Day -4 — Thu 17 May : Rupert flies to Sydney. Rupert & David fly as far as Bangkok before the plane gets tired.
Day -3 — Fri 18 May : David & Rupert arrive in England
Day 0 — Mon 21 May : General gathering, possibly involving the final day of the Lords' test, assuming we haven't lost it by then and it's not pissing down.
Day 1 — Tue 22 May : By train from Waterloo to Lyon via Paris. Collect car, stay in Lyon.
Day 2 — Wed 23 May : Longish first-day drive, to Parma, as a reasonably-central base for exploring more than a destination in itself
Day 3 — Thu 24 May : Florence for the day
Day 4 — Fri 25 May : Venice for the day
Day 5 — Sat 26 May : Milan for the day?
Day 6 — Sun 27 May : To Genoa, both as a place to see and a step on the tour
Day 7 — Mon 28 May : To Nimes, as our second "base"
Day 8 — Tue 29 May : Wine country, and an elderly bridge
Day 9 — Wed 30 May : Marseilles, inter alia to see Rupert onto a plane after lunch.
Day 10 — Thu 31 May : More wine country, and a rather newer bridge
Day 11 — Fri 1 Jun : Another day, another country. To Barcelona.
Day 12 — Sat 2 Jun : A day in Barcelona
Day 13 — Sun 3 Jun : Through Spain to Jaca
Day 14 — Mon 4 Jun : Through the Pyrenees to somewhere a bit south of Bordeaux. Labouheyre, maybe.
Day 15 — Tue 5 Jun : To Bergerac. Mmmm, lots of nice wine.
Day 16 — Wed 6 Jun : To St Etienne, taking in some very old art indeed.
Day 17 — Thu 7 Jun : Back to Lyon, depressingly.
Day 18 — Fri 8 Jun : And even more depressingly, give the car back and get on a train. And stand around at Lille for almost an hour. Better than Hounslow, I suppose.