after taking our late afternoon showers, the encroaching darkening skies engulfed the site. Rain began and soon became heavy. The orange orage [vaguely poetic] had arrived, spot on time. We took shelter in Frodo who became a bit steamy being unable to have roof vents open because of bouncing rain drops.

Accompanied by thunder and reflections of lightning flashes, the predicted wind very suddenly whipped up. I heard what might’ve been grêle hitting Frodo’s roof but, no, it was bits of tree debris. As trees whipped about, it was all remiscent of a tropical storm like that in “A High Wind in Jamaica”. Then our electricity went off.

The high winds did not last long, say about 10 minutes, and the rain abated. I tried a different electricity connection point but to no avail. I turned our gas on so we could keep the fridge cool. Having very rarely run on gas, happily the fridge fired up.

As we came out of hiding it was apparent that others were in the same boat with no power. A neighbour had a long but happily not too heavy branch of a willow tree balanced right across the roof of his large motor home. We’d been lucky, though I can’t check Frodo’s roof – a large tree top had twisted off of one the nearby willows and had fallen very close to Frodo’s nose. It more or less filled the neighbouring pitch which had mercifully been vacant.

Our electricity was restored quicker than I had expected, after about 15 minutes. One willow had fallen across the track into and out of the campsite. It was now barricaded.

The saules in Caamping les Saules means willows. Now maybe we know where the term crack willow comes from.

The orange alert was in force until midnight so we remained battened down. It was far too steamy to consider cooking so our evening meal was a baguette with rilletes [potted pork] and a mixture of cheeses. What a hardship.

We moved on from Mausanne-les-Alpilles to Florac. Francine found a pleasant sounding campsite, Camping le Vagabond, on the outskirts of Florac and beside Le Tarnon river, which flows on into the Tarn. We arrived on Sunday 22nd June.

Camping le Vagabond is a small campsite of about 30 pitches and lacks a specific facility for dealing with motorhomes – no tailor-made motor van service area. The owners, though, do their very best to make up for that shortfall by, for example, manually emptying waste water tanks and running long hoses to fill fresh water tanks. After avoiding a few low-hanging tree limbs, we got Frodo settled. The ground slopes down a little towards Le Tarnon so levelling ramps are essential.

A storm blew in on Sunday late afternoon. The storm was accompanied by hail stones the size of marbles. We sheltered in Frodo with a little trepidation, hoping that the hail stones did not damage his roof or roof vents. In years gone by, we have seen caravans and cars dented by large French hail stones, looking as if they’d been hit by a ball-peen hammer. One poor chap had had his caravan’s roof vents smashed by hail stones, the vents being relatively flimsy plastic. We kept our fingers crossed that the hail got no larger’. Repairing hail stone damage in France is something of a specialist industry.

We had originally intended to stay for just two nights but Florac – spot the pattern here – was pretty much closed on Monday so we extended our stay to three nights so Francine could see Florac open on Tuesday.

After the hail storm, days two and three at Florac were sunny and hot, with the mercury hitting the high 30s°C. The river Tarnon beside the campsite had a small beach, the bottom of the river being a pleasantly fine gravel, though strewn with some rounded rocks; nothing painful or unpleasant – I do dislike muddy river bottoms. The water was quite cold and, once over the initial shock, bathing in it to cool down in the later afternoon was very refreshing. It had been a long time since we’d indulged in river bathing.

Zooming about over the river were dozens of Small Pincertail (Onychogomphus forcipatus) dragonflies, some of which were prone to using our heads as perches as we sat in the middle of the water. This species likes to perch on the rocks beside the river so maybe that’s what they took our heads for, especially mine which was covered in a rock-coloured Buff..

Butterflies were taking advantage of the salts in the sandy beach beside the river, too. There was quite an aggregation of Essex Skippers (Thymelicus lineola), which seems like a slightly silly common name when observing them in the south of France. Maybe the American name of European Skipper would be more appropriate in this context.

