Two Go Back in Time

[DBK]

This time tomorrow we should be on the ferry for the overnight sailing from Plymouth to Roscoff.

The books are all packed. Apart from the rogue one about the Mississippi Delta the rest should give a good clue where we are heading.

 

[Anthea M]

A road trip round Belgium Germany and France !!!
Looking forward to your thread John!

 

[Abacist]

It's like an Enid Blyton series! Have a great trip!

 

[Garfields]

Got four of them with us
Only got the German guide and rod maps though
Just a couple of weeks off
Have fun

 

[Viennese]

We are off to France (ferry to Dieppe) on 16 Sept, will keep a lookout for you!

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[DBK]

We are off to France (ferry to Dieppe) on 16 Sept, will keep a lookout for you!

We are planning to drive slowly along the north coast so we probably won't be far from Dieppe by the time you arrive.

 

[FIDGET]

Hi dbk ,we are over on the 9th headed towards Brittany ,, might pass by you .

 

[DBK]

Hi dbk ,we are over on the 9th headed towards Brittany ,, might pass by you .

I'll be posting on here most days on the daily events and trials.
The shipping forecast looks good for tonight's crossing - sea state described as "slight" which will make a change from our April voyage to Santander which was a bit too bumpy for me.

 

[Viennese]

Love Dieppe, great town, we sometimes stay in the aire there. As it's a morning ferry we are going directly to the Chateau of Chantilly to see the Conde Museum, which we only heard about recently, and which has supposedly the best collections after the Louvre. I want to see the museum of the horse, housed appropriately in the stables!! After that we are diving southward, taking in friends (including Yodeli near Toulouse) on the way to Languedoc Roussillon and the Med, hoping it will still be warm enough for a dip or 2! I guess you are going north??

 

[DBK]

Love Dieppe, great town, we sometimes stay in the aire there. As it's a morning ferry we are going directly to the Chateau of Chantilly to see the Conde Museum, which we only heard about recently, and which has supposedly the best collections after the Louvre. I want to see the museum of the horse, housed appropriately in the stables!! After that we are diving southward, taking in friends (including Yodeli near Toulouse) on the way to Languedoc Roussillon and the Med, hoping it will still be warm enough for a dip or 2! I guess you are going north??

The plan is to head eventually towards the Mosel/Rhine area but it is weather dependent as it will be October before we get there. If things turn damp we could well shoot off south.

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[Robert Clark]

Have a great trip
Hope the weather is kind to you

 

[Riverbankannie]

Have a great trip.
We did a D day and a WW1 battlefield/cemetery tour back in May. It was memorable and led me to read more into the subjects including D Day Operation Overlord, day by day, by Antony Hall and The Ardennes, Hitler’s last Stand by Antony Beever.
Both books gave me great insights into what really happened.

 

[BobtheBass]

I hear Pluto is nice at this time of year. Nanu Nanu!

 

[Wendo55]

Have a great trip.
We did a D day and a WW1 battlefield/cemetery tour back in May. It was memorable and led me to read more into the subjects including D Day Operation Overlord, day by day, by Antony Hall and The Ardennes, Hitler’s last Stand by Antony Beever.
Both books gave me great insights into what really happened.

Some of us solo ladies did that in June. It was very interesting and really made you think about what happened in some of those places.
Happy travels @DBK !

 

[Lenny HB]

Have a good trip.

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[Just smiffy]

Have a good one ... I’ll be watching..

 

[klaatu]

Have a good trip - might meet up with you somewhere, we're heading off to Alsace next week and then possibly Germany and the Mosel area.

 

[FIDGET]

Pluto pipeline started from the isle of wight

 

[vwalan]

have a good one.
i found i liked east germany far better than the west.
its full of history etc . most we never here much about in uk.
drive safe and have lots of fun.

 

[Viennese]

Unfortunately lots of rioting and violence in East Germany at present.

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[jumartoo]

We've just driven through Germany from east (Rugen) to west and not seen any rioting or even gangs of potential troublemakers.

 

[Viennese]

They are in Chemnitz

 

[DBK]

The ferry has just arrived. Always a welcome sight. We will be boarding at the pointy end but hopefully it won't be going astern all the way to France.

 

[DBK]

Our first night in France just felt so comfortable - like the feeling of climbing into a bed with freshly laundered sheets.

But sleep was a thing behind us when we drove off the ferry yesterday morning at an unrestful 07:00 UK time which Brittany Ferries excuse by claiming it is really a much more civilized 08:00 local time.

After stopping in the MH area within the port for breakfast and dog walking we made our traditional visit to the Super U supermarket at nearby Pol de Leon.

No one does a fruit & vegetables display like the French:

They even had damsons and three different varieties of them too.

From Pol de Leon we headed north and east to Camping du Port where we have stayed before a couple of times and always enjoy.

How couldn't you when this is the view from the rear of the van?

