Le Jogging.

So something had to give. Yesterday, after my jog, and I use the term loosely, as it was more of a walk interspersed with very brief spurts of running, I came home and ate a pain au chocolate and drank a coffee. I just don't know who I am anymore, either. Honestly, the days of Bikram Yoga at least five days a week, no sugar, no caffeine, healthy eating and wine only on the weekends are well and truly over.....if you were to ask my husband about this his face would break into a spontaneous smile and he'd no doubt tell you how insanely boring I used to be. Not any more.

In my defence, soon after we arrived here, I did embark on a FIVE hour round trip journey to do ONE Bikram Yoga class in Montpellier. It is a great studio and Naomi, who owns and runs it is lovely....even though, as a small business owner in France she endures all of the difficulties and bureaucracy that it involves singlehandedly....yet her dedication to sharing Bikram Yoga is truly impressive. I just wish that her studio was a little closer. Then, on Monday, I was all excited when I found a notice stuck to the door of the boulangerie.....maybe the alarm bells should have been ringing, yet that was the very same way that we found our lovely babysitter.....oh, except that her notice was in the wine shop.

Anyway, I thought that it was going to be a Mickey Mouse style of yoga, and seeing that I've had success with this style of yoga before in France....when I was pregnant and living near Beziers....and seeing that this class was here in the village, I decided to give it a go. That was how I found myself on Monday night, sitting, with my eyes closed, in a dance studio, which reeked of the pong of stale sweat and old vinyl, outside the boulevard in a warehouse complex. There may have been yoga mats on the floor....and yoga....albeit for....the voice. A crossed legged lady twanged on a sitar and sang Hindi sounds and chants at us, which we mimicked back...for an hour and a half. Having been out to lunch  at L'Authentique in the nearby village of St Siffret and eaten the two course Formule Gourmande and drunk pink wine, I really don't think it could have even made the tiniest dint:

So, the fact remains that I'm scared of growing out of my clothes, and even though my friend Faux Fuchsia warns me that it will give me wrinkles....there's nothing for it but to jog. And jog as opposed to walk. Anyway, when I was tossing and turning at 4am this morning and giving into a good old dwell on how our time in Uzes is flying past at the speed of light....we only have four weeks left before we head off further afield to explore Sweden, Denmark and Ireland, the jogging solution revealed itself. Along with ditching Fleetwood Mac as the soundtrack and reverting to the old tried and true Blondie, I need to stop taking the scenic route. See what I mean:

Of course I have to stop....to take photos. The other day I even passed another jogger, jogging, only to discover her a few kilometres along the track.....picking a bouquet of wild Flowers:

And that is what this particular track is like....spellbindingly beautiful, with flowers, chateaux, white horses, distant glimpses back over to the village and the garrigue. It may be a feast for the eyes yet it also smells intoxicating.....with whiffs of honey, herbs, broom, lavender and down in the valley, ivy and leaf mold.

It is also perilously dangerous as the elevated sections of the track run along the top of a cliff and are made of a hodge podge of misshapen rocks and stones which were probably in existence way back in time when the Romans were building the 50km long aqueduct from Uzes to Nimes. The source of the spring, which fed the aqueduct, is down on my jogging route and further along.....further than I'm prepared to jog..... is the magnificent Pont du Gard. This track is so perilous that I have already cut my leg and my hand and yesterday, I lost my footing altogether. Mercifully,  the Gods must have been smiling on me, as somehow I managed to steer my trajectory and fall over onto the waist height grassy side....and not to my death over the cliff. In those long two seconds before I hit the ground, I was worried about landing in dog poo. I didn't.

Anyway, my husband hasn't had any problems with his chosen method of exercise as he has .....a bike.....and they are BIG on bikes here. Although, to give him his due, he did suffer last time we were in France and he was obsessed with rowing.....as it is an absolute rowing wasteland. We hadn't been here for a week before he had joined the local cycling group, who go out three times a week.....for four hours at a time. So far, this group of MAMIL's have convinced him to shave his legs and buy special cycling sunglasses to accessorise with his kit. Next weekend, they are even going stage an attempt to ride to the top of Provence's highest mountain....Mt Ventoux....which looms on the horizon and can be seen from here. Oh, and of course, after a bike ride you drink beer....in France. Meanwhile, I too will be taking to the road....jogging.

Rx