Three weeks in France were very beautiful indeed. I travelled to Lyon and Gaetan has inscribed for medical school. Those of you following my ramblings will know that he and I taught together in Lhasa for three months and cycled over the Himalayas to Nepal. He is taking the hard option in life, in his field, since he is 29 and is a doctor of pharmacy. It would be far easier to sit in a pharmacy and rake the money in, doling out drugs to neurotic people, but Gaetan pretty much never chooses the easy path. So ten years of gruelling study are about to commence on monday.

We surfed and lived in the tent, travelling in my Mum's old car down to Zarautz in the Basque country to see the famous wave at Mundaka, which wasn't breaking after all, so back to Hossegor we drove arriving to see stunning waves at another classic spot - La Gravière. Three metre swell was hitting the steep sand bank and turning inside out, large barrelling waves and certainly dangerous for the inexperienced. Body surfers floated in timelessness, arms outstretched, deep within the throats of these awesome monsters, and surfers, no matter how able, were engulfed and consumed by the tube.

I immediately paddled out and for an hour or so threw myself into the lurching vortices, receiving a thorough beating. Again and again I tried to take off into the wave, that leapt past vertical into a tube, my reactions just too slow. I made one drop, but the rest of the time I was lifted and thrown violently onto the sandbar, winded. Gaetan was feeling ill so we drove to his grandfathers house in the country for the night to recuperate. Lying deep in the region of Le Gers, Gaetans grandparents live quietly tending peach trees and vines with their dog Yuri and Grisgris the beautiful grey cat.

Gaetans grandfather Antoine was born in 1920 in Barcelona and came to France at the age of five with his mother. At twenty he was living in the free part of France, the rest having been subjugated by the Nazis. When, in 1942 the Germans invaded the South of France following the entry of American forces into North Africa, the youth at the time were being sent to Germany in exchange for French prisoners of war. Three labourers would provide for the return of one French soldier, who would then be returned home to their family.

Meanwhile Spain, after the civil war, had lost 10 percent of its people, another 10 per cent were in prison and a third were against Franco's regime. Though neutral, Franco manouevred very cleverly to support Hitler, who had ensured his victory in the Spanish civil war, with troops in Russia, supplies and so forth, but no overt expression of enmity to the allies. As a result Franco was able to hold onto power after the end of the war. The only four countries in Europe one might avoid german capture were Switzerland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. Though ostensibly neutral, if captured by the military police in Spain one might expect to end up in a concentration camp. Nevertheless for Antoine, young and afraid of the massive forces consuming Europe, Spain was the only option.

That winter, before the letter arrived demanding that Antoine be deported to Germany, he did a runner over the pyrenees. Moving during the night ensured better chances of avoiding capture over the mountain range. When he arrived the army of Franco jailed him for three months. Refusing to support Franco in word they deprived him food, but after hunger-striking he was released and spent two months recuperating in Madrid. French prisoners were then being set free and sent to North Africa, rather than Germany, since Franco had changed his strategy, seeing that Hitler wasn't doing so well, and that America had joined the war. He agreed to keep allied prisoners in decent conditions in return for a ton of wheat a day, but at some point they had to to be released. Antoine and a load of others were subsequently packed off to North Africa where he became a cook and lorry driver for the French in Algeria. Despite accidentally pouring boiling oil on his feet he signed up to fight and joined the forces invading the South of France. On his way up through France, then Germany and Austria with the French army, Antoine saw quite terrible things. Devastated cities, the absolute dehumanisation of enemy troops by all armies, regardless of nationality, and the rape and murder of an Austrian mother and daughter by French soldiers.

Though such a kindly, good-humoured old farmer, the distant horrors of war are clear to see in Antoine's deeply lined face, but still his blue eyes are bright and unclouded.

I am staying in Lyon and then travelling to Zurich to wrap up the last loose ends of my life in Europe, after which I will return to Nepal in October, so for me then, the journey begins. I dearly wish for peace in the world, as anyone surely does and hope I will never see the sort of things Gaetan's grandfather did.

Until next time, then.