Thursday 23 June Portsmouth - end of our trip

 

We are back in Portsmouth harbour after a very smooth 5 hour crossing , where we slept in comfy cabin beds after a welcome shower and our last croissant breakfast 🥐

End of our France trip 😞

Wednesday 22 June Cabourg, Pegasus bridge Ouistreham.

The annual Romantic film festival is held here at the Casino. This year it was 15-19 June, Andy breathes a sigh of relief.

I'm more interested in coming back to the Deauville annual American film festival 2- 16  Sept (just down the coast) open to the public and a smaller version of Cannes  €130 full pass, €30 a day , accommodation already fully booked up.

The grand hotel 

Stunning houses along the promenade, favoured by wealthy Parisians

Festival de Plage: getting it ready on the beach for Sunday 1st July when resorts fully open up to accommodate the French holiday period July/ August 

Big bonfire,  sad to miss it 

Beach provision 

Called in at the Pegasus bridge museum en route to the ferry.

Gliders were used instead of parachutes to help Allied forces to land, capture the bridges and push back the German presence 

A reconstruction of one of the 30  gliders used 

The bridge, which can be raised to allow shipping through, was moved to the museum and replaced by a longer bridge after the war ended, the canal having been widened. 

A model of the original bridge built  in meccano and displayed  in the museum.

We also saw sections of a Bailey Bridge, designed by Donald Bailey  which, with much practice, could be assembled in 36 minutes by a hundred soldiers, these bridges  were taken over by a Halifax which dropped 30 gliders who landed near enough to the target areas  to enable bridges to be built speedily across strategic river ways in this area in order to replace those  destroyed by the German forces on the evening before D - Day on 6 June 1944.

Apparently  German forces were geared up  to repel this action but no one dared to wake the sleeping Adolf Hitler to obtain the proceed order (according to Col Von Luck in a film shown of the glider action) , this was  a hinge movement in the east , around Cabourg and Merville , remarkable in its precision and vital  apparently to the success of D- Day).

  

Here is the bridge which replaced the post war built version , reconstructed in the 60's when the Orne was widened to allow larger  vessels to pass under it . We waited about 15 mins for it to rise to allow a barge through and to be lowered again. 

We arrived in Ouistreham where the Brittany  ferry goes. Andy bought some wine from Normandy Wines. The wind was very strong, making walking along the board walk and the cycle ride along the beach too uncomfortable to contemplate, so we rested in the van for a few hours and boarded the ferry at 11 pm.

Tuesday 21 June Les Peupliers campsite day 2

 Early morning swim in the warm sea with quite a lot of swell, swim in the heated outdoor pool, then  cycled first to Cabourg and later on to Merville in the other direction from the campsite, had a beer in the Merville bistro, watched a heavy rock covers band warm up, cycled on to the bird hide tower  on the cycle path overlooking the River Orne, wetland sanctuary 

Trotters exercising the horses when we went for our early morning swim 

A trainee perched on the side 

Very touristy high st in Cabourg to reach the boulangerie

Very ornate houses, la belle epoque style architecture 

What can you say? 

The usual carousel on the green 

Beautiful late afternoon mackerel patterned sky

Only seagulls visible today 

Great wooden observation tower.

Monday 20 June 2022 Cabourg Normandy

 We decided to head back East towards Caen, where we will get the ferry home, and find a nice camp site to spend a few days on. We have decided to go home earlier than originally planned to give us time to get ready for Sean's Civil Partnership celebration. Cabourg was a bit of a random choice because it had easy access to the beach.

Fancy houses along the 7 km beach  towards Cabourg...

Happy to be pitched on a 4 star quiet clean campsite Les Peupliers, with a heated outdoor pool and a covered pool too, although the weather has picked up. We are equidistant from fancy Cabourg and smaller Merville sur Plage with excellent off road cycle routes to both places.

 

Sunday 19 June St Malo

Drove on to the Paul Feval car park on the  outskirts of  St Malo in Brittany, a cloudy, cool, very windy day.

