Le Pres Vert, Concarneau, France (19.44Euro/night without Elec)

We stopped off in the pretty little town of Pont Aven on route to Concarneau. If you’re into you artist and gallery shops then it’ll be the place for you. The river estuary location is very nice, with some expensive looking houses.

Getting into the camp site after we arrived to ages as it seems that the daughter who has taken on the running of the place is not very organised. However, the parents are still around and help out to smooth things over; though they can chat, chat and chat, but then it was good practise for Gail 🙂

The campsite is seems very relaxed and peaceful, luckily making muesli and rolls didn’t interfere with this tranquillity.

View from the bottom field on the campsite, unfortunately not from Mika:-

On the Tuesday evening we went out for our 1st meal of this trip.  The restaurant La Flaveur was excellent.  We took the cheaper of the 3 menus at 25Euros/person which was for 3 courses, but the food was superb and unique and not something that we would be able to do at home, let alone the motorhome, so it was definitely worthwhile.  We also liked the size of the wine glasses.

Concarneau itself as a town is worth a trip to see, especially the old town in the fortification guarding the port area; it was a surprise to use when we entered it.

Quiberon, France – Camping Beausejour (15Euro/night without elec, plus 4.5Euro pppn)

On route to Quiberon, we stopped off in the town of Vannes for a wander around. This has a pretty quay area and a very nice old town, well worth a stop over and a wonder around; it was a good place to stop and eat our lunch 🙂

The camping Beausejour had all the facilities that we wanted. The site was fairly busy, but then all the sites on the coast will be the same during the summer months. On the day of arrival we did think that it seemed to be lacking somewhat in the number of showers, but it turned out that what we thought was an excess of toilets was in fact 1/2 toilets and 1/2 showers. Although the site itself doesn’t have a shop or a bar, there is one of each next door. The shop is excellent and has everything in it more or less, even a fairly good bakery, though we haven’t tried the bar.

After a walk around the coast to the centre of Quiberon on the Sunday, we tried a local Brittany pastry speciality that is called ‘Kouring Amann’. It was very good, though as it was essentially pastry, butter and caramel you wouldn’t wont one of these that often 🙂

On the Monday we cycled into Carnac with the aim to have a look around the town and then see the Menhirs, Megaliths, alignments of over 1000 standing stones. These are alot smaller than those of Stone henge and not so impressive, though the fact of how they got them here 5000 years ago is. When we arrived in Carnac we realised that although we had the bike locks, Keith had forgotten the keys; we wondered briefly around the town with our bikes, though if we were going to forget the key on one day, then today was as good as any as there was not that much to see anyway.

After another walk into Quiberon, which is well worth a visit as a nice seaside town, we had just got back and opened a bottle of cidre to share as an apperitif which some crips when the heavens opened. Luckily the menacing black clouds had given us warning and we had already ducked inside.

We’ve decided that we have now begun our tour of Europe, though with a stay of 12 days back at the house in Bagnoles; we are currently thinking of staying in the motorhome 🙂

Gail enjoyed her lunchtime rolls during a stop on the drive to Josselin.

We noted that even with a loaded motorhome it does definitely drive better with the addition of the air suspension on rear axle.  On the journey we nothced up the first 1000 miles in Mika, though I’m sure that the next 9000 to the 10000 landmark will probably arrive in the timescale of the first 1000 if not before 🙂

We had a nice shaddy spot for Mika at the camping; this definitely kept her fresher, though we’ll have to deal with the sap from the tree on our return to Bagnole.

The camping site was more than adecuate for the price, and a fantastic location to visit the very pretty medieval town of Josselin (2.5km from the camp site to the centre) and right by the river.  Josselin has a fantastic Chateau and a great market on a Saturday morning, though it is very touristic.

We decided to do without the Electric to test the limits of Mika running on gas and the solar panel, though obviously this will change depending on the weather and time of the year; obviously if electric was included in the price then we’d use it (prices in the summer seem to range from about 4-7Euros/night) 🙂

Friday night at the camp site was a BBQ evening with some free live music outside.  We didn’t partake in the BBQ as we had one planned for the Saturday with burgers and sausages anyway, though we did spend the evening buying drinks from the bar and listening to the music; very amusing even if Keith didn’t really understand what they were singing.

On the Saturday after lunch we decided to go for a bike ride along the very pretty river, which is strewn with locks.  We ended up having a gentle cycle, yes we can do exercise gently as well, to a town call Rohan; though the round trip was about 45Km.  The town has nothing to do with the clothing store or the Horse lords in Lord of the Rings.  In fact, if it did have one of these links then it may have been more interesting; no, not one that we’d recommend.  However, Gail was after an ice cream and after some searching and just at the point of giving it up as a lost cause we found a supermarket that sold some; unfortunately the minimun pack size contained 3 and with a long way back we had to eat them all 🙂

The only thing almost as good as growing our own veg is having someone else give you some of theirs that they’ve grown. This is the 2nd lot of tomatoes that we’ve had in the past week 🙂

This week we took Mika, the motorhome, into the motorhome dealer in Caen to sort out a couple of very minor warranty issues, but more importantly to add air suspension to the rear axle.  As well as improving road handling and reducing sway, it will hopefully assist with moving some of the weight slightly to the front axle; the difference in road handling was noticeable when we picked up Mika for the journey back to Bagnoles, though we wont be quite throwing her into the corners like we can do with the golf…

We have a display control unit to control the pressure in both sides of the rear air suspension so I guess it is more a pump up my ride 🙂

14th of July is a national holiday in France with celebrations throughout. To kick off the festivities, Bagnoles De L’Orne mowed the lawn on the local racecourse (it only happens three times a year) and rolled out the horses for a bit of trap racing …. with a bit of sunshine thrown in it definately helped the French summer holidays get off to a good start!

The evening was finished at Pascal’s house looking over the lake (through the trees) with a lovely firework display …. can’t complain 🙂

Do you ever have times when you don’t see many friends for a while, and then for a number of subsequent weekends you are blocked up seeing one friend after another?

We hadn’t had any visitors, apart from Gail’s parents who live here from time to time, until the last couple of weeks when we had Keith’s mum immediately followed by Gonzo; we dropped one off at Dinard airport and picked up the next – talk about conveyor belt… 🙂  It did help as it’s about a 2 hour drive so it saved a bit of travel time.

A week later we had Stevie B and family stop over for the night on Saturday on their way down to their summer holiday.

It was great to see them all.  It will be the last lots of visitors we have here in Normandy as we now only have about 4 1/2 weeks here and 10 days of that will be on a trip to Brittany…

Not bad for a mornings work, with the obligatory homemade rolls as well 🙂

I know that beetroot chocolate cake sounds strange, but it is very moist and tasty, you can’t taste the beetroot!!!

Finally, after all the looking we have found something that Keith and I both like and think may actually suit the purpose….

It’s ok – I know what you are thinking, ‘it needs a lot of work’ and I guess more importantly … ‘where will you stay when you come over’  – it does have a granny annexe – we aren’t so kean, but I am sure that over time we would be able to get it how we want it….

Ok – you win, it is Chateau de Carrouges…. we quite like the gatehouse, but Keith’s mum persuaded us to go and have a look round the Chateau as well – definately worth a visit if you are over here.