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During the last week of September 2008 three friends (Chris, Jim and Fay) from my local astronomical society and myself visited the Les Granges Astronomical retreat in the South of France. Chris and I drove down with all the astro gear and Jim and Fay went by plane and met us down there. The journey is pretty straightforward by car. We stopped over in Calais on the first (Friday) night and left by 8am the next morning and drove non stop to arrive at Les Granges at 5.30pm. The week at Les Granges was fantastic the accomodation and location is really suited for an astro holiday - extremely dark skies and great horizons. The milky way was simply stunning and on the first night I must have counted at least 25 meteors (and it wasn't even a recognized shower period). Numerous naked eye objects were on show including m31, m44 and even m27. The owner Olly is a very enhusiastic and acomplished astrophotographer and was always willing to lend a hand if needed - the first problem we all encountered was locating Polaris as there was just so many stars. Olly has some great astro gear himself (including a 20-inch dob) that can be hired and a great library of astro books for daytime reading. The weather whilst we were there was fantastic and of the 6 possible observing nights available I imaged on 5 of them. The only rain I saw was a few spots the day we left. The images I managed to take during my stay are shown above. You can get larger views and imaging details by clicking on the thumbnails. I am in no way linked to Les Granges but if you are interested in an astro holiday then I don't think you could do much better than to visit Les Granges.
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