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.

All,

Although there are 1000’s of travel  books and internet sites about places to go and see when we are travelling around Europe, which we will use to a degree, we thought that we might as well tap into the personal knowledge of our friends and family 🙂

As such if there are any outstanding places that you have been to on your holidays or trips to Europe, generally outside of main cities as we can do these on city breaks, then can you please let us know and we’ll add then to our list of potential places to do?

Thankyou

It is amazing what you can do with a few little wild strawberries from the garden! 

I made lemon sorbet last week (on the left of the photo), but after a visit from one of the neighbours who asked if he could take some of our little wild strawberries to make some jam I decided to have a go at a bit of strawberry ice-cream today ….. yum 🙂

Lets hope they grow back quickly so we have a chance to make some more before we go!

This was started in France to celebrate the amateur music artists, who perform free on this day at various locations around France; maybe in some other places now as well.

There were about 4 sites within Bagnoles itself in the evening, all of which we visited.  As with all of these things, not all the music is to everyones taste, but there was a very good duo that played in front of the Lake 🙂