My star here, initially spotted by eagle-eyed Francine, was undoubtedly a fully grown Conehead Mantis (Empusa pennata) which did its best to pose favourably. We have seen this species before but this was in prime position. Try studying the face, it looks completely other worldly. What a magnificent creation.

Our stay at Maussane-les-Alpilles was four nights, between 18th and 21st June. It is a worthwhile stop for those with a dragonfly fixation.

My first interest, being a dragonfly anorak, was what we call a Norfolk Hawker which in France is more appropriately called a Green-eyed Hawker. Either way it is Isoaeschna isoceles (and the missing middle “s” is correct). The curiosity here is that this specimen sported distinct antehumeral stripes which are missing from those in Britain. This variation is noted from Greece and Turkey and has been described as a subspecies called antehumeralis, That is still subject to debate, though. Clearly this variation also exists in southern France.

On a very shady, rather hidden stream which we’d discovered on a previous visit, we started seeing different looking Hawker-type dragonflies. These we eventually managed to narrow down to being Dusk Hawkers/Western Spectres (Boyeria irene). I’d seen these beasts before on the Mausanne campsite and at the Peau de Meau but they never settled and I never managed to get a picture of one. Over the course of three late afternoons these frustrating critters once again failed to settle. I did, however, manage to use a tripod and a bit of modern technology in my Olympus camera to snag a vaguely recognizable shot in flight. The shade was very deep so the ISO was necessarily high but it sort of worked.

Many years ago whilst walking the Corfu Trail from south to north, we had a rest day from walking. I used almost the whole of this day to try and capture one of the hundreds of Cleopatra butterflies (Gonepteryx cleopatra) with wings open. Like our related Brimstone butterflies (Gonepteryx rhamni), this species never sits with its wings open. With an older camera having autofocus too slow to cope, I resorted to manually pre-focusing and trying to catch the wings as the butterflies took off. I kept three shots out of about 100. This time I pressed my Olympus’s technology into service again and did much better much more quickly.

We took a longer electro-steed ride out to the remains of a Roman aqueduct to go, “oo, ah” at piles of old stones. Well, it was an excuse for a bike ride. We played chase with a Roller on the way out but it was a lot faster than I was and a distant shot with too small a lens was all I could manage, so don’t look for it here.

Our return passed through Le Paradou where there was a handy-dandy bar with a tree-shaded square opposite. Naturally, given 35+°C the temptation was too great and we sat under the shade trees supping a beer or two. A few things fell out of the trees onto us and one got Francine very excited. Since it was on me, she had to use my camera, unfamiliar to her, to snag it. This utterly delightful little creature, just about 1cm long, is a mantis nymph, though just which species of mantis I know not. What a wonderful little miniature, though.

We’ve come back to Maussane-les-Alpilles again. Apart from being a jolly nice part of Provence, this is largely because, when there is an interesting subject being shown, Francine loves to visit the Carrières des Lumières.

The carrière is a huge cavern left behind after blocks of bauxite had been mined in years past. The cavern walls are essentially flat and white making them an excellent projection surface. The floor is also used as a projection surface. Dozens of projectors are positioned to cover the entire cavern. I think you’d probably call this a son et lumière show, beloved of the French. Each year a couple of artists are chosen and their works are animated and projected to accompanying music. This year the main man is Claude Monet, whose works Francine is fond of. So am I, come to that. This wall isn’t one of the flattest used in the show but it’ll give you the general idea.

We chose Friday morning, clambered on our electro-steeds and cycled uphill to the val d’enfer at Les Baux de Provence, a modest journey of about 4kms. We arrived quite soon after opening and before the day’s heat had built up too much. We were surprised to note that this was yet another French attraction with an area to leave bikes but without one single bike stand to lock them to. (The other was the National Lily Collection where Monet became enchanted by lilies.) Curious.There was not yet a large audience; the audience grew as we watched, though.

The show cycles round continuously with breaks of just about a minute between. The “supporting” artist this year was Henri Rousseau, whose artworks depicted, apparently, dreams. I wasn’t especially taken by this shorter section.

