London to Toulouse | Travel Photography with a Fuji X100

A rare couple of weekends without weddings (my only ones until the end of October) saw Nicky and I booking a last minute holiday with the kids to the South of France at a small hotel in the Pyrenees. A bit of a departure from our normal destination of Annecy, the drive would have been that little bit too far with the kids so we decided to fly. This decision not to spend 12+ hours in the car and to go on a plane instead, strangely enough, went down incredibly well with the kids. Whilst Alex has flown before, he was too young to remember it so he was really excited. The lack of luggage carrying capacity also contributed to my decision to leave all my Nikon camera gear at home and take only the Fuji X100 (albeit a loan one from a friend due to mine dying the week before we left – thanks Dave!)

We flew out of London Heathrow Terminal 5 late on a sunny weekday evening, departing for the scorching hot city of Toulouse. A smooth flight with a beautiful sunset was a great way to start the holiday. We grabbed the hire car, my first time driving a left hand drive, and headed to a local hotel for the evening as it was too late to travel any further.

The following day spent the morning at the hotel pool before heading into Toulouse itself for lunch. In stark contrast to London, the temperatures in Toulouse were sitting at around the 40 degree celsius mark. I made the mistake of saying to Nicky we’d wait for her in the Place du Capitole whilst she went popped to find a post office, I think the kids and I lasted about 5 minutes before we had to retreat and find some shade. Fortunately the wait wasn’t a long one and we then went to grab some lunch before heading south to find our hotel.