After covering the European Tour’s ‘2012 Desert Swing’ it was back to base in Crail, Scotland for a few weeks rest.

However the thought of three weeks rugging up during the last remnants of the Scottish winter was little too much to bear.

So given we had some business matters to attend to in France we jumped aboard an Easyjet flight to Lyon for what turned out to be 10 days in France.

However there was one of the strangest sights on arrival at Lyon when four items of oversize luggage appeared on the carousel at Lyon Airport – two sets of skis and two sets of golf clubs.

It would seem after visiting the Golf de Clou club at Villars-les-Dombes to the north-east of Lyon that we may have peaked a few weeks too early in wishing to tackle playing golf in France.

As the following snaps will show the while relatively short 4,821-metre par 66 Club de Clou looked picturesque enough it was still gripped by winter.