22 July
Actually the Tour rest day was yesterday but today is our turn. Northern Ireland have gone to St Tropez for a well earned break and we are on plant watering duties. I feel a bit like Scarlett O'Hara at the Twelve Oaks picnic! Locked away for the afternoon in darkened rooms to avoid the heat. From time to time I venture up to watch the Tour on telly but have to slope back to my cooler quarters after a while leaving Sherwen and Liggett to ramble on. Jet fighters are roaring ovehead. It's all a bit surreal. I really come down to watch proper Tour coverage on France 3, via their website Pluzz, on ipad. Their ads are less frequent and more fun.
Other than that I have been keeping company with Robert Louis as he continues his canoe trip down the Oise and find myself more and more in tune with him.
No one should have any correspondence in a journey; it is bad enough to have to write, but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday feeling....After my journey is over, I shall not fail to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve. But I have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your perpetual communications...You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations that I came away to avoid.*
So take that, Facebook and Twitter! I know - pot and kettle. blogs and emails are included!
*An inland voyage R L Stevenson 1878
Stop press Thunderstorm- just before Archers! Dilemma...to unplug or not to unplug.