Annecy

I'm camping by lake Annecy, somewhere near the French alps, at the moment. Have been here for a few days now with the Bish and we're both loving a bit of a rest. So far we've cycled 450 odd miles.
Started down the northwest coast and into Paris, via Giverny and Monet's somewhat overrated gardens. In Paris we watched the Argentinians upset the French in the opening game of the Rugby World Cup on a big screen in the middle of the city. Was (very quietly) cheering for Argentina in a crowd of a few thousand excitable French. Caught a train from Paris to Bourg St Maurice and cycled from there over to Annecy.
Have a look at our route on google maps, it's quite impressive.
I'll apologise at this point for any random spelling errors as I'm using a retarded French keyboard and half the keys are in the wrong place.
It was Bishs' birthday on Tuesday, great timing, and we celebrated by riding over a couple of mountains to another lake and back again, only took us eight hours. We've had two days of rest since then and are taking tomorrow very easy and ending watching the England South Africa match with a few cold ones.
Saturday we train it down to Avignon (have abandoned the cycle everywhere plan and started using trains so that we actually get to spend some time in the places we want to see. So we'll do a few days along the Ardèche Gorge and then another train to Bordeaux to check out some wineries. Another train from there to Paris and then on the Eurostar to London and we're home!
Annecy is truly stunning. Could easily spend the whole month here if we didn't want to see anything else. I randomly woke at 5am the other morning, pretty much unheard of from me, and was rewarded with a magical view of the pre-dawn mountains. Tried to replicate the feat this morning but neither of us could actually drag ourselves out of our relatively warm sleeping bags (we may have erred in basing our choice there on how small the bags packed away rather than how warm they are) to see it. Might have another crack at it. Then again. Might not. We shall see.
That is all
Ciao

Up Off and Away

Am off to France in an hour. Train down to Dover. Ferry to Calais. Then Cycling as far as we like each day and camping wherever we can. Gonna be AMAZING! Rugby World Cup is on while we're there as well. May fork out some dosh to see a match if we get close enough. Otherwise will just sit in the pub and watch as many games of an afternoon as we can manage.
Contact for the month will be via email, comments here, or facebook.
See you in a month!