Au Petit Port De L’houmeau –  – 16,54 euro per night inclusive of electricity.

Although there are a couple of campsites in the centre of La Rochelle we decided to opt for something a little further out hoping that it would be a little more tranquil. As the schools have started to go back and low season has officially started we assumed that there wouldn’t be any problem finding a space we were however lucky as when we arrived there were only two left. It is a nice campsite with a mixture of posh wooden chalets and pitches for tents and motorhomes and for people like us who are happy to jump on a bike ideally placed.

1/9 Île de Ré

Situated just off the coast from La Rochelle connected by a pretty impressive 3km bridge is the Île de Ré, a hidden gem with beautiful beaches and beautifully preserved villages. We looked at the map on Sunday night and decided to bite the bullet and cycle all the way to the lighthouse at the end. The route on the way passed through some beautiful little villages as well as fields full of grapes, and salt and oyster farms.

On the way back whilst wiggling round the coast trying not to take out any cyclists (or pedestrians come to think of it as there were quite a lot) we got distracted by what looked like a castle, which upon further investigation was Saint Martin de Re which is a walled cathedral city containing a vibrant town with a rather plush port – all of the buildings maintained to a really high level …. I know I shouldn’t say it, but you certainly wouldn’t expect to see anything as pristine as this in France… not a tumbling down building in site 🙂

After rattling the bones on the cobbled streets of Saint Martin de Re we continued on to La Flotte which was equally as beautiful, slightly smaller and more personal. We stopped for an ‘Artisanal’ (I think that is supposed to be ‘home made’) Ice cream and soaked up the atmosphere whilst people watching.

The journey home was via a part reconstructed Abbey leading to the days total cycling distance of 84km….. phew, lovely day but I definitely have a couple of sore bits 😦

2/9 – La Rochelle

With sandwiches in hand we set off on the bikes again to explore La Rochelle. The campsite is about 6km outside La Rochelle so it was an easy journey in and we managed to chain the bikes up near the seafront and set off on foot to explore.

There is obviously something about this part of France as, like yesterday on the Île de Ré everything was immaculate – I know it helps when there is a bit of sunshine, but all the buildings in the city are built in a white stone which looks stunning against the blue skies. La Rochelle is obviously a touristy city as there is every possible shop you can think of from the UK high streets, from Kookai to Kickers and there is a price to pay …. My eyes happened to be wondering in a patisserie window and a Millefeuille was 4.50 euros ….. Bagnoles De L’Orne count yourself lucky at 1.90 euros.

Definitely worth a trip, but quite glad we made some sarnies before we went!

La Rochelle8

As we got closer to the Loire valley the countryside started to change from fields of corn to fields containing vine after vine of grape… both red and white. We couldn’t have timed our visit better as looking at the size of the grapes we may still be in the region for harvesting which I understand is a bit of an event.

As you rarely get the opportunity to visit friends whilst away we took a slight detour from our planned route and popped in to see Dave and Nicky in Brem-Sur-Mer and were lucky enough to be shown around the area and can only say that we were thoroughly looked after for four days…. Quite a treat!

 The weather was kind to us and we managed to take advantage of one of the regions’ fantastic cycle routes, cycling along the coast to la Chaume (across the estuary from Le Sable D’Olonne) with Dave, we walked along the local beaches as whilst also taking in some of the local cafes, markets and playing some tennis 🙂

 We were spoilt by Nicky’s wonderful cooking and the families hospitality and were also introduced to some lovely local sparkling red wine and a fantastic restaurant on Saturday night where Keith Dave and Nicky all had Sardines three different ways…… tasty and definitely interesting!

Hopefully they enjoyed the time as much as we did and feel as relaxed as we do coming away from their house….although we have to apologies for the hole we left in the driveway when Keith spun the wheels whilst trying to reverse off 😦

We look forward to coming back and seeing more of Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie in the future as we only got a little taste and hope the driveway is big (and possibly hard) enough – we could quite see ourselves living there 🙂

I think we managed to go through three of the four seasons on the 120km journey to Arromanches, but thankfully by the time we arrived it had stopped bucketing down…. For the first 15 minutes at least.

