After 2 years in the waiting, and slightly less in the planning, in just a few weeks we’ll be heading out on an adventure.

Important things are starting to be delivered in the post. Red, green and white face-paint for one. It’s nearly time to hit the road and support Wales in their Rugby World Cup endeavours.

Last weekend the warm up games began, and while Wales haven’t been particularly inspiring of late, and have had a number of high profile retirements and injuries, I remain ever hopeful. This hope, my beloved repeatedly tells me, is the thing that will kill me.

I am fully braced for England to give us a thumping come Saturday (*we actually won, but lost the second leg), but, there’s always that pesky hope again. Gah! All my half Welsh husbands fault. Still, a losing Wales team that’s played through blood sweat and tears is still preferable to me than a winning but soulless performance from others. I want hulking great menfolk to cry during the anthems please. That’s why I’ve come!

So, our road trip looks like this.

We start in Bordeaux for the first game, then we travel south to Beziers for a night. After Beziers it’s Aigues Mortes for another night, and then onwards to Nice for 4 nights and the next game. Have visited Nice before but it must be at least 15 years ago and it was with my late niece. I’m sure I’ll see her face around a few corners, including when she fell over a pew in the ghostly silent chapel where Grace Kelly is interred, causing a chalk down a blackboard scrape soooooo loud it startled a thousand coach trips….. We giggled for a very very long time after making a very hasty retreat. We also spent a very amusing 5 minutes flushing and re-flushing the toilets in the Cafe de Paris in Monte Carlo because the toilet seats revolve when they are disinfected. Please let this still be a thing when we visit, it’s a thing I need to do for Gemma!

Then after the Nice game, we head back North for 2 nights in Carcassonne on the way home.

Next, it’s time for us to dog sit for Les Parentals, so they can go to the next game in Lyon, which is our willing trade off as they are kindly house-sitting while we’re away.

Then heading into October, we have one final weekend up North in Nantes for our last group match. Looking forward to going to see the menagerie of Jules Vernes inspired giant automatons at Les Machines des I’ile, including a steam powered elephant!

The Go-Pro will be coming along so hopefully a little bit of Youtubery will be forthcoming. Although I’ve still yet to edit the Southern Iceland trip we went on from February…..ahem….

Finally, very happy to tell you I’m now one of Feedspot’s top 100 French blogs, and you can see the full list here. https://blog.feedspot.com/french_blogs/

Lots to share with you over the next few weeks, I’ll try to take you along with me on our adventures, I just must remember to actually write every day!

TTFN x