Viva la Difference
Returned yesterday from a week and a half's burn around North-West France... Details follow behind a cut for the benefit of those not interested in "what we did on our holidays"...
On Friday we set off to Dover, leaving Lauren's Mum Ross in charge of the house and the cats. A clear run to the Channel Tunnel was spoiled somewhat when I picked the wrong lane (supermarket-checkout stylee) and we had to wait five minutes whilst the owners a pair of camper vans faffed at the automatic check in. The upshot of this was that, despite arriving at the same time, Pete and Liz got onto a crossing half an hour ahead of us.
Undeterred we whizzed through and played catch up, meeting the others in the Etap hotel at Berck (silly place names being the basis for much of our route planning). Unerringly finding a restaurant where they spoke no English we were forced to dredge up the French vocab that none of us had used for a year and did surprisingly well (to the extent that we actually received what we thought we had ordered.)
The next day we drove through Normandy towards Caen - the weather was bright enough to have the roof off the car but chilly enough that we kept the heater on! Buzzing through lovely twisty French A-roads with The Chain playing on the stereo reminded me exactly why I love these driving holidays...
By Sunday we'd reached the Normandy D-Day beaches and realised from the multitude of uniformed tourists that we were less than a week from the anniversary date. Successfully navigating our way South-West we reached Bayeux and took a look at the tapestry embroidery (ask Lauren) before ending the day in Granville (silly names again).
Monday was Impressive Architecture Day since we started with a trip to Mon St Michel, the medieval fortified island just off the coast. Having climbed all the way to the top and back again we drove South to Fourgeres where we found a huge semi-ruined chateau that dominated the town. Before attempting yet more stairs (Mont St Michel has a lot) we stopped to re-vitalise ourselves with a picnic in the grounds.
A quick burn along the motorway to Brest in the fog ended the day. French roads are brilliant - there seems to be a lot more of them for a lot fewer cars compared to here. In addition to this their lane discipline is better, with drivers sticking to the inside lane when not overtaking and lorries and caravans are restricted from the entering the fast lane on steep sections of road. This fact alone makes them a work of genius in my book, without going into sensible roadwork design and speed restrictions and matrix boards that don't broadcast condescending messages when they've actually got nothing to say but just display the time instead.
When we got to Quimper (via a couple of picturesque village stops at Morgut and Crozon) things had got a lot warmer. We took a look around France's Cleanest Cathedral and had a break for lunch. Then it was on to Vannes to stop for the night.
The next morning we went to take a look at Carnac, having heard mixed reviews as to whether the standing stones are as good as they're made out to be. Size-wise maybe not, but there are a hell of a lot of the buggers. We entertained ourselves by getting lost down promising-looking footpaths and making up theories for why the stones were put there in the first place. Lunch was in a fantastic looking restaurant where we had a couple of unfortunate misunderstandings - mine and Lauren's being "how bad can spicy tripe sausage be?" and discovering the answer to be "very" and Pete receiving a crepe full of semi-raw egg which kind of spoiled his appetite seeing as he hadn't ordered this and ain't the world's foremost egg lover. Nevertheless the Tumulus hidden away in the woods nearby was well worth the 1 Euro entry fee.
Our happy-go-lucky approach to hotel rooms (i.e. turning up at the local Etap and hoping for the best) backfired when we got to Cholet and discovered no rooms were available at any of the various big hotel chains in town. When the first small hotel recommended to us turned out to be full as well we ended up in a tiny village called Jallais, where the place we were staying turned out to be the only place to eat as well. Flouting the "no eating in the rooms" rule on the basis that we could claim to be ignorant English types who couldn't understand the sign we picnic'd in our room and skipped the dodgy menu that was on offer.
Thursday was Puy Du Fou day. I was slightly nervous about this since we'd made the trip into the Loire Valley to visit this theme park on my recommendation, based on visit a couple of years back. It didn't disappoint however, with the initial falconry show being the highlight of the visit, but the Vikings, Gladiators and Knights set pieces all proving spectacular. The only slightly strange production was the "Three Musketeers" show which turned out to be about five minutes of sword fighting followed by another half hour of bizarre dancing and pageantry. Very French though.
Mileage-wise we were two thirds of the way by now and stopped in Angers for the evening. Another full Etap meant that we dug deep into our wallets to pay for a stay in the city centre Hotel d'Anjou. Very nice though, with underground parking and air conditioned rooms! This meant that the next morning we were able to stroll the short distance to Angers Castle which is huge, despite the turrets actually having been reduced in size to transform them into artillery platforms a couple of hundred years back.
The penultimate stop was in the gorgeous little seaside town of Honfleur which is just down the road from the Pont du Normandy which we had crossed in the other direction a week earlier. Despite being a complete tourist trap it was a fantastic place to visit and having missed our chance to take a boat trip when we were at carnac we hopped onto a tourist trip which took us out to see the bridge. Impressive, but not terribly picturesque since it's surrounded by industrial dockland! We stopped at Abbeville to fill the cars up with cheap French booze and then continued North.
Our last hotel was another Etap at Calaise, spitting distance from the Tunnel in preparation for our early crossing back to Blighty. After a mysterious battery failure on my TVR meant that we required a jumpstart we made it to the train on time, hoping that a quick buzz up adn down the motorway would have charged it up enough to start again on the other side. It hadn't, and a few panicky minutes of connecting jump leads again whilst other passengers cars queued behind us to get out meant that the cars hadn't failed in their reputation of being "quirky"! Then it was the familiar old M2 and back to Norwich for lunch, home after 1735 miles of holiday.
More pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/csburdett/LeMidiTour2007.
On Friday we set off to Dover, leaving Lauren's Mum Ross in charge of the house and the cats. A clear run to the Channel Tunnel was spoiled somewhat when I picked the wrong lane (supermarket-checkout stylee) and we had to wait five minutes whilst the owners a pair of camper vans faffed at the automatic check in. The upshot of this was that, despite arriving at the same time, Pete and Liz got onto a crossing half an hour ahead of us.
Undeterred we whizzed through and played catch up, meeting the others in the Etap hotel at Berck (silly place names being the basis for much of our route planning). Unerringly finding a restaurant where they spoke no English we were forced to dredge up the French vocab that none of us had used for a year and did surprisingly well (to the extent that we actually received what we thought we had ordered.)
The next day we drove through Normandy towards Caen - the weather was bright enough to have the roof off the car but chilly enough that we kept the heater on! Buzzing through lovely twisty French A-roads with The Chain playing on the stereo reminded me exactly why I love these driving holidays...
By Sunday we'd reached the Normandy D-Day beaches and realised from the multitude of uniformed tourists that we were less than a week from the anniversary date. Successfully navigating our way South-West we reached Bayeux and took a look at the tapestry embroidery (ask Lauren) before ending the day in Granville (silly names again).
Monday was Impressive Architecture Day since we started with a trip to Mon St Michel, the medieval fortified island just off the coast. Having climbed all the way to the top and back again we drove South to Fourgeres where we found a huge semi-ruined chateau that dominated the town. Before attempting yet more stairs (Mont St Michel has a lot) we stopped to re-vitalise ourselves with a picnic in the grounds.
A quick burn along the motorway to Brest in the fog ended the day. French roads are brilliant - there seems to be a lot more of them for a lot fewer cars compared to here. In addition to this their lane discipline is better, with drivers sticking to the inside lane when not overtaking and lorries and caravans are restricted from the entering the fast lane on steep sections of road. This fact alone makes them a work of genius in my book, without going into sensible roadwork design and speed restrictions and matrix boards that don't broadcast condescending messages when they've actually got nothing to say but just display the time instead.
When we got to Quimper (via a couple of picturesque village stops at Morgut and Crozon) things had got a lot warmer. We took a look around France's Cleanest Cathedral and had a break for lunch. Then it was on to Vannes to stop for the night.
The next morning we went to take a look at Carnac, having heard mixed reviews as to whether the standing stones are as good as they're made out to be. Size-wise maybe not, but there are a hell of a lot of the buggers. We entertained ourselves by getting lost down promising-looking footpaths and making up theories for why the stones were put there in the first place. Lunch was in a fantastic looking restaurant where we had a couple of unfortunate misunderstandings - mine and Lauren's being "how bad can spicy tripe sausage be?" and discovering the answer to be "very" and Pete receiving a crepe full of semi-raw egg which kind of spoiled his appetite seeing as he hadn't ordered this and ain't the world's foremost egg lover. Nevertheless the Tumulus hidden away in the woods nearby was well worth the 1 Euro entry fee.
Our happy-go-lucky approach to hotel rooms (i.e. turning up at the local Etap and hoping for the best) backfired when we got to Cholet and discovered no rooms were available at any of the various big hotel chains in town. When the first small hotel recommended to us turned out to be full as well we ended up in a tiny village called Jallais, where the place we were staying turned out to be the only place to eat as well. Flouting the "no eating in the rooms" rule on the basis that we could claim to be ignorant English types who couldn't understand the sign we picnic'd in our room and skipped the dodgy menu that was on offer.
Thursday was Puy Du Fou day. I was slightly nervous about this since we'd made the trip into the Loire Valley to visit this theme park on my recommendation, based on visit a couple of years back. It didn't disappoint however, with the initial falconry show being the highlight of the visit, but the Vikings, Gladiators and Knights set pieces all proving spectacular. The only slightly strange production was the "Three Musketeers" show which turned out to be about five minutes of sword fighting followed by another half hour of bizarre dancing and pageantry. Very French though.
Mileage-wise we were two thirds of the way by now and stopped in Angers for the evening. Another full Etap meant that we dug deep into our wallets to pay for a stay in the city centre Hotel d'Anjou. Very nice though, with underground parking and air conditioned rooms! This meant that the next morning we were able to stroll the short distance to Angers Castle which is huge, despite the turrets actually having been reduced in size to transform them into artillery platforms a couple of hundred years back.
The penultimate stop was in the gorgeous little seaside town of Honfleur which is just down the road from the Pont du Normandy which we had crossed in the other direction a week earlier. Despite being a complete tourist trap it was a fantastic place to visit and having missed our chance to take a boat trip when we were at carnac we hopped onto a tourist trip which took us out to see the bridge. Impressive, but not terribly picturesque since it's surrounded by industrial dockland! We stopped at Abbeville to fill the cars up with cheap French booze and then continued North.
Our last hotel was another Etap at Calaise, spitting distance from the Tunnel in preparation for our early crossing back to Blighty. After a mysterious battery failure on my TVR meant that we required a jumpstart we made it to the train on time, hoping that a quick buzz up adn down the motorway would have charged it up enough to start again on the other side. It hadn't, and a few panicky minutes of connecting jump leads again whilst other passengers cars queued behind us to get out meant that the cars hadn't failed in their reputation of being "quirky"! Then it was the familiar old M2 and back to Norwich for lunch, home after 1735 miles of holiday.
More pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/csburdett/LeMidiTour2007.