We found a municipal campsite which is just on the edge of the town …. I am over cooking it …. there really isn’t much town so it is fairly central. The site is big (about 100 places) and reasonable (15 euros a night) and the pitch is flat … with predominantly Italians motorhomes.   We can’t work out why there are so many Italians up here, but they appear to travel in groups (Can I say gaggles or ‘gaggias’ J … oh ok maybe not) of motorhomes with CB’s – which when it comes to a small place like Arromanches blocks roads…. But interesting now the less!

On Sunday afternoon we set out to explore – the beach that Arromanches sits on and which spreads to the East is Gold Beach. Even though it is mid-August (albeit with mediocre weather) the long sandy beach and shore line stretches out for as far as you can see, interrupted only by a handful of pontoons left as reminders of what happened 70 years ago.

We walked along Gold Beach to Asnelles and then back on a slightly longer than expected route through the countryside and lots of Corn fields (Keith thought that the man in front was doing the same route as us ….. J).

On Monday we made some sandwiches and set off on the bikes into Bayeaux via the country route via more corn fields (I am still not allowed to pick any to eat…) and about 12.5km later we arrived. Bayeaux is a really pretty town with lots to see. It was built around the waterways and hence has lots of old mills and baths for laundry dotted around the town in addition to the beautiful cathedral. The journey back helped build up an appetite for a spontaneous bar b q … well it was dry J

Following a morning run we decided to set off West on Tuesday morning to see whether we could walk to Port-en-Bessin-Huppain which is the beginning of Omaha beach. Well…. The answer is yes, you can walk there and you don’t have to walk along the main road… it just takes a long time. The way back took us 2.5 hours … so it was about 12.5km. Unfortunately on the way there we followed (no, not another man) some white and red trail signs thinking that they may be the coastal route, to be fair it worked for the first 11km or so, however when we were about 1.5km from Port-en-Bessin-Huppain we followed the trail signs instead of turning right into the town which although pretty was through woodland without any options to turn right … and you don’t want to go back the way you came, so just before we got to Cherbourg….. only joking thankfully we managed to only walk an extra 4 or 5 km and at least we found a nice ice cream place when we got there … it was just a long walk back J

We were invaded on Tuesday night by the Poles – they started to arrive mid-afternoon and by about 20:30 there were about 30 motorbikes and about 50 people. They were here as part of a two week tour to celebrate the 70^th anniversary – quite impressive and apart from some early morning operetta singing they were pretty well behaved …. I couldn’t quite work out where they stored all the vodka though as they were travelling light so may have been in the fuel tanks J

On Wednesday morning we decided to have a quick bike ride along the coast to Courseulles-sur-mer to see a bit of Juno beach this morning. Unfortunately about half way there the skies opened and it proceeded to rain until we were on the road back. The beaches at Courseulles-sur-mer were completely deserted (not surprising considering the weather) with mile after mile of sand, quite pretty considering the history.

When we arrived back at the campsite there was absolutely no sight of it having rained ….. obviously went the wrong direction!

After our last game of tennis at the club we headed to Juvigny in convoy to park up in the car park and enjoy a gastronomique feast with Tom and Monique. My parents have raved about the evening meal here for ages but we have only visited at lunch time (also great food), so felt it apt for our ‘last supper’.

Following Kir royale, red wine, foie gras (I probably shouldn’t say that out loud – but for someone who hasn’t ever had it before, it was amazing), home cured Salmon, lamb cooked for 7 hours, more cheese than you could imagine eating, and some delicious deserts we retired to the car park for a very pleasant nights’ sleep despite the peacock which decided it wanted to look for a mate at sunrise ….. noisy little buggers.

Thank you Tom and Monique for sharing the evening with us and for the lovely homemade jams…. oh and more cheese J

It is time to say goodbye to our home for the last 4.5 months …. oh ok, the photo above is the Chateau de Bagnoles and Mairie, the one below is the house 🙂

We have had a fantastic time, got to know some lovely people, walked, cycled and run the forests, played tennis and eaten some great food….. what more can you ask for? The locals are so friendly they even held a national holiday yesterday with fireworks over the lake last night to say a final goodbye 🙂

Keith has now got a good level of French and mine has been revived from the ancient past although that probably means that the Spanish has taken a bit of a knock – but we get by!

We will be back ……first stop Juvigny-sous-andaine for dinner tonight.

