Bury and Berets

Two things to tell you about today.

1] Tulle, which is the capital of the Correze departement, and the nearest town to us, is twinned with Bury.



Yes, that is the actual Bury, north of Manchester. In July 2008, three chaps, with a combined age of 175 made an heroic cycle journey from Bury to Tulle, a distance of 1210 kilometres [ missing out the Channel of course, let’s not be ridiculous].

Here are two pictures of the three blokes: one where they look heroic and misty, setting off from a suspiciously sunshiny Bury; the other picture shows them meeting the Maire of Tulle.

In case you have difficulty in picking them out, the English cyclists are the ones in the middle of the group.

This year a party of twenty is going to do the return journey, and as we’re now members of the Tulle-Bury twinning group, we’ve been asked if either of us would like to join the group. R’s concentrating on running so I’m thinking about it. It’s bit daunting as I haven’t done much cycling but I do need to get fitter. Would any of you ace cyclists like to do it with me?

If you say it in miles it sounds less scary: 752 miles - Tulle to Bury. Downhill all the way.

2] The second thing is that R’s becoming more French by the day. In recent years he’s become convinced that he needs to wear some kind of hat, particularly in the sun, as he thinks he might be going a tiny bit bald, despite my assurances that he’s still got a fine head of hair. His normal woolly[aka robber’s] balaclava is too hot and the baseball cap looks American, not a popular look round here. So he’s toying with the idea of getting a beret. I’m not all that keen, to tell you the truth, but there you go, he’s his own man. Apparently there are hundreds of different styles but he’s honed it down to just three. .

What do you think? Knitted Red? Yellow Pom Pom? Cool dude black? If you haven’t already cracked it, now’s your chance to put a comment on my blog. Please help him choose.