Personally, entertaining though the Monet section was, I thought they’d gone a bit overboard on the animations this time, not just animating the changes of images but also animating sections within the images themselves, such as making plant fronds wave and making Monet’s water lily blooms open. I’d rather just see what he painted.

Having watched the show through, we collected our bikes and whizzed back downhill to Mausanne itself.

We have been camping in France, with occasional forays into Germany, Austria and Switzerland, for about 40 years. We used to travel with friends complete with school age children, so many of those trips were in the height of the season. We never booked any sites and, apart from one occasion in the Alsace, we never failed to get a pitch on a campsite. That considerate owner let us stay on the hardstanding outside the site and use the facilities.

That changed two years ago in 2023 when Francine and I decided to visit the Basin d’Arcachon. The first four campsites that we tried were full. Happily the fifth site did have a pitch for us, albeit a tight squeeze for Frodo between trees. Basically, avoid coastal sites full of sun worshippers, even when not in the height of the season.

Last year, 2024, was a little different. The weather over much of France was poor and it seems that almost everyone had flooded south to Provence and the Languedoc. The Languedoc is one of our favourite areas and the erstwhile reliable little camping municipal at Loupian was full. We did get in to a lovely aire naturelle at Villemarin. The attraction here is Mèze, which has to be my favourite place to add to Millau for Francine.

The face of camping in Europe has clearly changed with a huge number of the grey brigade swanning around in motorhomes, campers and caravans.

Liking the idea of more seafood in Mèze, this year, fighting with the online reservation system, Francine managed to make a reservation at Loupian between 14th and 17th June. The timing got us there on Saturday in time for the attraction of the Mèze Sunday market. There is a Camping Car Park [CCP] site at Mèze and it is notable that it gets very full on the Saturday night, presumably with avid market goers.

We duly hit the well conceived cycle track beside the Loupian campsite and headed in to Mèze on Sunday morning to make for the market square, to be met by municipal works fencing off about half of the market area in front of the church. The remaining half was crammed with densely packed stalls and the other avid market goers. It was a bit of a disappointment but we still managed some of our usual purchases.

On another day, heading the opposite way on the cycle track towards Bouzigues, we found the track and route much improved, an underpass now totally avoiding the busy main road. Bouzigues is the main oyster farming centre of the Basin de Thau and has an attractive front lined with a variety of restaurants overlooking the lagoon. One of these was called Chez Francine. Even more incredibly, just above Chez Francine was a board advertising an establishment called “Curd Ridel”. Well, it would be rude not to, wouldn’t it?

Maybe the stars had aligned. We enjoyed a very decent lunch including raw oysters, gratineed oysters and Rouille a la Sètoise, which was squid pieces in a tomato and I suspect red pepper sauce. It was all washed down with a very good bottle of Picpoul de Pinet … oh, and a subsequent pichet of vin blanc because, in the sun, the bottle didn’t quite last long enough.

We’ve returned to Millau, one of Francine’s personal favourites, for the first time in more years than I can remember. It’s been a four night stop.

We used to stay at a quite wooded campsite beside the River Dourbie but now we have come to Camping Saint Martin almost in the shadow of the magnificent Millau viaduct. (This picture misses two more pylons to the left.) The campsite reviews mentioned views of the viaduct but I don’t think it’s actually visible from the site itself. What is visible, particularly from Frodo’s viewpoint, is the Cirque Saint Martin, overflown in the late afternoon/evening by some of the astonishingly large Griffon Vultures that call this area home. It’s not a bad place to just sit and watch.

Millau has two market days and we timed our arrival for the Wednesday market. There is a 5km cycle route from our campsite into the centre of Millau which we followed to investigate. Going into Millau is largely downhill so the going was easy. The Wednesday market was a bit lame, in truth, being much reduced in size with most seeming to be more like a rummage sale. Having sat at a bar for a coffee, we tackled the return route, largely uphill, and were very grateful for the bikes’ electric assistance.

