The other stuff what I did on my holidays

The second part of my European Summer odyssey was spent in Italy. I was back at Char's San Ginesio family home for the third year in a row. If you've seen the Bertolucci film Stealing Beauty you'll have a decent idea of the set-up. Imagine that, but with me in the Liv Tyler role.

We picked Ryan's Air.


Emily picked her legs.


San Ginesio has a population of 3,872.


I've drawn this all before.


If you're finding all this international doodlery overwhelming, I've now started putting all my sketches on a map.
It's an idea I've stolen from the "Seattle Sketcher" and, like Mr Sketcher, I'll be "geotagging" all my sketches as I do them.

View Larger Map

What I did on my holidays

I've been away for a while. And not just AFK, as they say in Second Life. Genuinely away: out of the country. Out of the office, even, meriting email autoreplies (if I had remembered to set it).

We (me, Char and five of Char's school friends: Henry, Hugh, Jess, Mark & Sophie) went to Saint Julien en Born, a little French hamlet (a jambon-let, you might say) somewhere between Biarritz and Bourdeaux.



There was a beach, Contis Plage I think it's called.



We were camping amidst a pine forest which was kind of idyllic when the sun was shining (which it was for about half the time). I was pretty much raised under canvas and so was ready for some of the vicissitudes of tent life and the others were fine with it too. Char on the other hand seemed to have completely misunderstood the object of the exercise. At one point early on becoming hysterical and bawling "We're living like tramps!".
It was what those in the camping game call a tents moment, probably.







There's nothing more tempting than a big red sign sticking out of the ocean saying "BAINE: COURANT VIOLENT".



It really was a great holiday.