So 956 miles and two and a half days of travel and we arrived in Margon. The journey south was smooth, Eurotunnel efficient and fast, traffic fairly light and even the dreaded périphique was ‘fluide’. As you can see the car was heavy loaded, basically all the space from the front seats to the back window was occupied with something. Two good hotels eased the journey and what a treat on Monday driving down the A75 after an overnight stay in the Auvergne next to Eiffel’s spectacular viaduct at Garabit. Beautiful clear weather meant breathtaking views of the Massif Central and the beautiful Millau Bridge. The fact that this coincided with my first official day of retirement and that I was not sitting in the school hall was the icing on the cake.

And so we are settling in, unpacking continues and 30C sunshine means that life is pretty good. No wines as yet, harvesting has begun though there are lots of red grapes still hanging on vines. This will be the next stage of my journey, finding out more about the harvest and first steps in turning grape juice into wine.