With decent market withdrawal symptoms, we repeated our downhill visit for the Friday market, which is really the main event, not that we had remembered beforehand. This was much more extensive and devoted large areas to the French love of food. Now we were encouraged to spend money on some artisan sheep’s cheese, a rotisseried chicken, which we always refer to as a spinning chicken, and some aligot to accompany it for lunch. Aligot is a bit like French mashed potato: smashed potatoes are stirred with a large wooden paddle whilst being heated with cheese and, I think, some crème fraîche. It’s a labour of love which I’ll leave to the experts.

The cafes were all heaving on the main market day so, armed with our purchases we made our assisted uphill return to enjoy lunch beneath the imposing cirque.There is a belvedere up on the cirque offering a panoramic view of that wonderful viaduct. I must say I was tempted to try attacking it on the bike but somehow I never quite got around to it.

There is a small stream flowing just beneath the campsite and I couldn’t resist checking it out for wildlife. I was very happy that I did because in one sunny spot, and being very cooperative was a lovely male Golden-ringed Dragonfly (Cordulegaster boltonii). We have them in the UK but sadly not anywhere near my home which lacks the correct type of habitat.

One morning we stretched our legs along the lane leading into the cirque and, as well as seeing a female Golden-ringed Dragonfly, we were very pleasantly surprised by what I thought was a Purple Emperor (Apatura iris) butterfly. As it sat in the hedgerow, I waited (somewhat) patiently for it to open its wing and hopefully give us a flash of the glorious purple colour, which it eventually did. Then I was informed by those more knowledgeable than I in the world of butterflies, that this was actually a Lesser Purple Emperor (Apatura ilia) which I didn’t even know existed, Nice one.

We were very favourably impressed by our new campsite. It’s actually an ACSI site and very reasonably priced at €16.70 a night. For some reason, this seemed to be the friendliest campsite we’ve come across this trip with an especially charming guardienne. Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw with which other campers happen to be there at the time, or maybe the mood of the guardienne contributes. The campsite has the added advantage of a Leclerc supermarket about 1km down the hill towards Millau,

On Sunday after leaving Le Temple sur Lot, we’ve made a very short hop for us, a mere 90kms, and pitched up at Cahors, also sur Lot. (I asked the nice young man on reception, which we just made in time for the lunchtime closure, and the “t” at the end of “Lot” is pronounced. I wasn’t sure. Now we know) We picked a slow cross-country route but it was more interesting than a main road.

Having arrived on Sunday Cahors was closed. Monday being another public holiday [Whitsun, apparently], Cahors was again closed, other than a Carrefour City, which we took advantage of to buy a bottle of Cahors wine, and, oddly, a hat shop [chapellerie]. Fortunately, Cahors itself didn’t have to be open for us to go oo-ah at its famous 14th century Valentré bridge. Trust the French to surround the bridge not with grass but with vines.

Now we can get into the beers, which have been waiting for nothing much to happen.

The Super-U at Castelmoron had some beers that I just couldn’t resist, with a damselfly on one can and a butterfly on the other. How could I not buy them? These were from the Mira brasserie in France.

I tried the weaker one first. When I say weaker, all things are relative; this was stronger than most of our draught beers at 5.2% ABV. My first taste was a bit of a surprise and pretty much knocked my socks off. This was one of the bitterest bitters that I’ve tasted, very well hopped indeed, apparently with a mix of three different hops. I now know that NEIPA stands for New England India Pale Ale, the India Pale Ale part I am very familiar with but slapping New England in front of it was a surprising development. India Pale Ale has its roots in shipping beer from England to India. At least this was strong enough to qualify, though, which is more than I can say for many of Britain’s current crop of IPAs. As you can see, it’s one of the modern “Hazy IPAs” which I began enjoying in Australia last year.

Next up was the butterfly-adorned “Passion IPA”. How intriguing is that, brewer’s droop notwithstanding at 6.8% ABV. I took a sip. Odd, My taste buds began to suspect that the passion aspect was based upon passion fruit. Indeed it was. The French had taken a leaf out of the Belgians’ book in developing a fruit beer. It wasn’t sweet (unlike an attrocious American attempt that I had tasted many years ago in Californa where blueberry syrup had been added). This was subtle.

