A week in Provence

Has come to an end. Above is the balcony of our room, the lovely yellow blind, and the trees which remind me of the twisty ones in a Van Gogh painting. I was sorry to say goodbye to this wonderful place, after an early breakfast, but will be quite happy to be home again. 
We had a funny journey.  The coach which was to take us to Aix TGV station (approx 1 hour) was 30 mins late, then the train from Aix to Lille left on time, but became half an hour late as we went along.  Not a problem for most of us, but the Canadian women who were heading off to Paris missed their connection. Then the Eurostar was about 20 minutes late arriving at Lille - which caused a lot of anxiety as people needed to catch further trains to Oxford, Southampton, Essex, Wiltshire, etc and of course Bristol. So our goodbyes were hasty and a little bit brusque, a shame after an enjoyable week together (20 people altogether). Everyone haring off to try to get home… I got to Paddington in plenty of time to catch my 8pm train, but my train didn’t, and was eventually cancelled. Two trainloads of people squeezed onto one train at 8.30, including quite a lot of football fans - Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, and Chelsea. Apparently good humoured, even the Villa ones, who had been thrashed by Palace. And the train crawled to Slough, by the time it got to Bristol it was 45mins late and I was very tired. Just time for a big cuddle with Portia, and fell into bed about midnight.