Although we only have a few more days left in the house in France, Bernard very kindly gave us over 3Kg of Mirebelle plums. They are small plums, though not really a looker. However, they are naturally sweet and with limited time we decided to just stone and then stew then. Keith tried some raw and a bowl of them stewed and both were very good; the below bowl was even a bit much for Keith to manage after dinner 🙂

The advantage of having the motorhome on hand, and virtually prepared for the off, is that we decided to take it with us on Saturday evening when we went out for a meal in a hotel/restaurant in a near by village called Juvigny with Mary and Melvyn. We could’ve driven, but there was a municiple camp site so we decided to stay in the motorhome.

The meal was very good, though not quite as good as the one in Concarneau though of a similar style made by a very talented young chef.

We’ll be doing something similar this Saturday after we finally leave the house. The Cheverie restaurant just outside of Juvigny, where we had many good lunchtime meals, is our destination as we’ve always wanted to taste their evening menu. They have a big parking area out at the front and back of their beautiful setting, and they’ve agreed that we can park and stay in our motorhome overnight. Hopefully not a bad way to start the tour 🙂

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 🙂

Whilst chatting to Sandro, one of our neighbours opposite here in Bagnoles, on the way down to the Boulongerie the day after we got back from our trip to Brittany, he told me to wait whilst he went a got a jar of homemade blackberry jam to go with our croissants – it was very good.

On top of that, last night we were invited to Sandro and his wife Michelle’s house for an Italien meal.  Hmm, mmm.  Homemade pizza slices to start with, followed my homemade pasta for the main.  After that came the cheese board and then a chocolate dessert that came from the local boulongerie/patiserie which were equally as good.  Yes, there was more as we then finished off with some homemade macarons, all washed down with some very nice Italian wine.  Yes, we were very spoilt indeed.

What more do I need to say…

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.

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.