Just an aside

So back to normal, having had the steed of steel serviced I had to pop off to see some real old fashioned mechanics, none of your modern computerised stuff - where I found this wonderful old vintage car, a 1925 De Dion Buton, currently being serviced, but it was out for an airing a couple of months ago. The feel of the bodywork, brass headlamps, the luxury interior, etc - just fantastic. these guys finish their work then spend some time working on their own wee projects, tractors, old machines, and so on - sadly I think their sink was a wee bit choked or was it just an accumulation of soap.

Our Tv licence money

Celebair was on Sky2 this evening , a load of celebs being trained to act as air stewards/esses, etc, then take charge of a plane full of so called celebs all off on a free junket at our expense!! Is this entertainment? And hard on the heels of Scotland being beaten 1 -0 by Macedonia , which again was not really entertaining, and to think that BSKYB/ Setanta paid the SFA umpteen million £££ to buy the rights, thus depriving the majority of the viewing public the privilege of once again seeing the so called Scotland squad being second best. It is a shame that these guys do not have any bloody patriotism, most of them cannot turn up for the friendlies, and when they do play they lack commitment, etc.
On the other hand Andy Murray playing Nedal in the US Open, both were at least trying their best. Getting exciting with Murray two sets up but game suspended now because of the storm.
The X Factor, a good programme with surprising results, some shocking, deplorable, others totally brilliant, a good chance for many to showcase.

Eurovision Celebrity Come Dancing about to start, this should be interesting !!! A few fair healthy bodies on display, and yet another clone of Davina McColl as hostess!!! Been good but as usual the judging is a bit iffy.

But back to today - working in the Mercat Bar all day as it was really busy, some nice folks in and one group of ten who have been in every night for the past five days - which speaks volumes
Staff are doing really well, run off their feet and considering that the Edinburgh Festival is over we seem to be getting a good turn, long may it last. Having said that we are being asked every day for our proposed x-mas menu as many of our regulars want to get booked up.
Had a very nice Fench lady from Paris in this afternoon who was staying at the Edinburgh Grosvenor Hilton, and who has already been in the last couple of days for dinner.

Comments from a couple of locals who follow this blog - and were intersted in our trip to France.

Going to have a go at getting some photos off a memory card, hopefully we will later be able to do a recovery job on the card which corrupted while we were away.

Wednesday - Skalli , and not the wag.

Surprise, surprise, everyone managed to get up, fed, watered, and onto the bus in time to head back up to Chateauneuf Du Pape again, this time to a different cave , name to be added later, but owned and run by the LES VINS SKALLI organisation. This was much better organised with our host being Guillaume Herbinet, who we knew as their brand ambassador from his marketing trips to Edinburgh, there was water, coffee, croissants, etc, available when we arrived, and this was followed by a good presentation on the Company, which own four sites, one in Corsica, two in France ( Cave Notre Dame Dame in the Languedoc , Silene des Peyrals in the Languedoc) and one in the Napa Valley, California, (St. Supery Winery) . One of the ladies managed to doze off and dropped her glass which woke us all up again.

The tour was very good and the tasting which followed superb, there were twenty six wines on display and everyone was good, with many ranging from superb to excellent. Obviously this took a bit of time so we ran out of time as we were due back at the same restaurant for lunch. They had a wonderful gift shop on site with many unique items for sale, but with all the rushing about we did not get the chance to go and purchase anything.

Their best one for me was a Chateauneuf du Pape, caves Saint Pierre, "Preference" - which doubless was fairly expensive , but lovely.

This time lunch was much better, we were inside due to the stronger winds, but he staff were better organised, we had some choice over the menu and our veggies were properly looked after - in addition the wines were bloody marvellous.

After lunch we headed back to the bus - this time up the hill and as a group, where we met the head wine grower, and then followed him for about twenty miles to a vineyard near to Carpentras, where we were taken out into the vines, given a lecture and demonstration of what to look for, taken to a working production line which will soon be buzzing as the vines will start being harvested in the next few days, hopefully the rain will stay away and the winds will dry off the moisture presently lying on the grapes. Some of ladies, complete with high heels have rather muddy, if not ruined footwear as a momento.

This was a really facinating day and the family, staff , were great, so we had only praise for them. By the time we headed off on the bus and reached the hotel we only had about an hour to get organised before we headed out for dinner.