Interesting though they both were, I can’t say I’d be rushing back for a repeat taste.

My current beer of choice on this trip, being widely available, is Leffe Blonde. This gets us on to one of my bug bears. Leffe Blonde is available in the UK BUT, and it’s a big BUT, the stuff in England is brewed under license in England. The real Belgian stuff is 6.6% ABV whereas the British imitation is only 6.0% ABV.

Most of the European beers available in the UK are brewed in the UK and spoiled. Kronenbourg 1664 is weaker then the genuine French stuff, St. Miguel is weaker than the real Spanish stuff. Given that we in the UK are crap at brewing lager, it’s a travesty that this happens. One of my alternative beers this trip in France is La Goudale at a respectable 7.2% ABV. Goudale IS available in small bottles at Morrisons supermarket but I confess that I haven’t checked the provenance or strength of that offering.

Thursday at Les Mathes  the weather had thrown irritating rain at us all day long, off and on. At times it felt mostly on. We really should have used it as a travelling day but we hadn’t yet paid the campsite owner so we sat inside Frodo wishing we’d been a bit more astute – the owner was absent all afternoon. We did eventually manage to pay and on Friday we did move on.

After some debate, where we moved on to was Le Temple sur Lot where there was a campsite with enthusiastic reviews. It’s essentially in the middle of nowhere, which generally suits me down to the ground, though it did have one intriguing attraction in what is really a one-horse town.

Starting on slow local roads we eventually completed the 3-hour 270kms journey and managed to arrive whilst reception was closed for lunch. However, whether or not they spotted us I know not, but as we were wandering around scoping out the pitches, reception did open up and booked us in. With there being just one other unit on site, we had no trouble grabbing our – well, Francine’s – first choice of pitch.

We got settled and wandered into town, though I’d hesitate to call it such, to find a Vival which really should not have bothered; it was next door to useless. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more pointless alimentaire in France. There is another option in nearby Castelmoron which we hoped would be better the next day after Frodo had spent a comfortable night serenaded almost constantly in the daylight hours by a vociferous Mistle Thrush.

When the French do cycle tracks, they really do cycle tracks. We followed one such, twisting and turning through the countryside so as to avoid roads pretty much all the time, to Castelmoron. Mercifully we found a Super-U Express, which was an excellent shop, to make sure we had enough supplies for another coming public holiday. There were some intriguing beers which I really couldn’t resist but which will probably be the subject of a slow news day.

After lunch [he said, skilfully avoiding beginning a paragraph with a conjunction] we went to the one-horse town’s main tourist attraction. Le Temple sur Lot is home to the French national waterlily collection. What’s that if not a show-stopper?

The main show-stopper may be the French for waterlily, which was a word completely unknown to us: nénuphar. I doubt that we’ll be dropping that into day to day conversation.

In 1875, Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac began the nursery for the propogation and commercialization of hardy waterlilies. At the World’s Fair in 1889, he displayed his new-fangled plants, which were unveiled along with the Eiffel Tower that year, and which caught the eye of Claude Monet. The rest, as they say, is artistic history.

We cycled into town and then out to the waterlily nursery where, we were gobsmacked to find, not a single bicycle stand that we could lock our cycles to. This is more or less unheard of these days, particularly sur le continent. Carefully avoiding the thorny subject of bikes, we coughed up out entrance fees and went in to go oo-ah at the nénuphars. As well as lilies, the garden sported a bridge which should look familiar to Monet fans.

With all that water around, I thought I might go oo-ah at some dragonflies, too. There were some but nothing that would occasion an ooh-ah. There was, however, the most enchanting small, young tree frog, which I was very surprised to see. We were used to seeing these at our favoured campsite in Fanjeaux but they disappeared after a particularly severe winter. ‘T was nice to see one again.