Well well, we arrived at ‘The Well in Fennel’. Le Petit Puis in La Fenoulier, Julia & Kevin’s holiday home in France. It’s a pretty name; certainly prettier than say ‘The Bucket in Garlic’ and we had a pretty good time there. Their daughter Hannah arrived a day later than us, flying in on Monday evening and the five of us enjoyed a week of endless chatter, eating well, getting jobs done, visiting beaches, shops and markets, the boys played golf and we all had a lot of late nights. Hannah taught us, and beat us all constantly at, the French card game ‘Mille Bornes’; always love a new game. On Wednesday morning we borrowed their car to get into busy St Gilles Croix de Vie. It was a bit weird sitting in the gutter on the right-hand side with no steering wheel in front of me. And Rodney found it strange to be sitting on the left on the centre line and still have a steering wheel. We had a Pommie Aussie, driving a Dutch car, in France; thoroughly international but a little bizarre.
On Wednesday evening we ate our dinner sitting amongst the sand dunes at Plage de la Sauzaie near Brétignoles sur Mer. We were intending to watch the sun set, but at 9:30pm it was still nowhere near the horizon, so we passed on staying in the sand too late. On Thursday Julia and Kevin drove us up to Nantes for the day where we checked out the Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne and the restored Cathédrale St Pierre and St Paul. We ate a simple quiche ‘menu de dia’ lunch and then strolled through the old town for a while.
Rodney and I then spent a number of hours visiting Les Machines de L Ȋle which was quite an eye opener. For many years I’ve wanted to see their creations up close and we finally had the chance to do so. Nantes is the birthplace of Jules Verne and the mechanical sculptures being created in the enormous workshops on the banks of the Loire River are a fitting tribute to his imagination. The first machine to come to life was the Grand Éléphant in 2007. It is made of steel and tulip wood, is three times the size of a fully-grown elephant and carries up to fifty people as it strolls slowly around the old shipyards.
We didn’t have time to ride the elephant, but it was brilliant watching it stride past you, occasionally spraying out water from its trunk at anyone who got too close. We did ride on the Carrousel des Mondes Marins, a huge mechanical aquarium. We picked the top, sea surface, level, sharing a seahorse and pulling levers to make its head, mouth and legs move as we went around and around. It would have been fun to have another ride on the middle level, the abyss, in a prawn or a large fish, floating above the smaller seabed creatures on the bottom level. In fact, it would have been nice to spend a lot more time going around and round staring at the movement of all the sea creatures around you.
The workshops are open to have a look at the builders working on their next project and there is a short film explaining a lot about the company included in the ticket. Then there is the Galerie des Machines which is laid out like an enormous greenhouse with real plants hanging and spreading about amongst some fabulous creatures and mechanical plants. There is a giant ant, a huge caterpillar that creeps along a rail and lots of other peculiar beasts. Above it all hangs a beautiful heron with an eight-metre wingspan carrying two baskets big enough to carry an adult. Two operators climb aboard the bird and it spreads its wings and flies above the audience; it is fascinating to watch. This will apparently become part of the current scheme to build the Arbre aux Herons, a massive tree 35m high, where you will be able to walk along some of the 22 branches and have a drink in a café that will be hung amongst the branches. Two herons will fly on and off nests at the top of the tree.
Les Machines de L Ȋle is definitely a place worth going back to in a few years’ time; I would love to see what other fantasies they will create in the future.
On our last night, Hannah’s 19th birthday we had dinner at 46 ème Parallèle. The stylish restaurant overlooks the entry to the estuary in to St Gilles Croix de Vie, right opposite the jetty for the ferry to the L Ȋle de Yeu, and every dish of the three courses was a spectacular creation. I’ve got the recipe for the green papaya salad entrée, so I have to try and re-create it, it was so very tasty.
On Sunday morning, with Eileen looking rested, clean, polished and shiny, we said our fond farewells, checked the date for meeting up again at Buckingham Palace and set off to……… the supermarket. We stocked up on supplies for our last 2 ½ days in France and then set off in the direction of north. For the first two hours of our journey the other side of the road was crawling with traffic heading for the Vendee coastline. We were very glad to be going in the opposite direction as it didn’t really clear until we turned off the N137 towards Châteaubriant. At Pouance we found a nice lake to sit beside for our lunch and then we continued driving until 4:15pm when we arrived at Camping Gué St Léonard in Mayenne.
Seventeen hours later we checked out again and set of north east towards Alençon. I’ve decided there are far too many crucifixes with a dying Jesus hanging around France. A statue of the Madonna can look nice, a plain crucifix looks respectful, but the sight of so many effigies of a cruel and painful death is rather horrific and somewhat depressing.
Strangely we seemed to be passing, or travelling through, a lot of places beginning with a ‘B’; Broglie, Bernay, Boisney, Brionne, Bosrobert and Bosnormand (not sure what they had done wrong), Bourgtheroulde, Bourg-Achard and most of those I really can’t pronounce!
Our last European picnic stop was a brilliant find. Four years ago we stayed in a tiny mediaeval cottage on the banks of the Seine with our friends Lynda, Mark, Caroline and Steve. We realised that the route we were following would actually take us really close to the village of Heurteauville, in fact it was only a 2km slip off the main road down to the river. We had such a lovely holiday there in 2010 that it was really nice to go back and reminisce. We parked just past the cottage and watched the little ferry transport a constant stream of vehicles across the Seine to Jumieges and remembered how the noise of the first ferry plonking down its metal ramp on to the concrete slipway would wake us each morning at 6am. The ferry captain was declining to carry every campervan and caravan that turned up, despite there being no sign to say that they were prohibited. And while we munched on our sandwiches, one campervan chap pulled over beside us to ask if our little van had also been declined and “how on earth was he now supposed to get to the campsite in Jumieges”. He wasn’t happy, but I’m sure he managed to cope with the extra 22kms drive round the big bend in the Seine.
Reminiscing over, we set off north over the Pont de Brotonne to Yvetot, then east to Totes and finally north to Dieppe. Numerous tractors and combine harvesters were plodding up and down every road we took. At one point we passed a convoy of six massive agricultural vehicles; we managed to overtake them only because they had all pulled over in a lay-by to enable the growing queue of traffic to pass We checked in to Camping Vitamin, strange name and there doesn’t seem to be a pharmacy here…..but it’s a nice place and we have some colourful flowers next to our pitch. Tomorrow we’ll have a lazy start to our last day on mainland Europe and catch the 6pm ferry over to Newhaven. I think we’re both a little sad to know that this is the end of our 2014 life living in Eileen and the freedom that we feel travelling on a whim and looking for wonder in this remarkable world. Now is Rodney really planning another year……..?
