Steaming hot in le Garonne, castles and jumping jays!

Its touching 36 degrees and still climbing here on a nice medium sized campsite about 20 Kilometres South East of Libourne in the Garonne region of France. My beer wasn't cold to start with when I grabbed a bottle out of the back of the car but now it's as hot as the cup of coffee I had first thing and not good!

We're supposed to be playing tonight - another impromtu performance but at the moment any movement, musical or otherwise, is creating sweat beads everywhere .... good job there's a pool here!

There's a magnificent castle just outside the campsite boundary - its called Rauzan Castle. Originally built in the 13th Century by Henry the 3rd, it's impressive tower bears witness to the 100 years war between France and England. Here's a couple of pics -

We're up in the hills here and there are lots of trees all around, it's quite beautiful actually and although we're nearly at the end of June there's lots of birdsong around from dawn till dusk. We heard some Scops owls last night with their curious submarine bleeping call ... they called all night and have to say got a bit tiresome (not often I say that about any bird call!!) No pics of them I'm afraid, not sure I've ever even seen one but the Jays (pic right) around here seem to be particulary tame and seem to be grabbing tit bits from the few campers on site. Managed to capture this same bird in hopping mode too (below)

Zoot alors! About 10 French campervans turned up all at the same time ... hope they like our music enough to throw a few euros dans le chapeau!!