Read a surprisingly enjoyable book, Pagans by James Alistair Henry, taking place in an alternate Britain, split into three warring ethnic nations, the Celts, the Saxons, and the Norse. Where Christianity is a fringe sect, The Norman Conquest never happened, and the Industrial Revolution (first) took place in Africa. The ethnic traits and enemities are rather overdone, the evil one(s) are as too often too omniscient but the building of the alternate World and of the collaboration between Saxon and Celt police officers work out well. I just wonder at the title since there are several pantheons attached to the different ethnicities. The part inspired from the January 06 Capital storming is riveting and terrifying. I also read The Black Loch, by Peter May, which mostly supports the general theorem that trilogies should never exceed three volumes! The trilogy takes place on Lewis, Outer Hebrides, with cases always related to the traumatic childhood of a group of school friends. This more recent addition is set ten years later and involves the same (surviving) characters, but the frequent returns to (yet undisclosed) events of their youth feel reheated and improbable, while the cliffhanger episodes defy any flavour of plausibility. The many mentions of the island geography and beauty would fit a Lonely Planet guide, for a while, but are quickly annoying here. A good point, though: the book will put you off from farmed salmon!
My daughter, her friends and I left our rental in 
For the May-8-plus-Ascension extended French bank holiday, we went “down” to 
The plans to visit Van Gogh’s Arles and the pretty island of Porquerolle then lead to hours being wasted in traffic jams as traffic regulation is inexistent in these über-touristy places, despite limited access and parking facilities. Methinks they should take example on places like Lake Louise where a capped number of cars is permitted access every day and shuttles bus the other visitors there, with an obvious positive impact of the maximum volume. 
Another issue I have with Porquerolle is… the huge number of both bikes and nikers! Indeed, while the island is blissfully car-free and cris-Xed by paths, a whole industry of bike rentals has taken over the landing area and as a result these paths are full of speeding e-bikes driven by neophytes, quite annoyingly and somewhat dangerously. Fortunately, enough of the paths remain off-access to bikes, if often more strenuous (although my 
