You will be relieved to know that my wild mushroom risotto did not poison anyone in Team Basil, if fact it went down rather well.

The morning was spent trawling through AirBnB to try to find an apartment in Berlin for our trip with friends in November. I managed to find four or five which meet our criteria so with luck one of them will work out.

Camping Municipal de Romains is only the second site on our whole trip where there is more than one other Brit on site (the other was Krakow). On the very few occasions when we have noticed other Brits on a site I have usually contrived a reason to strike up a conversation with them. Strangely, now there are so many I haven’t spoken to any of them. With fellow countrymen ten a penny in this neck of the woods, I think it would be odd to wander onto their pitch and introduce myself. This has made me re-analyse my behaviour earlier in the trip when I collared unsuspecting Brits – they probably thought me a bit strange.

One topic I have been meaning to write about for some time is TV or lack of it. We have a fancy satellite dish on top of Basil, but unless we are in or very close to Britain (such as the North of France) we cannot use it to view British television. What is strange about this is that just about every other European nation, using an identical satellite dish can watch their home television. Down here in the South of France I can watch, on my system, German, French, Italian, Spanish and various other national TV stations, but the only British stations are BBC World and various American news channels. It is another example where Britons are somehow treated differently from everyone else in Europe and it is usually to our disadvantage.

In reality we probably wouldn’t watch much TV even if we could. When we take Basil away in England we rarely switch on the TV, but it is the principle of the matter!!

Old press. I’m not sure whether it is for olives or grapes.

The idea today was to stroll into the village at lunchtime and eat Pizza in the village square. Unfortunately we miscalculated. Sunday lunchtime, it seems, is when everyone eats out and even the Pizza place was full and all tables reserved! This in Mid September – Mausannes is clearly a good place to be a business person.

Street Scene

Instead I went into the village this afternoon and have booked us a table at a slighty, for us, upmarket restaurant for this evening. It will mean getting one of my collared shirts out for the first time this trip!

These are the types of people who can afford to live round here.

I think we have decided that for the remainder of our time in France we will probably split our time between Camping Municipal de Romains and a couple of other ACSI sites in the general area.

Rather boring village church

Window of the day. I’m not sure what that rope is for.