TouteFrance

One of the things that epitomises France for me is a French person going down the road on their vélo solex. Whenever I see one it always reminds me of the French countryside, they’re a great way to get around the country lanes!

In fact they still seem to be quite popular, perhaps because there aren’t many of the original ones around any more. Apparently they’re still made, although I haven’t found a website that seems to sell them other than Ebay, where there’s a new one for sale at a price of £250 (with 2 days bidding left). 

The maximum speed is 35kms/ hr - they probably almost run on fresh air, but at that speed it would take quite a long time to get to your destination! I think the old ones are definitely the best if you can find one!

If you want to see lots of them in action, you can check out this video on YouTube - with some great French background music!

The new super-sized Airbus 380 flew over at Goodwood this weekend. It was one of the first public displays of the aircraft in the UK and did a flyover at the Festival of Speed. This Airbus is the world’s largest passenger airliner and is a joint venture including the French & British (amongst others), with the most part being built in Toulouse by Aerospatiale, and wings being built here in the UK by BAE Systems.

The Airbus A380, can seat up to 853 passengers (depending on seat configuration), with a range of 15,200 kilometres and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85, equating to around 560 mph. The A380 is truly immense, being 73m in length, with a wing span of 79.8m.

At such a phenomenal size, I’m not entirely sure if I fancy a trip on it, you wonder how such a large aircraft ever gets off the ground! The photo was taken at Goodwood by my husband as the plane flew over very slowly.

The plane’s first commercial flight was in October 2007, a Singapore Airlines flight between Singapore & Sydney. The credentials are that the aircraft is much more eco-friendly than most other aircraft - you can read more about that on Airbus’ website. It looks like they’re testing hydrogen fuel cells for future aircraft, so perhaps one day we’ll see aeroplanes running on water instead!