Arrived back in England on Friday and just got home having taken in Wembley. Great weekend in Perpignan, but the heat on Monday was even worse when I drove from Carcassonne to Dijon, including a 3 hour traffic jam at Lyon. Tremendous to see everyone on both Friday and Saturday.

left chester 10th aug, 3 hrs early for the ferry (slight timing issue) finally get on campsite on the sunday, worn out, too hot, unpacks the fan(most important thing!)
get kids portraits done on beach by someone who is telling me collioure is boom boom!! finally work out he means firework display not that it being bombed! (he seems happy we taught him a new word)
campsite is full of 6000ft high trees with squirrels and pine cones, disaster struck, not content with throwing pine cones at our head they decide to launch them at the front window of car CRACK!!
300-400 euro to replace as gues what, u have to sort it self and claim it back!! decided to risk leaving it abit.
finally thursday comes and im 31 today in a lovely country and im smiling again
my mum arrives as she staying a week with us, now there is 5 ppl to fit in a sardine can, im not smiling anymore!
watched the game, fantastic atmosphere and we won!
met teeside wire and his wife (lovely couple) and met 2 guys that rather helpfully entertained my son on his ds(thanks guys)chased son with giant prawn from paella(he not impressed!)
long long journey back to england where tears come just as we hit the m6, more exhaustion than anything!
is 3 weeks too long ....yes
do i still like squirrels.....not much,their devious little things
are my kids still alive to see their next birthday.....just but only because their batteries started going towards the end!
was it worth the 4 grand, well we could have bought a new car with that money but never mind!
would i do it again, hell yes every single time wire are playing over here, the good outweighed the bad and we had a holiday to remember!

Thanks Nicci. Nice to meet you both. Excellent idea to stay at the pub near the castle for 5 hours before the game instead of moving around. It was my wife's first ever Wire game (after 33 years of marriage),so she has a 100% record. We got our tickets from Galleries Lafyatte before the match and couldn't get 2 in the Wire end. The guy who sold them told me we could have 2 in the Wire area of the main stand so we took those. It turns out we were the Wire area, but what a great time we had surrounded by frenchmen. 80 minutes of constant argument and banter, lots of handshakes at the end, then a 2 mile sweaty walk back to the pub.

i know john, that walk back was horrible, do you think your wife will make any other games now she has seen wire!

Probably not. She loved the atmosthere but couldn't stand the tension.