So as you saw last week, the team at Volvo helped me “Escape the City” to France for the weekend. If you didn’t catch part 1 of this post, don’t panic, you can read it here!

Our second day in France was slightly more relaxed. We were still full from our delicious dinner the night before, so skipped breakfast and opted for a lie in instead. After a very leisurely morning we jumped back in the V40 and ran to a supermarket to pick up some extra provisions before going in search of the perfect picnic spot.

We stumbled across a picturesque little river, complete with an adjacent windmill and decided that would do nicely!

Once we had stuffed ourselves silly…..AGAIN, we packed the car back up and went back to the hotel to wait for the rest of the gang to arrive. Once everyone else was checked in, we thought it would be nice to try one of the walking trails that the hotel suggest before getting dolled up for dinner. The area surrounding the hotel was so beautiful and it was so nice being surrounded by countryside and not the hustle and bustle of the city.

When we got back, it was time for the highlight of the trip. Our amazingly organised (thank you again Nat) black tie dinner. Everyone went all out and was dressed to the nines. We had a special huge table set aside for us in the open plan hotel restaurant, and the food was simply divine. Unfortunately I didn’t get many pictures as I was far too busy stuffing my face and drinking all the rosé, but I can promise you, it was incredible.

As you can imagine, the night went on rather late, and thankfully the hotel were great sports at dealing with such a huge, pretty drunken group!

With pretty sore heads the next morning everyone slowly emerged at breakfast nursing their hangovers, before everyone heading back to the UK.

I have to say a huge thank you to Volvo for making the weekend so easy for us. The V40 was such a pleasure to drive, and we simply wouldn’t have been able to do half the things we did without it. The V40 starts at £20,715.