Parisian summer break

Visiting Paris on the August bank holiday weekend means two things - no Parisians in Paris, and long queues at the tourist sites, so it's different to other times of year. A definite highlight was the bike ride around the vast grounds of Versailles. The queues for the palace were way too much for us to bear, but a stroll through the gardens, past the fountains and down to the bike hire and we were away...

We rode along beautiful country lanes, past lovely ponds and Marie Antoinette's digs...

I'm the little speck you can see

The palace in the background

Bulli surveys the beautifully laid out Orangerie

The fountains dance to classical music

Meanwhile, back in the city - Place Madeleine

Sacre Coeur watches over the quiet city

I love to ride my bicycle

Bulli cruising past the thatched cottages

Well it was an adventure but once I remembered where we had to pick the bikes up, learnt how to use gears and stopped freaking out about cycling to our B&B before dark (with quite some additional distance given I messed up the bike pick-up), I loved loved loved our 100kms of cycling on the Isle of Wight. There are so many disused train lines on the island which are now cycling tracks, for a beginner like me it was the perfect cycling destination.

The view from our lovely B&B

Here we go, here we go, here we go

After a disastrous, shambolic let down of a World Cup, some of us are (blindly) keeping the faith. Enjoyed a great night at Wembley seeing England take on Bulgaria as Capello's lads 'rebuild' (again) for Euro 2012

Stevie G takes the corner