Wine

The thing about holidaying in the Bordeaux region of France is that as well as seeing a lot of French people knocking about the place, you also tend to see a lot of vines - especially when the holiday house is situated in a hamlet that is surrounded by vinyards. We went out in search of a picture to take that summed up the region, and hit upon the idea of a vinyard as a subject. How clever is that.
These plants always seem well-tended by Frechmen of specially adapted tall, thin tractors where the wheels run in the gaps on either side of the rows, and the driver sits in a cab suspended over the top of the plants. These machines have cutters that keep all the plants trimmed to regulation size which answered my initial question "why are all thes plants neatly trimmed to the same size?"
Once you've seen one vinyard, you've seen them all, in my opinion but it is interesting to note that the soil looks fairly stony and barren and dry - obviously how the plants like it. It certainly ends up as bloody good wine.

Flick was winning the "points-for-spotting-a-typical-Frenchman" game. The maximum points that could be achieved in one hit was to spot a man on a bike with a baguette on the carrier, stripeyt t-shirt, beret, cravat, moustache and a string of onions around his neck. If he was old, an extra point, and if he was playing boules at the same time (bike resting under a tree) an extra point, making ten in all.
The best we saw at any one time was the old man, bike, baguette stripey shirt and moustache.
The bugger was wearing a baseball cap and not an onion in sight.