Daryl & Heather Overland

Last week I went to a conference (the 12th International Symposium on Photosynthetic Prokaryotes if you don't mind) in the south of France, in a place called Pau (which I'm pretty sure was named after a sound effect in the Batman TV series). I caught the train the whole way from Bristol. 22 hours there: Bristol-London, London-Paris, Paris-Bordeax overnight, Bordeax-Dax, Dax-Pau. I enjoyed it but I really should have been a bit smarter and got a sleeper rather than a seat on the Paris-Bordeax leg.

I won't bore you with details of the conference itself. I presented a poster on the overwintering survival of Planktothrix rubescens. Ask me about it sometime. The conference centre fed us nothing but hors deuvres for every course of every lunch, and for the conference dinner. It was a little weird. Other than that, I ate a lot of duck confit (that's duck preserved in duck fat, a healthy local delicacy).

Pau was nice, if not terribly exciting. It's on the edge of the Pyrenees, and the views along the Boulevard Pyrenees are quite spectacular. Otherwise there is a castle, a small old town full of good value restaurants, and student accommodation that is blooming ages away from anything, as the 40 minute walk from there and back each day proved.

We also visited a few wineries and a local Chateau, and I managed 8m on the Bernese equivalent of the Caber toss.

And then it was 11 hours on the train back to London to catch up with Heather, an engagement dinner with Gary and Lucy and friends, a nice walk through Richmond Park, and then a bus back to Bristol.

Below: Palais Beaumont (Conference Centre), Pau Castle, me and the Caber.

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