There are a lot of rocks on the coast in this part of Brittany so inevitably any coastal walk will give you a good opportunity to see some. There are so many rocks they have to pile them up in places so you have space to walk around them. We have come across this before, most recently in Galicia.

The term "stone balancing" springs to mind except Mrs DBK rightly pointed out they arent really balanced, just piled on top of each other. "Rock piles" sounds like a painful complaint so I won't dwell on this any further

The beaches here are littered with what look like random boulders but they are not all what they seem.

If you look at the line of quartz in the shot below...

You can see it starts horizontally near the bottom then thread upwards and running through several superficially seperate boulders. So they aren't individual boulders, this is the bedrock but heavily worn on the surface.

Some of the quartz veins run at right angles to each other.

And to prove we have completely gone ga-ga about rocks we thought this one looks like a rabbit - or a seal.

The above photo also shows the weather is a bit misty and today will probably be the same but we should see the sun put in brief appearances from tomorrow onwards.

The next spring tide will be in about a week and I must plan to be near some rocky coast when it occurs, if only to see the hoardes of locals who will emerge to go marine fossicking. They take their seafood seriously here with size and catch limits strictly enforced in my experience. Without a license you can only harvest shellfish in limited numbers and for family consumption only.

A longish walk is planned for today.

 

[DBK]

The internet connection is being troublesome at the moment. In another thread I reported how I inadvertently used up all my Vodafone data allowance and until it rolls over to another contract period in a week I am using a Three PAYG card. The connection is strong, 4 bars on the MiFi but the connection keeps dropping out every few minutes. The only network I can get it to connect with is Bytel 3g but I'll have a play later and see if I can get it to connect with someone else.

But back to the fun. It was Mrs DBK's 21st again on Monday which we celebrated very quietly as we were on the ferry but last night we ate out in the campsite restaurant. We both chose Moules Roquefort and it was very tasty.

The Moules were very big.

We finished off with ice-cream which came in a conventional glass standing on a not so conventional slate. Mine had a slightly peeved looking snail.

Mary had a seagull. If it had been a real one it would have snatched the ice-cream off her spoon.

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[DBK]

Another instalment from the intermittent internet.

We did a bit of blackberry picking yesterday to have with some apples we bought at the Super U fruit counter. In this video you can see Mary feeding one to Charlie.



The video should play but isn't on my tablet at the moment. It might be the internet or YouTube have been changing things again.

 

[Fenman]

On your travels try calling in at one of the Grand Frais supermarkets. The range of fruit and veg is outstanding. https://www.grandfrais.com/
They often have a bakery next door and despite being a fairly large chain their bread is excellent - as are their brownies. http://www.marieblachere.com/

 

[Taran_Las]

Have a great trip

I await, (with anticipation) your next intrepid adventure​

 

[DBK]

This is a "geocache rich environment" as the military might say.

I have explained in my own haltering fashion geocaching before so I won't attempt it again other than saying, using an app, it directs me, via the phone's GPS, to obscure locations where in cracks in rocks and similar places can be found a waterproof container. If you are lucky there might be a "collectable" in the container which you can take and move on to another cache.

In the screenshot above the green blobs are caches and the yellow ones are the caches we found today. Not everywhere has as many caches as this area so if you are new to geocaching this is a good place to start.

Our walk today, interrupted by side excursions to geocaches took us on a clockwise loop northwards where we stopped to eat a packed lunch by a nice beach.

The second shot above was taken from our perch on the rocks while we are our sandwiches - ham and cheese but by mutual agreement it needed some mayonnaise as the Tesco bread was a bit dry - but still tasty!

With the geocaching app you can view a hint for each cache which I make full use of although of course the hints around here are all in French. But this is a good way to improve your French vocabulary! Here is one hint: .

"à l'abri de gros bloc de granite rose derrière under touffe d'herbe"

Which I think (happy to be corrected) means "in the shelter of a big block of rose granite behind a tuft of herbs". It beats "pen of my aunt" any day.

Most caches are fairly similar in the sense they are often under rocks but occasionally you find a fun one. This cache was in a red container hanging by fishing line from a tree branch. You had to lower it down by the line to open it - and find a few dead crabs!

On the way back Mrs DBK spotted a big caterpillar. It looked like an ambulatory dog poo with eyes at first glance.

It is a large elephant hawkmoth or in French Le Grand sphinx de la vigne. Whatever language you use it is a striking moth. Not my photo (we don't have the time to wait for the caterpillar to transform ) but as an adult it will look like this:

We planned only two nights here but I think we will stay another day - more geocaches beckon.

 

[busby]

This time tomorrow we should be on the ferry for the overnight sailing from Plymouth to Roscoff.

The books are all packed. Apart from the rogue one about the Mississippi Delta the rest should give a good clue where we are heading.

View attachment 252739

Dispatches from Pluto is excellent,,very funny read.
BUSBY.

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