Lazy days

We’ve been a bit lax on the blog update front; partly because our internet connection has been rubbish recently but predominantly because we haven’t actually done a great deal since Friday.  We’re still moving around, but more often than not, we’ve been in living mode rather than holiday mode, having now settled into the reality of life on the road.

We headed to Huelgoat on Friday, the first stopover that hasn’t been a stone’s throw from the sea since we left the UK.

Huelgoat is a pleasant and very small village in the Arree mountains, although like the Harz mountains in Germany, they’re more like hills really.  While we were there, we took Powell for a wander in the Argent Valley, an ‘enchanting’ forest area, with unusual rock formations such as Le Champignon (the mushroom) and La Roche Tremblante (the trembling rock), to name but a few.  

Pete managed to get the trembling rock to ‘tremble’ after being shown where to push it by a passer by.

Le Champignon

Pete and Powell are in the pic to give an idea of the size of the boulders...they weren't small!

There are all sorts of legends attached to the area; our favourite was that Gargantua was less than happy with the hospitality that he’d received from the villagers so he threw giant rocks at them!

We managed not to get any trick or treaters that night, despite there being some kids in the village knocking on house doors.  They’d have been highly disappointed with our treats anyway as we only had beer and wine!

Saturday saw us leave Huelgoat behind and head back to the coast, this time to Plogoff (yes, it’s a real place!) and another free overnight stop with a bit of a sea view – it was slightly obscured by a house or two, but you could still hear the sea, so it still counts.  The weather started to turn while we were there and we spent the evening listening to the snare drum that is our roof when the heavens open.  It was a bit blowy too; luckily Dora is a good weight as we might have been blown around a lot more than we were.  Unfortunately the camera had a wobble and both of the pictures below are really blurred, but they're the best ones I have off Plogoff.

On Sunday we had planned to walk round to Pointe du Raz, approximately 4 miles from our stopover, but because the weather was so bad, we had a change of heart and moved on to another free beach stopover at Fouesnant.  Other than the obligatory Powell exercise, we didn’t get up to a great deal with the weather still being pretty dire, so much so that from Saturday eve to Sunday eve, I managed to start and finish a very good book by Ben Elton - Two Brothers - a really good read! Not sure that Pete was so happy though....I tend to get a bit antisocial when I read a good book!

Sunday night saw more snare drumming at bed time, leading to next to no sleep for me and only slightly more for Pete; that is definitely one of the down sides to rainy nights in here.  If it’s drizzling, the sound is quite relaxing but if it’s torrential, it’s just loud and annoying.

So, sleepless night done with, we woke to slightly better weather on Monday and decided that another laundry day was needed.  Having initially decided we’d go to Concarneau, we arrived to find the aire was out of service and couldn’t find anywhere else to park.  As a consolation prize, we went to Quimperle instead as I’d read that it was supposed to be fairly nice, but on arrival we were pretty disappointed.  However, we did manage to top up our water for free, so it wasn’t a completely wasted journey.  We also found a laundrette in the car park of the Carrefour there...well, I say laundrette but it’s not even in a building, just two washing machines and a dryer, boxed in and with a little shelter over the top, providing 24 hour access to do your laundry!  I forgot to take a pic, but you can see what I’m talking about here.  Can’t say either of us has ever seen anything like it before, but apparently another major supermarket, Super U, has them too – makes perfect sense – do your shopping and laundry at the same time!  Fantastic idea, but the dryer wasn’t very good, meaning that for most of Monday, Dora doubled as a Chinese laundry while we tried to dry out our clothes in the much lower than last week autumnal temperatures.  Having been unimpressed with the stopover at Quimperle, we ended up spending Monday night at Guidel Plage.  The weather improved marginally, meaning a much better nights’s sleep for us all.  We would happily have stayed another night but unfortunately there was a 24 hour limit; we’ve found that’s often the case with places we actually like.

So now it’s Tuesday, marking just over 3 weeks since our journey began and we’re in yet another free stopover, this time, in Carnac.  We’ve yet to see the main attraction; the megaliths that are strewn all around this area, but it’s on our ‘to do’list tomorrow morning before we leave.

Carnac Plage

After our first sighting of Francie in Avranches, then our actual meeting Hillion over a week ago, our paths have crossed again, as we’re at the same stopover again tonight.  We’ve already had a chat, but she’ll be joining us shortly for another catch up and a glass or two of the red stuff....after all, every day’s a Friday for us so it would be rude not to!