Jenni Stevenson

Xmas has come and gone and it is a new year and that means .......time for another Ryanair special offer. Hoorah !!!

I am staying at a camp site that is ,wait for it ..... 400metres from the leaning tower !!! How great is that ! I booked it through hostelworld.com and for 20 euros a night I am in a shared two person tiny mobile home. It has just a bedroom and shower room with walls as thin as paper. Each unit is jammed up against each other but outside they have a little covered terrace with kitchen equipment and table and chairs.

When I step off the plane it is tempting to yell “Barceloooooona” Queen style. But unusually for me I exercise decorum and restraint and just grin instead. I am sooo pleased to be here. A new city to explore, plus I'm back in the land of Chocolata and churros. Which pleases my gluttonous heart no end.

My next stop scares the hell out of me and the flight doesn't settle my nerves. As we take off and the plane is still angled at 45 degrees climbing up to 35,000 ft, several passengers stand up including the woman in the row in front of me. She opens the overhead locker. Luckily nothing falls out as my tent poles and sleeping mat are jammed into it holding everything fast.

All I really know about Marseille is that they make soap there, and that a friend who once visited it described it as 'the arse of the world'. Which perhaps explains why they make soap there.

Big excitement on the campsite. The 'market' otherwise known as the shop is open. Old grumpy knickers isn't there, it must be her 'top up your flaming red hair dye day'. Contrary to the name which conjures up an image of fresh flowers, floury loaves of bread and sweet smelling papaya fruit, the shop is like a museum of things they had for sale left over after the war ... with free dust and an historical sell by date. I buy a rusting tube of toothpaste and a bar of carbolic soap. I know it's for washing something, bodies, dishes, clothes, but I'm not sure which.

Proffering the Google map of the location of my campsite I sit down in the metro information office and hope they speak English. It doesn't start well.

I spend five perfect blissful days in Paris and I have much to tell about it, but the Beard says I am so far behind on the blog I must move on and because I love it when he is masterful, I will.

So what does a camp-hardy, be-rucksacked, adventurous, spirited gal like me do when lost in the woods of Paris with nighttime big bad wolves fast approaching? Easy. Phone a friendly Beard back home and ask him, coutesy of his employers, to "look up where the bloody hell this flipping campsite is then".

Ah Paris ... got to confess it's a bit of a favourite. I get off the coach from the airport and walk down the road to see where it takes me. I turn a corner and up the hill at the end of the road, bathed in very welcome sunshine is the Arc de Triomphe.