The England versus France rugby match, ‘Le Crunch’, that takes place at Twickenham every other year affords us a royal opportunity to make merry with our winemaker friends from across La Manche.  This year Messrs Pascal Labasse, Vincent Cantié and Maxime Graillot travelled over for the weekend with high expectations for ‘Les Bleus’. This enabled […]

(This post was written by Jonathan Ray, his final article for the Saturday Telegraph, published 2nd October 2010). They breed them tough in France's Sud Ouest. The Pays Basque-Béarn is serious rugby-playing, bullfighting country and, as I discover, serious eating and drinking country, too. I am here with my old mates Jason Yapp and Tom […]

Having developed an unhealthy interest in cycling the legendary peaks of the Tour de France over the past few years and having my friend Paul Bottrill entered in to this year's Etape du Tour (see August 2009 posting 'Etape in Cotes du Rhone'), I chose to spend a long Bank Holiday weekend on 'recon' in […]