Our friends, Antoine and Francoise met up with us and the group and we headed to a restaurant a short distance from the hotel where we once again had complimentary wines, which accompanied an excellent meal. Graham was able to do small presentation to our host on behalf of the group, a nice bottle of Johnny Walker, before we broke up for the night.

Once again our group split up and the karaoke gang headed to the bar to upset the natives. The more sensible !!! headed home to bed.

This for me was a bit of a nightmare, as I ended up sleeping sitting up in a chair most of the night - but such is life.

So apart from the photos and adding a few photos the last three blogs or so tell a tale.

Tuesday in Provence

Everyone was rather puggled following their hectic journey on Monday , but as I said some blogs ago, they made it for breakfast with the usual stragglers, Graham Harris and Aaron being late for the bus - Aaron said that if he had known I was there he would not have been late. Our coach was very nice and the driver, Jerome, a very pleasant chap, who we later discovered know both Antoine and Francoise, and another driver, Rocco, who had driven a group from L'Isle sur la Sorgue up to Penicuik on a twinning exchange a number of years ago, and who had been great with us when we had problems with our bus.

We headed off to the village of Chateauneuf Du Pape about twenty miles north of Avignon, one of the most famous wine producing villages in France. The name of the village is synonymous with good french wine but not a lot of people realise that there are many "caves" in the village so you really need to read the label closely to see which particular family or company produced and bottled the wine.

Our cave of the day was to "OGIER" Caves des Papes, which is part of the much larger "Jeanjean" group . the place was very good and we had an interesting lecture and presentation and lecture on the wine production and the company structure, followed by a tour of the facility and then a tasting. Unfortunately, the selection of wines was not quite as good as we had expected and out of the twenty one wines on display only two , a red and white Chateauneuf du Pape , which were the top of the range were to my taste. the majority of the group felt likewise so it was a rather unfortunate choice to present to such a group of discerning and potential customers. From, there our driver took us to the top of the hill in the village where the remains of the original castle still stand, this village was the summer residence of many of the Popes during the ages, and they still have a festival annually to bless the vines and pray for good crops. The castle was bombed and nearly flattened by the Germans at the end of the war when they pulled out of the area.

we had lunch in a lovely restaurant, but it was a fixed menu , with duck as the main course which was not appreciated by all, and they seemed to have a problem dealing with the vegetarians in the group. we paid for the meal ourselves but the wines were supplied by our host of the day - many thanks.

We decided to walk down from the restaurant and meet the bus further down in the village, however, our group being just a bit disorganised managed to get themselves split up and some took the wrong paths through the houses, so poor Graham and Chris had to run up and down hills searching for them - and it did not help when their phones were not working either.

Ailsa was seen nipping into the vines by the roadside and came back with some real juicy ones.

As folks were still a bit tired the bus took us more of less straight back to Avignon, but did a wee detour for me so that I could get some photos of the famous Pont D'Avignon, and so back to the hotel, poolside for some sun and a snooze to prepare for the evening.

Everyone managed to meet up on time so we set off to find the restaurant for the evening - however, Jim Wilkie, being the man he is, managed to get some of us lost !!! but with a mobile phone and directions from Chris Reid we soon all met up - in what looked like a "gay bar" - but the meal was fine, the staff helpful, etc. The usual street singers were on hand, if you liked gypsies or Spanish music , it was fine. Mr. Wilkie managed to keep us entertained with an endless stream of rotten jokes.

We headed back to the hotel, but several had found a kareoke bar so they remained to entertain the locals with their talents !!! which probably closed the bar early and sent everyone except the tone deaf home.

Next

Fun at the Customs / security

Now in Duns and have borrowed this very nice MacBook to play on while Andrew Mimms is working on my bike. His daughter Bridget's boyfriend, young Richard is here working on The Border Bikes website as he is their "webmaster" and making a brilliant job of it.

