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I was right! Beautiful sunshine, a case full of silk frocks and flip flops and nowhere to go 'cept into a car...farewell breakfast on top of our hotel in Nice:

Lucas: At last we set off on our journey to Avignon we stayed in the Hotel Cloister and Dad says: “dad wanted to mum to dress up as a nun but she would have none of it” then that night we ordered a meal from room service that was tasty! Next day on the “Pont d’Avignon” we went to the end and we couldn’t get to the other side because the bridge was broken! They gave up after about 50 years because they kept getting invaded and also it was a bit difficult to build. So here we are watching the storm coming towards us:

So, this is us again:

And now at last we set off in the hired car and goodbye to Avignon then went on our everlasting trip to our house in Limeuil, this is our first day here where we enjoy occupying ourselves [note: he’s now translating direct from the original Latin] making bow and arrows and swords out of string and sticks then now I’m here typing on mum’s laptop these very words about our Holiday!

Theo: Avignon has walls all the way round the town, old walls that you can walk on and I read the map again as usual because I’m the guide.

In the car, all day yesterday, Lucas was mad all the way through the journey, especially the last hour when his face was purpled red. He called us all twerps (but this was better than he normally says). Mum and Dad were laughing, which made him madder. Now I am in the garden with my bow and arrow pretending 2 be robin hood; I grappled up the wall and shot him with my arrow - he’s mad with me and I’m about 2 run up a tree...sorry I’ve gotta gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…

Tony: First visit to Provence and loved it. Hired (inadvertently) a car strangely called a Nissan - Notte and after 550km we understood why.
The plane trees which line the RN’s and the city streets and squares work beautifully with the small scale of the vineyards and fields and with the Provencal stone and architecture. To Avignon: the hotel was in a C16 monastery with a strange modern extension by Jean Nouvel. Avignon’s centre historique is a perfect piece of urbanism which demonstrates how a city can work within preserved city walls. Highlight of the day was the flash hail storm which swept at least 2" of water into the town and (yup, you guessed) made the drains rise magically and with all the familiar pomp and circumstance of this tour..

T: Deborah has bought much of the families’ summer collection from the exclusive couturier – Monoprix - and the children and I have most fashionable sous-vetements. [Long lost tradition of washing small boys’ smalls in bath and stuffing over radiators remains long lost]. Eight hour journey to Limeuil – sworn to return next time in a Porsche even if we have to saw down the children’s legs.

Me: The sun shone brightly on our last seconds in Nice, as we prepared to venture along the cote d’azur. My oh my, did I have fantasies about skinny dipping off various hot rocks, Campari, brown skin and singing cicadas [‘nuff, ‘nuff]. However, the strange conclusion I came to was that putting 2 children and moi in a car (= confined and private space) for the first time on this venture, means time and place for major tantrums. Somehow, and interestingly, travel by train has meant no excuse for bad behaviour as all is public. Can this insight be extended to any meaningful social comment? Was life more civilised when wholly lived in public? Back to travel: Funky hotel, our extension, built 1994, missed out on finishes to bathroom – concept good, execution poor. The tour has been interesting in terms of observing (totally professionally, y’all hear) the levels of service and care offered through the trip. Hating to bitch, and with the exception of big bland efficient hotel in Nice, hotel accommodation has been poor in the extreme, ranging from sheer madness and badness (ripped sheets and bed bugs in Paris) to laziness (lack of information, soap and loo paper in Florence) to smelliness (trapped water under bath in Avignon, don’t get me started on Florence again) to blankets (blankets! Some brown! Some pink!) throughout. Lucky I have my family to keep me warm....

Wendsday night: our bold attempt to probe the wheels of steel and travel, 'cross Europe by train.
Lucas: Well now we are travelling on a train to ROME and Mum though it was a first class sleeper train but it is a boring tiny smelly carriage and I’m feeling claustrophobic because it’s tiny and boring. All I hope is that tonight will have gone by soon but I feel annoyed but I’ll just eat till I go to sleep, Bye!

PS: In Paris the pyramid Gallery,” the Louvre” was fun till my legs ran away & and I could hardly walk! But I saw the Mona Lisa it was cool and it was behind bullet proof glass!
Lucas: Well sleeping on the train was boring and the blanket for the duvet was itchy and the bed was tiny and you had to walk up a ladder to get up, the bed was kind of hanging from the wall! Well me and Theo, and me, bought monster munch crisps and they were nice but mum didn’t let us have many and mum was whining about how much wine there was (NOT)
Tony: It was a pleasure to see Deborah’s face when she saw that the couchette did not contain even a lavabo let alone somewhere for Oddjob to hide and spring out as we trained through the St. Godard Pass. Much muttering about planting trees and flying first class rather than endure a night with the children’s feet within three feet of our faces. There is also a danger of the train being full of people eager to minimize their carbon footprints [not much, mon cher…..most brought their own chuppa chips]. The morning rose bright and cheerful as we passed through Modena.
Rome: Keat’s Flat

Lucas: about ten minutes before I wrote this I was go-Carting and whizzing round the park and knocking Theo’s wheel and nearly I got lost! But now I’m hungry and there’s nothing in the fridge {In Keats’s house}, Bye bye!
Theo: in the exhibition about Leonardo da Vinci there was a mirror room
which I nearly couldn’t find my way out of. There was also a 12 barrel shot gun which you could spin and more barrels would come.
Hey ho: still the best kitchen in the world (all Keats needed was good chicken soup; all that swooning bollocks, oi vei), universe and anything (see view, above).
To Umbria and beyond…..T does country:
Tony: France was good enough for Terence Conran, even for Rick Stein, so who needs Umbria ? Many years of prejudice and a fear of running into Germaine Greer have needed to be eroded by a: visiting Umbria and b: having friends with a beautiful casa, indeed virtual castello between Rome and Florence on the edge of one of the hill cities. Weather not so good so time in front of fire drinking and reading books on Algeria (homework). Flesh frozen and unyielding - damn.