Vincenzo Nibali has vowed to "honour the yellow jersey" by going all out for stage victory in today’s time trial on the penultimate day of the Tour de France.

THE devil isn’t just in the detail at Ballyfin; it’s in the big picture too. A lavish, Regency-era mansion sitting pretty in a private demesne beneath the Slieve Bloom Mountains, this is not only one of the most extravagant five-star hotels in the country, but one of its most exquisitely restored country estates.

Pól Ó Conghaile has just been named the Travel Extra Travel Journalist of the Year, awarded for “his exceptional body of work” including articles written for the Irish Examiner and the National Geographic.

The Kingmaker’s Daughter

If your most recent line of form reads runner-up behind Nathaniel, then you’re entitled to believe a Group 3 is well within compass.

GODOLPHIN’S Rewilding is now a 5-2 shot with William Hill for the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes following the latest round of forfeits.

WERNER Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams celebrates a series of wildlife paintings.

JOINING forces once again, South-west France holiday rental specialists The Gascony Secret and Simply Périgord offer a range of striking properties at prices for different pockets, the high range including historically important Chartreuse set in about 180 acres of land.

A bus carrying French students overturned on a Tuscan highway today, killing one student and two adults, Italian police said.

New clusters of black fungus are spreading over treasured cave drawings in France, scientists warned, as they announced a bacteria-killing recipe to protect the remarkable Palaeolithic paintings.

FORGET Raphael Ibanez, Frederic Michalak and even Sebastien Chabal. Many feel Thierry Dusautoir could be the new face of French rugby.

The betting shop on the main street in Malahide, where I live, does a roaring trade.

FANCY a meal? For almost €23,000? Well, there’s still time to reserve a table.

A sport utility vehicle driven by a British national veered off a highway in south-west France and crashed into trees, killing four people, including two 10-year-olds.

CAVE drawings thought to be older than those in the famed caves of Lascaux have been discovered in a grotto in western France, officials from the Charente region said yesterday.

Cave drawings thought to be older than those in the famed caves of Lascaux have been discovered in a grotto in western France, officials from the Charente region said today.

THE body of a teenager who died unexpectedly while on holiday in Crete is expected to be flown back to Ireland later this week.

A three-year-old Northern Ireland boy drowned in a swimming pool after leaving the French holiday villa he was staying in with his family, it was confirmed today.

A three-year-old boy, believed to be Irish, has drowned while on holiday in France.

Two passenger trains collided in south-western France after one of the trains derailed when it hit a crane that had fallen on to the tracks from a nearby construction site, police said.

A five-year-old girl was injured in a mud slide that swept through her family’s apartment as heavy rains hammered southwestern France.