We are in France!

What a fantastic five weeks in the UK but it is time to move on; we are so looking forward to the next country, France.

We are planning to stay in France between two to three weeks, mainly around Brittany, and gradually driving along the south west coast through the Loire Valley and Bordeaux. We will then stop at the Pyrenees to do some trekking before we start our route around Spain. This won’t be the first time we will visit France during this trip; we will pass through on our way to Italy early in the new year and then  come back in July to climb Mont Blanc. I have been wanting to do this climb for years; this will be my chance. It won’t be new for Gary though, this will be the third time he will climb the mountain; I bet he is bored of it by now.

Stephanie, a French friend of mine from work, made some suggestions of places we could visit and then kindly put a detailed itinerary together for us before we left. This included all the things we like to do: walking and trekking, a bit of heritage and culture, and of course, the best places to enjoy local delicacies of the French cuisine as well as good wines. Thanks to her we had everything we need for our stay in France.

Below is the route she suggested, which we will follow:

We arrived at Roscoff at 7.00 am on Saturday 27th September, welcomed by an amazing dawn. We drove for five minutes to the Harbour to enjoy the light, the village still asleep. Away from our home in the UK,  we now felt our European adventure had really started.

We went back to Dora and drove towards Mont Saint Michel, 227 kilometres east of Roscoff. Actually just within Normandy, a long way off track, but we decided to go there anyway. Stephanie had strongly recommended it to us for its beauty and historic meaning. Driving to this place was going to take us at least five hours so we stopped overnight near St Malo planning to visit it the next day. St Malo is a cute walled town with stunning views towards the historic harbour.

We felt hungry, as we had awoken early. The coffee on the ferry was disgusting. I get really grumpy if I miss my coffee in the morning and even grumpier if I have a bad one and Gary suffers with me!

After a couple of hours driving, guess what? We found a Lidl! We will post an update shortly. Dora’s fridge needed to be replenished. It was 12.00 am; too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, what should we have? Of course, croissants and coffee at the best beach we could find.

It didn’t take us that long to find. All the beaches along this coast are absolutely stunning, long, sandy, clean… It feels that the sea is permanently at low tide. Extensive and flat beaches are great for walking and to enjoy the scene, although they are not ideal for when we go kayaking as we need to walk miles carrying the kayaks to the water’s edge.

Whilst I was preparing breakfast, Gary put the sticker of our blog on Dora’s back window. Now she is advertising us and herself all around Europe.

I think she feels at home in France. Being a left hand drive vehicle, she finally drives on the right side of the road. Besides, France is the home of motorhomes; they are incredibly popular. When we were in the UK, motorhome drivers would tend to salute each other on the road by raising their hands. We were quite intrigue by what they would do in France. Some people do, others don’t. I guess, if you waved your hand at every single driver you would have to raise your hand permanently, there are so many of them!

We slept in an Aires close to St Malo. Aires are parking places where you can park overnight with your motorhome and allows you access to electricity and water, some of them for free!. I think we will save quite a bit of money on campsites in France. We will talk to you about Aires in a later post.

The bus services was scheduled every two hours so we decided to walk to St Malo as it was only six kilometres away. We would then get a bus back. We took a path, the GR34, which goes around the coast of Brittany, going through isolated beaches and rugged cliffs, and giving you the opportunity of enjoying spectacular views of the open sea.

Some people were already swimming, at 11.00 am, in normal swimming costumes. “Maybe the water is not as cold as in the UK” I thought. It was incredibly warm already, considering we were at the end of September. We have been so lucky with the weather so far in the UK and France was continuing that trend.

As groynes, they use tree trunks; looking from the promenade, they make a nice photo.

We eventually arrived at St Malo at 13.00. Full of Sunday tourists, but managed to find narrow, quiet back streets to avoid most of them.

We had crêpes for lunch: sweet for me (honey) and savoury for Gary (sausage). Later we found out that a savoury crepe is called a Galette. It differs from a crêpe in that it is made out of buckwheat flour rather than wheat flour, and it is slightly savoury and crispier. We liked them so much, we tried to replicate them for dinner a couple of days later.