Having mentioned weight limits we tried to keep our bags within the prescribed, so having been given some nice bottles of wine and no scales available I gave some away to our friends and packed only the one large 1.5 ltr in my bag. Got to the airport, which is tiny, and at the check in discovered that we actually had loads of weight spare, enough for another couple of bottles !! But too late, off went my bag. Then to passport control, charming young police officers, and onto security - where our stuff was being x-rayed, but the lady was also double checking our passports !! then i saw a bit of paper on the machine with MY name on it. As we passed through Mrs. b. was stopped and taken away to a side room and then so was I - where I had to open my bag - but when they saw it was just an extra big bottle of wine there was no problem. I commented on the fact that i had had to leave other bottles behind and the officer thought I had been deprived of them there and was heading off to retrieve them for me - which was nice but a bit late. It would appear that had I gone in with a presentation gift pack at that airport they would have let us through, unlike Edinburgh or the big ones where everything is binned then you are forced into their tax free shops.

Our other surprise for the day was that the plane was stopping off at Leeds / Bradford airport en route, however this proved to be a short stay on the ground (raining heavens hard) but we had nice short hp up to Edinburgh where the views were magnificent as we came in and a lovely bright summer evening . Then took a taxi back to Penicuik - big mistake as we will now need to take out a second mortgage I think - who said the French were bad.

So back to last weeks story - next.

Olh habits

Only been back one night and once again sleepless nights, but having said that I sat up all Wednesday night in the hotel room as I was a"bit off colour"!!!.
Anyway - up and getting ready to go to Border Bikes at Duns to get the motorbike serviced, then to East Linton . Home, hopefully after that but I have a R. A. Installation at Gorebridge Dundas 479 this evening. working Saturday, and Sunday although I need to go to an OES rehearsal at lunch time, then an evening pick up before heading to Runcorn on Sunday night for an early drop on Monday morning.

Back to the past few days, we flew direct from Edinburgh Airport to Avignon with Jet2.Com which was not bad, but it was the pricing that bugged me, once again the offer says , "prices from £xxx, but when you add on all the so called extras, like taxes, meals, booking seats and paying for bags, the price has trebled. We had a 17 KG limit and stuck to it which was fine, and Jet2.Com being bart of Globespan were reasonable. The main group flew from Edinburgh to Marseilles with Ryan Air, had a 15 KG limit and one couple had to pay £100 excess, another £30. what a racket - nearly as bad as the French taxi drivers.

 

I believe the law changes soon and all airlines will have to advertise the full fares from the start so it will be easier to compare airlines - other than the baggage allowances, in flight meals, etc. Of course, we put bags in the hold, but there were still those who managed to call their main bag the hand baggage and they were stuffed up into the racks.

Anyway - off to Duns now , back on air soon.

From sunshine to a sligtly damper clime.

Back home now and needing to recover from a hectic few days in Avignon, a lot to write about and with literally hundreds of photos it will take ages to get it all sorted.
Francoise and Antoine took us to Avignon on Monday and we headed to our reserved hotel, The Citea, near to the Gare TGV, not realising tht there were now two stations in Avignon - our heart kind of sank when we found that the new hotel was a few miles from where we really wanted to be , and worse still the place was still not finished with engineers working in the Reception. The ground floor was still being worked on, although no doubt the rooms were probably fine but we were not allowed acces till later. SO, being a bit perturbed, and with no means of transport other than taxis - and the French taxi drivers make dick Turpin look like an innocent - they are a law unto themselves and with the prices they charge you might as well expect a meal en route - we were charged £8 for a 400 yard drive last night !!!!!! and one of the others in the group spent £120 in two and a half days.
Anyway , Francoise phoned The Grand Hotel, Avignon, where the rest of the group were to stay and it turned out that there was a cancellation so we got a room at a so called special rate, which turned out well for us.
With time on our hands we were able to have a wander around the town do some shopping and then took ourselves back to the hotel for a spot of sunbathing and a snooze by the rooftop pool.
The weather was superb, so after our siesta we found a restaurant, just off the main square, where we tried out their steaks, a bit of a mistake as the so called entrecotes were kind of tough - not quite up to our usual standards. Anyway - it was food.

Back to the hotel and off to bed as the group from the SESLTA Soutth East of Scotland Licensed Trade Association were not due intill after 12 mn and knowing they had just left Marriane Airport, Marseilles, by coach we were not sitting up for them.

Breakfast Tuesday was good, the group were ever so knackered (undestatement) but all managed to get themselves fed and onto the bus for our first day out.

More to follow later- but have to head for Duns and East Linton in the morning.