The writing bug struck early. Karen Aldous says that she began writing as a girl and started her first novel in her twenties. Inspired by Provence and jolted into action by a family illness she is now the author of two books The Vineyard and The Chateau. Karen Aldous lives …

France got in the way of Spain. That might be the way Paul Shawcross would describe his first taste of France in 1979. His plan was to drive through France en-route to discovering Spain. He stopped at a campground in Millau, part of the amazing Tarn River Gorge. It was …