Our week of idyll with the family seemed to be over before it had properly started. Apart from being tourists, eating far too much and having the delight of spending a week with our little family, I also managed to fit new brake pads to Just Sue and give her an oil change. This proved to be a little bit of trial. The villa we were calling home was on a steep slope above the river, so I rolled the bike down and found the flat ground needed to do the oil change beside the road.

Obviously a local had been suspicious of what I was about and phoned the authorities. I had no sooner dropped the old oil into a container purchased specially for the purpose than a Municipal Police car pulled up and an officer appeared at my shoulder. I managed to explain to the pleasant young woman what I was doing and she was busy lending a hand with the job, when a second police car and a motorbike pulled up. Before I was finished I had four officers standing around supervising. Oh well, it probably brightened up a dull morning for them!

After our sad farewell to Sarah, Mike and Erin, we made one final stop on the Côte d'Azur. We rode east through the torturous traffic to the resort town of Menton. There were two purposes for this little detour. The first was to make a conclusion to our journey through the Alps by visiting the place where the mountains finally meet the Mediterranean. The second was to find the grave of a certain William Webb Ellis late rector of St Clement Danes Church, London and Rugby schoolboy. Menton seemed to us to be a better style of Côte d'Azur town with a nice waterfront and wide tree lined streets.

From Menton we managed to find a way back through the mountains and eventually to the Grand Canyon du Verdon. For those who have been to the Colorado version of a Grand Canyon, this one lacks the same awe inspiring impact but it is still a nice hole in the ground, as holes in the ground go. Jo says that I have no feeling for the geology, but...

All of this brought us to the village of St Didier near the town of Carpentras where we ended the week in a comfortable gîte. This has allowed me to make up some writing-time lost in the early part of our travels and the local Suzuki dealer to fix an intake air leak on Just Sue which resulted from the hasty engine installation back in London. Relaxed and refreshed we will next head west and north and back to the wet and cold of the autumn.

Oh, I almost forgot William Webb Ellis. For those not steeped in Rugby School mythology, Webb Ellis was the boy who first, in defiance of the rules of the day, picked up a football in his arms and ran with it thus creating the game of Rugby. The grave is in a beautiful spot overlooking the city and a suitable place to remember that Webb Ellis only did what we all should do: pick up the ball and run with it!