Back again in the house in France; as you can imagine there were a number of chores to be done after our recent trip.  We gave Mika her first wash, apart from scrubbing the top, and after throwing off the mud splatters from the UK and France she is gleaming once again.  Gail cleaned the car as well just so that he didn’t feel too jealous…

With the rain and sun it was time to attack cutting the grass again; it was surprising that the grass hadn’t grown too much though the various weeds, for which there are lots, in it had.

Being in the motor home for the week gave us the bug to carry on a bit and we even contemplated trying to go and see some of the Normandy D-day celebrations a bit more up close.  However, unsurprisingly all sites were already booked up.  It did make us rethink our ideas and we are now planning on leaving the house in France a bit earlier than originally planned; currently the 3rd week in August.  However before this we are currently planning a 2 week trip to Brittany for the 2nd half of July… 🙂

Whilst in the Motor home shop we brought a book with a number of places over Europe, the majority focused in France, that give the camping at a fixed reduced price outside of the high season. We had a review of our plan and changed from going to Jumiege to Deauville, which also happened to have a place within our newly purchased book.

Again we took the scenic route, I.e the non toll road route; we don’t travel that quickly in the motor home anyway. The route was very pleasant as were the majority of the villages/towns on the way.

The camping is a typical summer large site which has a combination of camping/motor homes as well as static homes and a large amount of facilities. It’s more than fine as it’s the closet site to the seaside co-located towns of Deauville and Trouville on the coast which we wanted to visit at some point.

The weather was definitely a lot better that the forecast had said. It was great to get the table and chairs out as well as trying out the awning…

There was a very brief shower, although the skies didn’t look it would be short, whilst we were finishing off doing some exercises. Keith quickly tried to close up the chairs etc and one of the arms partly came partly off. Out came the tools and luckily it could be fixed!!! It would’ve still be usable without a problem, but for the BBQ we did that evening it was great to be sitting outside.

Deauville seems to be a rich persons seaside resort; I’m not sure if it is the race track, the yachting fraternity or the expensive cars and restaurants that lead us to this impression.  It was definitely worth a wander around, as was our walk along the very long promenade.  Deauville does have it’s twin sister Trouville on the other side of the river; this definitely caters for the rest of the population.  The fish/shellfish stalls on the key which each had a number of small tables to sell their cooked wares; it certainly looked interesting.

This time we weren’t cooking fish on the BBQ, but very tasty sausages and burgers…  Yes, and Keith does like cooking with the “Chefie” tongs.

On the route to the next camping stop we stopped off at one of the supermarkets to top up on our supplies. Luckily it was one of the hypermarket type stores which also sold a selection pack of fuses; we had meant to get one of these at some point anyway 🙂

After going to the camping we were going to a motor home store that had accessories as well to get another connector for the TV power. However we ended up doing this in reverse. The reason was due to us firstly selecting the incorrect lane in the centre of Rouen which directed us over the river Seine as the SatNav was not clear in time. This in itself would not have been a problem as the SatNav recalculated the route to cross over on the next bridge. 15 minutes later we found out the next bridge was closed. At this point we decided to go the motor home accessory place first as we were a bit further south. As ever, a SatNav route is never as straight forward as shown on the screen and before arriving at the motor home shop we thought that we were doing a bit of rallying. Still, we finally got here and managed to get what we were after luckily so all back up and running.

The camping was very basic, the photo below reminds Keith of his 1^st French school trip, and we decided to forgo the electric and some other additions such as a hot shower and use those of the motor home as these almost doubled the price of the camping; we have after all solar power and a shower 🙂

We walked into Rouen on Thursday, which was about 4-5Km. Rouen itself is well worth a visit, maintaining, even if reconstructed, a lot of historic type buildings as well as some very impressive and imposing buildings. Close to the old marked, we also had an excellent meal at lunchtime. We think that it helped that it was a bank holiday in France yesterday and hence an amount of shops were shut; you know how much we enjoy shopping…

We decided to change the SatNav from the green route to the Easy route and also to include the roll road, which would include the “Pont de Normandy”, else the journey would’ve been twice the distance of the 48Km… It was worth the 6.2Euros, and not a bad view either 🙂

The campsite is very good, and it’s a municipal run one; one one site is the basic motor home stopover and other the campsite with the additional facilities.  I haven’t included the below photo to show that Gail is doing her share of the tasks, but that the washing up area has some useful draining racks; the 1st we’ve seen in France or in England.