For €7.50  you can park there overnight and also get two return free tickets on the shuttle bus into St Malo harbour (Intra Muros bus stop - the old town) 

Walking the walls 

Beach not so inviting today 

Savoury crepes for Sunday lunch in Brittany, yum 😏

Old town 

Very stylish cathedral 

Drove to quiet Aire ,15 min walk to the  Grande Plage du Sillon 

Saturday 18 June Aire Bruere to Aire de Camping Cars Le Vivier sur Mer

We drove 300 miles NW.

Church 5 mins walk  from the Aire  we stayed at, very sudden change of temperature from 40 C- 14C . It was very windy with dust blowing around the parking area. 
 

Delicious pizza at the L'Amaryllis restaurant.

When we got back to the MH there was a thunderstorm and heavy rain, which felt very welcome.

Friday 17 June Aix le Bains to Bruere Ali champs Aire

 We travelled north- west from Aix Les Bains  for 5 hours in an attempt to find somewhere cooler 

We met Mike and Jackie at this shady Aire, near Bourges which is  en route to the coast (situated a  few km from Lac de Virlay, but no swimming allowed there😞)

 Mike and Jackie are from Ontario , Canadia and have been touring in their live - in RV for the last seven years  and have the stickers to prove it! They kindly showed us around their extremely spacious home with all mod cons, including a washing machine, an ice maker and air conditioning. Bliss !

Good to meet this friendly couple and hear about their extensive travels and adventures 🙂

Andy rigged up the outside shower outside the MH  so we could keep cool until the sun went down;  too weary to explore further afield tonight.

Our next drive tomorrow is 5 hours to the coast, 39C forecast for today again, so the coolest place for us  to be is in the van with air con on a whilst the engine is running.

An evening  Boules tournament was on nearby, the last revellers left at 2.45 am on Saturday morning, hopefully the champions 🙂

Slept really well from 5 am-8 am 

Mike and Jackie decided to stay in the area to attend a gospel concert on Saturday  that a friendly French woman invited us to go to, hope you make it Mike and Jackie, gospel is so engaging🙂 

Thursday 16 June Lac Serre-Poncon to Aix-Les-Bains Aire

 

We left Le Nautic at 9.15 am after a filmy surfaced  early morning swim in the lake.

We stopped for lunch at the Col de Lauteret, just after Briancon. This scenic route  added several hours to our journey but there was the consolation of dining with several cycling teams on a practice run up the Col  (only to find that their route over the Col de Galibier was closed for 24 hours) 

Meadow flowers just emerging

2 glaciers in the back ground

 

We arrived at Aix - Le Bains  after some 8 hours of driving at 5 pm the hottest part of the day 

 This elegant lake-side  resort was by the second largest natural lake (Lac Annecy the largest) in France 

The lake side campsite we booked to stay on was overflowing to bursting and the only pitch offered had no shade. With our awning out of operation in 39C heat, we decided to abandon our pitch on this very crowded campsite and de-camp to an Aire a few Km away which had shade.

The A -L- B  Aire ticked the boxes and we managed to get the last pitch, it was quiet and shady. We went for a lake swim from a public beach, 10 mins walk along the front, very shallow water, then a welcome pizza, where we spent a night cooling ourselves with water (and beer).

Wednesday 15 June. Gorges de Verdon to Lac Serre-Poncon

We drove NW from Castellane in the Verdon, following the route Napoleon's band took on his return from Elba. It was an interesting drive over some high alpine feeling areas.  We arrived at the Lac du Serre-Poncon after driving about 75 miles.

 Haute Alpes  Lac - 2nd largest man made lake in France

Stayed overnight at camp site Lac de Nautic , not recommended, as very near main road to Briancon capital of the Alpes and thundering trucks kept me  awake during the night. Lovely,  kind campsite reception guy. The lake was cooling to swim in, in the evening but had a greasy film first thing in the morning (possibly from the slate rock the lake was carved from) and a liberal scattering of dandelion seeds.