“I never really sleep well. Got one eye open, always”

Leon, Leon

Bonjour! Ca va? That’s about as good as my French gets. Actually, that’s not entirely true.

Back in the mid 90s, I not only had a questionable haircut, I also had French GCSE every Monday morning. Our teacher, Madame Bates, would ask us what we did at the weekend. In French, of course.

My answer was the same every week.

‘Samedi, j’ai joué au football avec mes amis au Wallsend Sports Centre’

And every week she’d roll her eyes and let out a big sigh. As I used to point out to her though, are you asking me to lie Miss? My parents have always taught me to tell the truth. What do you want me to say? That I rode a Bear topless round the streets of Damascus, whilst shouting ‘I am a Fish’?

Cocky little twat, wasn’t I. You should have heard me in Religious Studies. ‘Sir, don’t you think Jesus was, like, just a clever conjuror?’ Not the greatest opinion to have at a strict Catholic School, but one I stuck to.

So, my grasp of French as a language is a bit rubbish, but I’ve always quite liked the people. They go on Strike the minute they get annoyed with something, they take long breaks for lunch, and they executed their Royal Family.

Therefore I had no complaints when my wife suggested we head off to the South of France for our 2025 family holiday. Possibly one of the most middle class sentences I’ve ever typed on this blog.

So, last July, we headed off to Mougins, a medieval hillside (uh-oh) town in the Côte d’Azur, just 15 minutes from the much more famous celebrity bastion of Cannes. C’est formidable.

And yes, I’m taking my running gear.

This will be the seventh different country I will have run in now. As an aside, I still kick myself that back in 2008 I wasn’t yet the fully fledged obsessive running sad case you see before you today.

That year, I went to New York City, staying a stones throw from Central Park, and never ran around it. A huge missed opportunity, potentially not one I’ll get again. Such is life. Je ne regrette rien.

Anyway, fast forward back to 2025. I’ve Google Mapped this place in advance. Of course I have. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. And, well, it’s pretty hilly.

As you know, I’m a glass half full person. It does look a stunning landscape to run round. After doing a bit of research, it seems I’m only going to be a mile from a decent size Public Park.

It’s called L’Etang de Fontmerle, and appears to be the go to place for local runners. In English, that translates as ‘The Fontmerle Pond.’ Man the French make everything sound so much more exotic. Anyway, apart from sounding sexy, it’s flat, off road, safe, with lots of tree cover to give shade.

It may be my only option during the whole holiday, but it looks lovely, and I’m not planning on doing any ‘big’ runs while I’m away. It’s all about ticking over with some 5ks.

We’re going on the Wednesday evening, so like the sad, sad man that I am, I front load my running at the start of the week. I do a 5k on the Monday (I never run on a Monday usually), the Club session on Tuesday, then a 16 miler on the Wednesday morning.

The 16 miler seems a bit extreme, but as always with me, there is method behind my madness. I have to drive overnight on the Wednesday. I can never have a lie in. So let’s get up early, run long to knacker myself out, then go back to bed. It’s either genius or a terrible idea.

That run goes fairly well. I’ve been upping my pace slightly on these long ones. My legs are a bit tired after doing a speed session the night before, but I’m still knocking out an 8:47 pace. If I could maintain that for another 10 miles, then there’s a 3:50 Marathon. But that’s a discussion for another day.

I won’t bore you with the details, but after an overnight drive to Edinburgh, a flight to Nice, and a Taxi ride to Mougins, we’re here. Phew.

That Taxi ride is a real eye opener, I can tell you. Google Maps has not done the hills here justice. I really don’t know the best way to put this – they are steep as fuck.

It’s all part of the adventure though. I mean, I’m always telling people I love a hill. Usually.

After a fairly decent nights sleep I wake up early with the first lot of many, many Mosquito bites this week. I like to think it’s because my fitness levels make me tasty as shit. These flying fascists take one look at my magnificent calf’s and can’t believe their luck. Bastards.

Anyway, off we go for run number one. As I mentioned earlier, my destination is L’Etang de Fontmerle – aka the sexy pond.

Now the biggest problem with this sexy beast is getting to and from it. It’s only around a mile away, piece of piss. The problem is, I’m on top of a geet big hill, and the park is at the top of another one.

Therefore, the journey to get there is a bit of a pain in the arse. I mean, look at the state of this:

A 300 foot drop in only half a mile, followed by an immediate 200 foot climb in the next half. I can already hear my knees shouting ‘ARE YOU TAKING THE PISS MATE?’ before I attempt it.

But attempt it I do. The first run is always into the unknown, but the drop is as big a bastard as I thought it might be. I drop down carefully though, running downhill is always hard for me, especially with this gradient.

Downhill survived, its tester number two – a busy main road. I’ve actually been looking forward to this less than the hills if I’m honest. I’ve driven in France before. They’re nuts frankly.

This is pre rush hour, but it’s still fairly busy. There is a pedestrian crossing, but have you ever tried using one of these on the continent? It’s like a round of Squid Games.

