Canyoning in the Gorges du Verdon.

A few days ago I recieved some amazing news.... Miss Jennifer Phipps was coming to France and staying just an hour away from me! So yesterday Alice and I set off bright and early to Castellane to meet her there, unfortunately Jen had some 'van issues' so while we waited Alice and I had a little explore around the market.

Jen arrived and it was just fantastic to see her. 8 months is definitely TOO long!

We had a few hours to kill before we had our canyoning trip booked for so we headed down to the Gorge and found a lovely little pebble beach to chill on and pass the time in the sunshine.

At 2 we set off down to Jabron to meet our (rather attractive) guide for the afternoon, Francois. And walked in the baking sun for half an hour down into the Gorge kitted up with a wetsuit, harness and helmet. Fit.

Three hours were then spend in the Gorge jumping off stupidly high rocks, cramming ourselves through tight spaces, toboganning down natural slides, climbing slippery walls and abseiling down from a great height to be dropped into a freezing cold pool of water....

Unfortuantely we couldnt take a camera with us as the whole time was spent in water, but I do have photographs from the website of our trip to show you how brave we were. I PROMISE we actually did this....

Exhausted, we trundled back to the car and made our way towards St Andre les Alpes to where Jen was staying, stopping off briefly for a dip in the Lac de Castillion, before crashing in a restaurant to have a well deserved massive plate of steak and chips. Yum.

A really amazing day, made a billion times better by the fact I got to spend it with Jen.

Visitors and Grottes...

Well, it's been a busy few weeks and I have had a couple of wonderful visitors!

Firstly, completely randomly, dear old Maxwell Dennis managed to blag a holiday with the Cosgroves and wound up staying 5 minutes down the road from me! It was so fantastic to see him, John and Jude again and we spent a few days chilling in the sunshine, drinking wine, attending BBQs and showing our competitve sides becoming the dreamteam in a rather heated game of articulate....

A few days later I recieved a phone call from Martin who was due to be camping in the garden to tell me Matt had managed to get a puncture and could I go and rescue them.... The nutters were on a charity cycle from Rome to Home for Help for Heroes and we had scheduled them a chill out day to recover after nearly 600 miles of cycling! They then spent the day with us and more BBQ and more wine was consumed! Again, completely wonderful to see him again after 3 years!

With all the visitors gone, I was back to work and decied to take the girlies to the Grottes de Saint Cezaire.... These are underground caves where you can walk to 40 metres underground and explore the caves, the girls loved it.... and even more so the picnic we had afterwards!