We were happy to see a big improvement in Barbara when we visited on Monday.  She is still in hospital and highly dependent, but is much more like her old self, and starting to have a good grouse about things.  Good sign.

Readers will be used to my grizzling about the driving we meet on the way south.  Started early this time.  We were driving into the sun between Goudhurst and Biddenden when I saw the shadow of a large truck approaching and slowed down.  Just as well: the trailer had oversteered well into our side of the road, and we missed it and the hedge by a couple of millimetres.  Soon afterwards we encountered a car that had been going in our direction ahead of us, well embedded in someone’s front wall.  Bet it was the same truck, and we wonder how far it got.

The rest of it was by and large less exciting.  We tried a new route round Paris, and think it saved us getting on for half an hour, not to mention a lot of stop-start through the traffic lights between Asnières and the Pont de Sèvres.  This time we picked up the A86 (grotty old urban 4-lane soi-disant autoroute) and followed it round to Villacoublay.  The newer part is largely in a curious tunnel, tolled at €6.50, and 2m high, hence closed to trucks.  It’s a bit like driving round a multi-storey car park for half an hour.  It spares us the hack down from Gennevilliers to the quai at Asnières, then along through Courbevoie, Neuilly and Boulogne, plus that ghastly steep, winding race track from the Pont de Sèvres to Meudon-la-Forêt, of blessed memory.  But getting it right at Vélizy to rejoin the N118 requires quick reactions and light traffic. 

From there on it was a familiar route down the A10 and A20.  There’s a lot of Iberian heavy goods traffic on that route from Paris to Toulouse, because much of it is toll-free.  Some lovely country along the way, though.  We spent the evening and stayed overnight with Jan and Mark, who also have Jan’s daughter-in-law and granddaughters with them at the moment.  Gentle evening at the table on the verandah, then a somewhat fitful sleep: we had a pretty lively storm around midnight, and that dropped the temperature a bit.  I was out on the verandah before the rest of the house was awake, sorting out the emails and watching an orange sun rise over the hill to our left, and listening to the day coming to life – donkeys, wood pigeons, cockerels and green woodpeckers.

Nothing much to report of the drive here.  The Toulouse ring road was full of the usual mad drivers, but by driving at the speed limit down the middle lane all the way, leaving 2-second gaps whenever possible, we avoided the worst threats.  Home is much as we left it, save that kind visitors had brought in the washing we’d left hanging in the stairwell, and left a couple of nice bottles in the wine rack.  We’re taking it easy this afternoon: I’ve taken down the shower room heater that has worried me since I bought the place almost fourteen years ago, and run the wiring into a junction box.  Tomorrow’s task is to rebate it back to the wall and attach the new fan heater.  Stand by for tears.