It’s always best to travel hopefully (Rick Stein)
Tuesday 26th April 2022
Tuesday morning hailed the start of our next European jaunt in a motorhome. It had been almost 6 years since we sold our beloved Eileen The Motorhome and we had missed the ‘looking around every corner’ lifestyle.
At 6:35am we drove out through the very fancy but disarmingly narrow gates of South Lytchett Campsite and drove down to the Brittany Ferries terminal in Poole, Dorset. Tickets, passports and vaccination certificates were thoroughly checked and then we drove up the ramp onto the MV Barfleur (1992). Poole Harbour on this sunny morning was beautiful and was quickly added to a long list of places we must come back to one day. Taking photos of the surrounding scenery, from the outside of the upper deck, was freezing. Yet again I wished I had gloves on with my layered fleecy jacket and puffa jacket combination. The channel crossing to France was soothingly calm and sunny, unlike our first trip in 2012 which rock and rolled all the way from Dover to Calais in pouring rain. There were very few folk on board and most of them might have ben travelling like us, because we did see quite a lot of motorhomes boarding the ship. For the first time in 34 days we had no-one to talk to apart from each other. Time to try and remember a bit of French before we arrive at a campsite near Cherbourg!
The ship sailed into the port of Cherbourg et Contentin at 2.30pm local time and we wandered down to the vehicle deck and found Reggie at the very back of the ship; the only vehicle to be sitting outside exposed to the elements. Everyone else’s vehicle was tucked inside. Hmmmph. We hopped in, stowed the duty-free perfume and giant dark Toblerone, plonked ourselves onto our seats ready to drive off and sat unmoving for 20 minutes. We were almost the last vehicle to drive onto Franceland.
Following a truck in front of us helped to keep us on the ‘wrong side’ of the road, until he turned off, but by then we were both tuned into keeping right. Heading east we drove along the north coast of the Cherbourg peninsula, pulling up at Camping L’Anse du Brick. It’s a fabulous campsite, terraced up the hill from the beach and with lovely views across the bay. The sea is a mix of turquoise and blue and the hills behind are yellow from the flowering gorse that covers them. We settled Reggie into pitch 16A and then went for a short stroll down to the beach and up onto the eastern hill. There’s a lovely restaurant next door, La Maison Rouge, and it tempted us to wander over after 7pm. The three-course meal was delicious with a lovely cheerful waiter who advised very well on the food and wine choices and when we finally left the restaurant at 9:15pm, the sun still hadn’t set! It would have been nice to go for another stroll, but we were tired from the 6am start and the food and wine had made us both drowsy, so we jiggled around with the seat cushions, pushed the button to bring the bed lower, set up the ladder and footstool, then hopped into bed for our first sleep in Europe.
Wednesday 27th April 2022
We didn’t wake up until past 8am, so we must have slept well. A very late breakfast was followed by hours of downloading and sorting photos, moving things around the van to make life simpler. The underwear is in the lounge, the clothes are in the bathroom, the food is in the fridge, two cupboards in the kitchen and also in the bathroom; it’s all a bit mad and very different from being in Eileen, but we’ll get into the swing of things. I hope. Because I’m getting a bit bored of the constant wail from both of us…..”where have I put the ..…insert lost item here’.
At 2pm we could feel the need to ‘look around a corner’ and set off down to the beach and headed east along the coastal trail, The Chemin du Littoral, to Pointe du Brulay and onwards to Cap Levi. We walked out to the old fort and then took a different route back via Fermanville and up over the gorse covered hill back to Anse du Brick. It was probably a good 7 or 8kms walk and gave us a good appetite for a moussaka dinner, showers and another early night.
