View from restaurant just below Mont Aigoual observatory (1567 m); for all I know Kanchenjunga was visible. BB's younger daughter provides frame
Zach the juvenile mariner; his ma on Li-Lo behind
St-Guilhem-le-Désert a touristy but well restored village 
Mont Ventoux in Provence, a trial for TdF racers
View from the villa's balcony - good for getting loaded to
The narrow streets of Couvertoirade, a walled village
Zach unimpressed by Grandpa BB's progress through the billows
More from the Villa Bonden:
OH WHAT A FALL Shuffling past Lodève’s hotel de ville and more than a little conscious of the seventh phase of Jacques “Ages of man” I stumbled over a bollard and fell on to my nose, the basis of my only true claim to physical beauty. The tentative attention I received from French teenagers and octogenarian concierges confirmed I’d been right about Jacques. The nose survived but my left wrist was sprained and led to my forcing my way through the rapidly closing door of a pharmacie, the time being 11.59, a minute before France’s sacred lunch break. Normally I am able to turn my physical failings in France into rewarding conversational opportunities, but the grumbling stomach of the pharmacienne prevented this. The wrist-support cost a shocking €41. Un prix énorme, I said, demanding a receipt prior to a claim on my travel insurance I know I will never make. My hungry saviour nodded.
LE STYLE C’EST L’HOMME Lodève was also the scene of a lost purse which necessitated a visit to the police commissariat (in the vain hope that someone might turn it in) and to the gendarmerie (to obtain a temporary driving licence replacing the one that had disappeared). The police were mainly overweight, sweaty and worked in a paper-strewn cavity that looked a hundred years old. The female gendarme wore a blouse with creases so sharp they could have been used as weapons.
CHARTRES Quite a different experience from those which uplifted Lucy recently. The Hotel Marmotte is located on the rue Charles Coulombs, but Chartres has another similarly named street which only lacks the final s. Satnav obediently took us to the first in the town’s traffic-crowded centre before, contritely re-programmed, taking us to the correct address in the midst of an industrial estate. Cheap, though.