We had previously dismissed the idea of baking cakes and biscuits whilst away, but thought that it was worth a go before we pack everything away and send it back to the UK. After a couple of slightly dodgy looking batches (although they still taste lovely), I have managed to perfect oat, raison and chocolate chip cookies and gooey chocolate brownies 🙂

We will now happily be rolling our way round Europe…. the baking utensils are staying with us 🙂

If we had longer we would have travelled round the coast as there are so many beautiful places to see, but with only ten days this time we decided to cut across and drive directly to St Malo – we will definitely be back another time (out of school holidays) to take in some more of the coastal line and perhaps do the coastal path as well.

The drive was a pretty uninteresting one, but it was the quickest route. The campsite is situated on a hill looking over St Malo bay. Once again it is a municipal one – Camping La Cite d’Alet should have been 20 euros 50 Cents, but somehow we got mistaken for a tent and only got charged 15 euros ….

The campsite is set on a hill next to a fort looking over the bay to St Malo (approximately 2km walk from the old town) surrounded by beautiful views such as the following

We were also in hearing distance of the port with the odd tannoy announcement and quite rudely a 7am ‘honk’ on Sunday morning …. and I thought they were a catholic country 🙂

It was actually very peaceful and pretty for its position, so we couldn’t really complain.

For those of you who haven’t been here before, although a port, St Malo is a really pretty walled town with a really nice long promenade to walk along the seafront.

We wondered around the old town on Saturday afternoon when we arrived and then went for a long walk along the coast on Sunday stopping for a picnic in a rather tranquil setting ….

although we did think about stopping for some over sized twiglets on the way but they were too pretty to eat…

Back at the campsite, the unnatural obsession that I have about the weight limit on the motorhome meant I had to go and ask a couple from Guernsey how they get away with carrying a full sized gas bar b q (similar to the one we have at home) and a 750cc motorbike in their garage in addition to two bicycles and all the normal things the rest of us carry … apparently we are worrying about nothing – they have been weighed both in the UK and in France and the border control appear to turn a blind eye ….. oh well, obsession over – lets see what other interesting things we find in peoples garages over the next 12 months 🙂

Huelgoat is a small town centred around walking, cycling and riding. It is surrounded by forest and sits on a lake with some fantastic boulder formations which predominantly are arranged in old river beds but also appear to be randomly distributed around the area. We found a beautiful old cottage with one of these boulders (measuring approx. 15ft x 20ft) about two foot from the house … not quite sure which was there first, but if it was the rock you have ask why they built the house so close….. and if it wasn’t, that was a close game of battleships 🙂

It was a lovely place and we got some good walking in both through the countryside and through the woods along an old mining canal. The campsite we stayed at was a municipal one approximately 1km out of town and cost 12.44 Euro each night, can’t really complain. We managed to pick up some ‘poitrine’ (the closest France gets to Bacon) on the way to Huelgoat, so on Saturday morning we had our first bar-b-q brekkie of bacon, eggs and beans…. Certainly set us up for the days walking!

We met a lovely (although rather insane) couple from the Netherlands who were staying on the pitch next to us with their two very large Pyraneen mountain dogs…. Better described as bears as the smaller one was 70kg. The couple had just bought the motorhome (second hand) and stripped out part of the interior so that the dogs could sit inside and rather ingeniously converted the garage (roughly the same size as ours) into a sleeping area for the dogs when it was too cold/wet for them to sleep outside.

We left Corncanou on Friday morning (1^st August) and travelled to Quimper for lunch. Unfortunately the fayre had arrived before us taking up all the oversized vehicle parking spaces so we spent a good 15/20 minutes getting to know the side roads of Quimper before we finally managed to park … one of those things we will just have to get used to I guess 🙂

Quimper, once we got out of the motorhome was pretty, an old town on a river which has had the advantage of the tourists passing through on the way to the coast, so money has been spent on renovating buildings and providing a decent mix between real shops, sights and bars and restaurants… believe me it can be difficult to find!

After some rather delicious homemade sarnies (yes, we are still making the rolls ourselves) and a tour round a housing estate courtesy of the sat nav system we continued on our journey to a little place called Huelgoat which was to be our home for the next two nights.

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 🙂