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.

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 🙂