Wow! Oh my word! How long has it been since I was here?

Well, almost 40 years.

Yeah, I'm in a place, a little hilltop town called Allo, spelled A-D-L-L-A-U-C-H, which is a few few kilometres about 10 kilometres north of Marseilles and it's the

first range of hills that you encounter when you drive sort of north east and inland a

little bit and I've walked up the cavalry to the little Notre Dame du Chateau

church and I have a personal connection as I've alluded to with this place because

maybe it's a story for another day but when I was 17 I arrived here in here in a lorry having travelled

via a different series of lorries all the way from my job where I was a

Fault of Truck Driver in Munich.

And I jumped in our lorries for this freight company. I went via Cologne, Lille, Paris, Lyon

and ended up a day and a bit later in Marseille.

But that is another story for another day.

I'm here for a bike race.

The three-day Tour de la Provence starts tomorrow.

The weather forecast isn't great great and I don't know

whether the microphone is picking it up but one of the most infamous feared winds in all of the

world has been turned up to 11 the mistral made the approach to landing at marseille

province airport this lunch time pretty dicey and it is absolutely

blasting its way down the Rhone Valley and right up here at the top of this this rocky outcrop

looking at the city the great city of Marseilles it is it is cold and it is very very windy indeed

I've never been to this bike race before. This time last year I was at its I was at the Etois de Bessege which is of course the first stage race in the French

calendar. This the Tour de la Provence only three days long is the second not only that but

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