I dodge traffic and get into the designated pedestrian zone, which is about as safe as leaving a toddler alone by a swimming pool. It’s at this point that I realise I’m running the wrong way. Whoopsy.

After a quick stop and check of Google Maps (and it is quick as I feel like a sitting target here) I’m back on track and on a side road that will take me to the sexy pond.

I say side road, but what I meant was ‘huge fuck off hill.’ Yes, this is the climb. As mentioned earlier, 200ft of it in less than half a mile. I attack it and actually feel quite good. For the first 0.20 of a mile of it, anyway.

By the time I get to the top I am feeling it. But at the top I am. Another quick map check (to make sure I’m not lost, and not at all because the hill has killed me) and I’m soon at the park.

I have never – I mean never – been so happy to see such a flat and boring park. The two hills, down and up, to get here were only just over a mile, but my legs feel drained already.

It also doesn’t help that the temperature is already 23c. Add on being 600 foot above sea level, when you live at sea level for the other 11 months of the year, and this is a real slog. It’s stunning though, that can’t be questioned.

Whilst it’s certainly not busy, there are a few people milling about. Mostly dog walkers, but also half a dozen runners. The park has a dirt track round it, with grass, trees, and that sexy pond in the middle of it.

The plan on this first run is to just do laps around it until I can’t be bothered. One loop comes to just shy of a mile. Which is handy. After hitting mile 4, I keep running and head out of the park onto a different road to where I came in.

I have a hunch this was the way I originally meant to come in, before I ballsed up on the main road. I’m dropping down the hill on a dirt track before suddenly finding myself on a canal.

Hang on a minute, a canal? On a hill? Wouldn’t that be a waterfall? Well, no. I seem to have stumbled upon another bit of flat I wasn’t expecting. I make a note to investigate this more when I get back to the villa. For now though, I’m bored of hills – the up and the down ones. So I walk back to the villa. Not a bad first run though.

Not flat

After eating my weight in French Pastry for Breakfast, I do some investigation on the random canal I stumbled on.

It’s called the Canal de la Siagne. It’s long disused, but basically is how they got drinking water down from the mountains to Canne on the coast. Clever.

Handily, even though it serves no real purpose now, they’ve turned sections of it into part of a walk – therefore popping a handy trail path along it. As well as being flat, it’s also only halfway up the hill I climbed yesterday. I’m all over this for Day 2.

So, into Day 2. I’m up early on another glorious warm French morning. Back down the hill, over the Road of Death, then up half the hill to join the Canal.

Once I’m on it, I play a quick game of ‘ip-dip-dogs-shit’ and head left. It’s quite a wide path, although it does get a little tight in sections. It’s also surrounded either side by tree lines, making it cooler and more comfortable than yesterday.

I do encounter some locals on a couple of occasions. I knock out my good old Pigeon French – Bonjour, Salut, Merci – as I pass them.

I go over a little wooden bridge, through a very tight tunnel, before the track ends at another very busy road. I’m not going to negotiate this one, so I turn back the way I came.

I get back to my starting point and keep going the other way. This part of the Canal is much better. No bridges or tunnels. This is a running utopia you very rarely get. A quiet path off the beaten track on a French hillside. Through the trees, the view is something else – the Alps sitting spectacularly on the horizon through the morning haze. Bottle it.

I again hit a road – this one has no traffic at all on it – and lose sight of the canal. This appears to be the end of the line for this section. So I turn until I finish back where I started. Just shy of 4 miles, a nice 30 min work out to sweat out the local wine.

Over the next week, I get up each morning and do a mixture of the Sexy Pond Park and the Canal. Usually 3-4 miles, except for one day when I push the boat out and do a 10k. It stays warm all week, which I slowly acclimatise to.

I do deviate off on a completely different route one morning – heading down the other side of the hill our villa is on – into the nearby town of Tournamy. However, despite being fairly flat (nothing is truly flat round here I’ve discovered) it’s disappointingly devoid of any character whatsoever. Lots of new build apartments and business units. More like a Retail Park than a Town.

It’s on the day before my final run out of the holiday that I find out something amazing about my Pond/Canal jaunts. I’ve been running right past the home of Picasso. In fact, the place where he died – Château de Vie.

It’s up on the hill, right next to the canal and on the way to the Sexy Pond. Right next to a beautiful old church. Therefore on my last day, I decide to stop there and take a look.

There isn’t much you can see. It’s privately owner and only open to the public once a year, but like a shit Paparazzi I take a photo of the gate.

Amazing. Right under my nose all this time.

And thankfully for you all, that is that for running in France. I know, how long? If you’ve got this far, you’re an absolute trooper.

Ideally, it would have been nice to have also got a run in down the coast in Cannes or Nice, along the Promenade with a warm Med breeze, rather than the usual North Sea artic blast.

All in all, some fantastic exploring of some very scenic, albeit very hilly, French culture. Sexy ponds, canals, and Picasso.

Bien à vous.