I touched down in Nice, made my way through the airport to the Europcar desk and (after a bit of queueing) got my Renault Clio - which was a free upgrade from the super cheapo car I had booked and meant I had aircon. Then, as I drove out of the airport and onto the motorway, I had one of those rare occurrences of a sudden and utter thrill: a vista opened up before me of densely wooded hills, Mediterranean whitewashed chalets and an astonishingly blue sky (I guess that's why they call it the Côte d'Azur). And I suddenly realised I was extremely happy to be here.

So I drove on to Fréjus to the holiday home park where Anne & Nicolas live in high spirits. I arrived and was greeted by Nicolas outside the internet café he runs. Then Anne came down from the house to see me and I got to see her seven-month bump, soon to be a daughter. It was great to see Anne again, and to get to know the father of her daughter-to-be who is a lovely guy.

The next few days I chilled out with Anne & Nicolas, driving around the area, tasting wines, eating well (including an authentic bouillabaisse cooked by Anne's boss in the creperie she works in, a real foul-mouthed and xenophobic man from Marseilles who I have to say was good entertainment value, if a tad on the barmy side), and generally bumming around.

Rain or shine.

Oh yes, there was rain aplenty. I was lucky enough to see Provence's first rain since June. Hurrah. And Serge & Vérp had told me it would piss down if I left Belgium! How right they were. But actually it was lovely to see huge thunderheads building over the palm-strewn hillsides and closing in on us as we sat on Anne's veranda chatting. The angry hammering of the rain on the roof at night was strangely soothing and left me feeling better. I love the way storms bring a release of tension.

On Saturday I drove up to visit Sebastien & Aurélie, who I hadn't seen since Pascale & Pepe's wedding last year outside Madrid. The journey started off well, with barely any traffic except when I had to get through the small market town of Aups which was busy having its market. After Aups there came a succession of tiny Provence towns, clinging to hilltops and surrounded by brushland. It was great driving country: not a soul on the roads, just the crackle of a million cicadas that sang an arid note in the hot wind rushing in my ears.

Then, sadly, it all went pear-shaped: I got to the main route between Grenoble and the South and there was traffic all over the shop. It took hours to reach Grenoble, with at least one hour of stop-start traffic as seemingly every caravan owner this side of the Med had to wait his turn to get between two ancient stone houses in one village through which our road led. Not even the stunning vistas afforded by the hills of the Drôme region could brighten for more than a second or two the dark proto-road-rage sullenness in my heart. All I can say is I hope they finish building the motorway soon. From Grenoble it was plain sailing all the way up into the Alps and to my final destination, the small town of Séez.

Ah, how lovely it was to see Seb & Aurélie again! Things started well when as a remedy to my travel-weary body (I was actually vibrating when I got out of the car at last, you know, how you do after you've been on a train or a boat for too long and then you've lost your land legs) Seb poured me a local beer speciality with orange. This was to be the first of many exotic drinks we enjoyed over the next few days, usually as an apéritif before the cheese or as a digestif after the cheese.

That's right, cheese played a major role in our calorific intake, cheese in its many guises: local (I'm thinking Beaufort & Tomme de Savoie among others); national (Mimolette, Issau-Iraty); and international (Parmesan, and this crazy Italian semi-soft cheese coated in what's left of the grapes at the bottom of your wine press). Oh how we ate!

But perhaps best of all, I managed to knock a small chink into the armour of prejudice that all Continental types share against English food, when I deftly picked some high-quality items from the "awful foreign food for tourists" shelf at the local hypermarché. These included PROPER tea (none of your herbal muck) - can you believe, Seb raised eyebrows when I said the water has to be boiling, not 60°! - decent marmalade and (a hit with Aurélie in particular) Walkers Sensations chicken & thyme flavour crisps.

Okay, who am I kidding. French cuisine is usually phenomenal whereas English food, while on occasion excellent, is easy to dismiss. But I'm trying to be an ambassador for Sunday roasts and well-prepared fish & chips wherever I go in this world.

Apart from eating and drinking, we did actually get out a bit too. We walked around Val d'Isère the ski resort, and saw the big hydroelectric dam there. We wandered through Bourg St Maurice, stopping for a fabulous Belgian beer called Corsendonk - truly, it's amazing. We spent one afternoon in Italy, crossing the St Bernard Pass, enjoying great icecream and buying more cheese. All in all, a lovely few days.