Eastbourne this last weekend was as pleasant as always, in many ways it's the ideal south coast seaside resort, favourable climate and bucket and spade-fulls of Edwardian nostalgia and architecture.

The night out with the GBMCC bike club boyz was fun but the change to summer time made it a short sleep. I went for a hike up Beachy Head (162m altitude) to enjoy the views back over Eastbourne and to Boulogne in France far away in the murky haze over the Channel.

Since then, the pier was damaged by a fire but it looks as though it may be rebuilt.

Postcard from the Auvergne, the volcanic mountains in the middle of the hexagon that is France. The last area of ancient Gaul to fall to the Romans.

Extinct volcanic plugs, deep valleys and many ancient churches in the Romanesque architecture.

Cheeses: St Nectaire, Salers, Cantal, Fourme d'Ambert, Bleu d'Auvergne and many others.

Brilliant autumn light and colours but winter arrives early here and stays late.

An all-too-brief visit to be present for the annual general meeting of AMA, the French bike club.

Fish Hill near Broadway is one of the finest road hill challenges in Southern England. Multiple curves as it rises from the Vale of Evesham to the Cotswold Hills. But biker beware: several of the picturesque villages in the Cotswolds maintain their medieval stocks!
Cotswolds roads are about straight lines and then right-angle bends so a different challenge to the very technical style that works for the roads of Provence and the Alps.
Met with some of the bikers from GBMCC London and Cardiff at The Rose and Crown in touristy Stratford-on-Avon. No stocks in that town but you have to pay up front for just about everything.
A ride through five of the counties whose names my French friends find most difficult to pronounce: Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire; useful to remember for encouragement when you are tripped up by Espigoulier, Carpentras, itinéraire, Marignane or Forcalquier!

Some souvenir photos from an enjoyable camp of twenty-eight bikers from all over France, all of us members of the French club AMA; we were exploring from the Côte d'Azur to the Alpes Maritimes, the frontier range between Nice in France and Ventimiglia in Italy.
Pictures on my postcard show the palm trees on the promenade at Fréjus, the Col de Turini (1607m) a mountain route known and appreciated for its numerous corners, curves and hairpin bends, great for practicing lines and ballistics. And other halts at Puget-Théniers, Dolceacqua and somewhere high up in the Var just before we had the fun of encountering a group of bikers out from Marseille also out for the sport in the sunshine. See also my postcard of our base at St. Jeannetwhere the club had booked a gîte in a rustic style.

Parked underneath the orange trees in the garden at the Gîte des Baous, St Jeannet.