Blimey, this is a long one...

As we arrive in La Spezia (about which my first impression was mistakenly unfavourable... we were though

following a dust cart which stunk of rotten fish on the way in) it's about jolly time that I brought you up to date with the tour so far.

Monday saw us depart Dijon in fair weather and lunch was pegged at Lake Annecy, well known to Brian as he's been there at least half a dozen times before. Not well known to Brian however is the way there, or even where those naughty French people hid their 250 square kilometre lake when we were trying to find it. It is a very picturesque place though and we enjoyed lunch sat in some 25 degrees of warmth, a marked contrast to the first couple of days. The gentle ride into Grenoble took between fifty-five minutes and two and a half hours depending on who you were and whether you have any clue whatsoever which way is south.  That evening passed in a remarkably civilised fashion and we almost spent some time planning the route to Nice. Good news... the Support Van manned by George and Joey arrived this evening (though quite what they are supporting is anyone's guess) and also our very own waif and stray, 'two pants' Tony.

Having failed to plan the route to Nice, we spent the usual half hour on Tuesday morning trying to work out which way to go and inevitably we lost each other, though even we expected it to take longer than one corner and a set of traffic lights. Having been lured into believing that we couldn't possibly encounter any bad weather, it threw it down shortly after leaving Grenoble and resembling seven giant condoms on motorbikes we made our way further south along roads which even had it been dry would not have overly impressed. What we didn't expect was the delight which followed our morning travails in the form of a dry afternoon and some fantastic bendy roads which took us through some spectacular gorges and one especially nice village, St Andre-les-Alpes, where we found a very accommodating bar lady willing to let us in her pub.

Previous visits to Nice have tended to show that it can be a bit of a messy night out. Tuesday night was definitely a messy night out. We found ourselves at Wayne's Bar, a live music bar/restaurant of some fame in Nice which we liked so much we stayed half the night. Dancing (loosely speaking) on the tables is encouraged so we did and the evening then degenerated into a type of drunken Olympics... most popular events included Bollard Hugging (as shown...) the Basement Dive (the idea of this event is to walk along the street and then fall or dive into someone's cellar, isn't it Andy?) and that old crowd-pleaser, Falling Over For No Apparent Reason (top athlete in this event was undoubtedly Richard).

You might be less than surprised to learn that Wednesday morning's ride which took us into Monte Carlo was a bit slower than usual. The Monaco GP was held at the weekend and we took the chance for a spin around the circuit though not as you might imagine as these are public roads and rather crowded. We were overtaken eight times by teenage girls on scooters. As Nice had done for any desire to go whizzing around mountain roads today, we headed to La Spezia on the Mediterranean coast motorway, only to hear later in the day that 'wrecker' Reid had been at it again... this time reversing his Honda into a car in Monaco. Brian is now on Interpol's most wanted list and most of Europe's insurance companies are offering a bounty on his head.

Assuming La Spezia doesn't chew us up and spit us out like Nice did last night we head for Siena on the morrow... I hope they haven't got any bollards there.