Ok… so France was great! I spoke mostly English until the moment we had picked up the hire car and dealt with all the important insurance type stuff. After that moment, I switched into French and managed to speak and understand plenty - except for the little old lady who wanted something lifting down from a high shelf in the supermarket, but Sarah understood her miming perfectly. Everyone we met was friendly and helpful (except the horribly disorganised airport on our return - but we won’t talk about that), so huzzah for the French!

Arrived at lunch-time on Wednesday, whizzed over to Postman Cheval’s palace, grabbed some supermarket provisions, found the hotel then wandered off into the mountains for a quick cache. I couldn’t help myself singing the opening theme tune to the Italian Job as we were taking those huge sweeping bends round alpine highways. I couldn’t help pooping myself when we got onto the back roads with hairpins and sheer drops off the side without as much as a fence to stop us plummeting to our flaming death.

Back to the hotel before dark, a good night’s sleep and up in the morning to find another cache, get some petrol, return the car and fly home.

Success!

The Palace was truly wonderful. We’d been warned not to expect too much, so were pleasantly surprised by its size (three stories in places) and the intricacy of the details. An amazing piece of work made by a single man over the space of thirty years, and apparantly the world’s only example of architectural naive art.

The photos really don’t do it justice, but they’re here anyway…

Go and see the full gallery, including full-size pics right here.