The town/village of Etretat is very pretty. All the houses and gardens walking into the town from the campsite are very pretty and well maintained; we thought we might have walked into the set of “The Stepford wives”… At the sea there are some impressive cliffs either side of the pebble beach, which looks like there is a bit of walking…rather than stay just for 1 night as we had thought before arriving, we have now changed our minds; not for the 1st time I’m sure 🙂

We had some good news and a learning experience whilst here, both related to the TV. We managed to sort out the Satellite so that it could point to another other than the default 4 set up and also found one that transmits a limited number of channels in french. The learning experience was that after tilting the TV to have a better picture, once we pushed the TV back into its locked travel position, it collided with the power lead connector and snapped part of it, which in turn as it turned out blew the fuse. We found out that this fuse also powers one of the USB sockets that we use to charge the phones.

On Wednesday evening Andy and Alex had invited a couple of their English friends, Paul and Sue, for dinner.  Gail and I made our version of a Paella and as well as a plate of cheeses, Andy had made an apricot crumble.  We’ve never had this before and it was fantastic; it seems to be apricot season over here at the minute so I think we may well be having some more…  If you have a chance and haven’t tried this before then I’d give it a go 🙂

Keith has also finished his french lessons as of last Thursday; now we’ll see how much he actually knows… in truth Gail’s french is pretty good, though with practise she will eventually be happy with it 🙂

We’re off from Saturday or so for a trip in the Motor home whilst the house is rented out for about a week.  We’re planning on going up the the area near to Rouen.  We’re looking forward to it, though hoping that the weather improves from what it has been these last couple of days.  Each time I’m sure that we’ll load up the motorhome slightly different to make it better balanced and use of the space; yes, I’ve already juggled with things that are going in the garage 🙂

On Sunday evening we went to some of the neighbours with Andy and Alex for some “aperitifs”.  The wine was very good, as were the pizza that Sandro made.  He’s Italian and a very good cook; he made the pizza’s for the youngsters, i.e. Gail and Keith… 🙂

Gail’s parents arrived on Wednesday and hopefully it’ll help with the recovery of Gail’s dad.  They have certainly brought the weather with them.  We actually had a BBQ and I could cook in glorious sunshine 🙂

I moved the motor-home back so that Gail’s folks could get the the car into the garage.  That had the added benefit that the Satellite TV worked as it could pick up reception between the house and a large tree that had been previously beside the motor-home; this was important as there was the Europa cup final that I wanted to watch and there was a clash with the English programme watching in the house.  This was also useful as good preparation for the World cup so they’ll be no viewing clashes 🙂

We’ve got another week in the house before we go off somewhere in the motor-home for about a week.  We’re unsure of the destination as yet, though it’ll probably be around the area near to Rouen.  Fingers crossed that the weather stays for a bit longer…

If you want to hear about an evening where we BBQ’s apparagus whilst watching the football, then I’m araid that you are going to be disappointed as the 3 topics in this case are not related.

We have now checked that our new BBQ works connecting it to the external gas point from the motorhome, one of the last major things to check, though it is still to be used in anger to actually cook something; next time 🙂

Yesterday we brought some white asparagus, it was definitely the 1st time that we were going to cook it.  Luckily just before cooking, we found out that we need to peel it and cook it for longer that it’s green cousin.  Luckily the internet saved the day, though as we hadn’t had green asparagus for quite a while we don’t know which one gives your wee a stonger smell of sugar puffs..!!!

Yes it is near the end of the football season, which I’m sure is great for some, but not for others; we also have a split household.  However, there still remain what could be some cracking matches; the final premier league games tomorrow, the Europe cup final, the FA cup final and then the Champions league final.  That said, being an even year, there is only about a 3 week gap and then in this case it is the World cup that will begin and last for about a month; luckily we have the  motorhome which also has a TV 🙂

Yes, although it is fairly fresh today, it has been pretty sunny which is fantastic considering that it is a bank holiday weekend; well in Endland anyway as they had their bank holiday here actually on 1st May.

As such, we decided to have a BBQ, and even this didn’t manage to ruin the weather.  I must say that our digestives of damsen and sloe gin are not bad at all and have got even better with age… If only we could 🙂