We followed the crêpes with a pastry called Far Breton. We chose ‘au pruneaux’ (with prunes) which is apparently traditional. It was like a sweet tart, I think made with pastry, egg and sugar. Not precisely a healthy lunch but, who cares! Tasting new flavours is part of the travel experience. Gary thinks France is ‘gonna’ make us fat. More exercise may be needed.

The village is surrounded by walls, which you can walk on, high enough to enjoy lovely panoramic views of the harbour. The day was beautiful, the sea calm.

A tidal swimming pool in the middle of the sea caught my attention, not very popular. I think people prefer to swim in the sea, not surprisingly.

On the next day, we continued to drive towards Mont Saint Michel.  Mont Saint Michel is a tiny rock of an island in Normandy, located approximately one kilometre off the country’s north-western coast. A monastery was built on its top around the twelfth century, and gradually expanded to an abbey by the sixteenth. A village was also built around the base of the island. Because of its strategic location, it became a prison and a fortification during the French Revolution. These days, it is dedicated to tourism with all its gaudy commercial trappings; ceramics of religious iconography, plastic swords, fake antiques and tea towels showing the location of French cheeses.

We got a ticket which allowed us to visit the four museums in the island for €18, he then gave it to us for half price, which was actually the group price. We still don’t know why. This is partly the beauty of not being able to communicate well; you just go along with it, especially if it is in your favour.

What mainly caught our attention was the surroundings. Because Mont Saint Michel is on an island and at the estuary of three rivers, strong currents find themselves here, pulling from all sort of different directions carrying huge amount of sediments and sand. Over the years, these sediments have built up, forming a thick, firm layer of mud. At times, it can be so solid that you can walk on it and not sink, as if you were walking on a water mattress. We would have loved to go out there in the mud to experience that feeling but you have to hire a guide as you can easily step on a soft bit which then sucks you in. By the time we ended the visit around the abbey, all tours had finished for the day.

The shuttle buses going backwards and forwards from the car park to Mont Saint Michel were really interesting. It seemed, a timber-built bus with two cabins drivers one each side, like a train carriage. Gary spoiled this by saying it was just a normal bus clad to look like timber!

After Mont Saint Michel, we drove back gradually towards Brittany until we arrived to an Aires in Locmaria Plouzane, where we intended to do a long walk on the GR34 coastal path the next day. Guess what we cooked for dinner, galettes; egg galette for me and sausage galette for Gary. Delicious for being the first time try.

The next day, we took the bus to Le Conquet and planned to walk back to Locmarie where Dora was parked. We started the walk at the Harbour, at the time when all fishing boats were returning with the catch of the day. Quite nosey, we approached to see what they had caught.

Not a great deal it would seem!

Not sure how it employs the numerous fishermen on board, plus the others that had come to unload the six various boxes.

Not a bad day, eh?

The day was gloomy, the sky was quite moody. We still enjoyed the landscape and the light amongst the clouds.

Gary takes the piss out of me for my recent obsession (I would call it an interest) with shore life. He is becoming equally obsessed about fishing; no idea why, giving the unsuccessful fishing experience at Newquay . He is determined to buy a fishing rod for when we go kayaking. Here, he has found a fishing hook which he has kept for that purpose.

New country, new language, new maps, and therefore, new mistakes. We are not used to the maps they produce in France and therefore, miscalculated the duration of the walk. We had to cut it short, otherwise we would have been walking long into the night. We stopped at Plougonvenlin –half way in between the two villages– and took the bus from there. Neither of us can speak French so we had problems in understanding the bus timetable. We still had to wait for an hour.

In the meantime, we had a drink in a funny place which looked like at newsagent but it also has a bar inside. They seem quite popular in small villages in France.

Even then the bus didn’t quite take us where we wanted to go, grrr… so we still had half an hour of walking at the end of the day.

Next stop: Crozon peninsula, where we would spend between several days.

SM