Cosy (koh-see) adj: comfortable, warm, snug, a little home…….Eileen.
After a day of sad reflection and a fun and friendly evening, we decided to make Wednesday a day to put some mileage under our belts. The temperatures had dropped considerably on Tuesday evening and when we woke up it was only 18°C; the heatwave had broken. We drove in an almost perfect north-westerly direction, along very straight flat roads, passing endless cultivated fields. It is amazing how much maize is grown in France (sorry that was a line from Rodney that had to go in) and whenever we passed a field of sunflowers, it was such a cheerful sight. After three hours we broke our journey just west of Nantes for lunch and then it was back on the road again towards Vannes. It was cool and overcast all day with a sky that looked thoroughly overloaded with pale grey clouds and when we crossed the border into Brittany, the weather felt thoroughly British.
It’s funny what you think about in the quiet moments on long journeys. Rodney and I are wondering if we should have an occupation. When we used to hand in our form at the airport, Rodney would put ‘seaman’ (thankfully correctly spelt) in the occupation box. In recent years it has seemed almost exciting being able to put ‘retired’ in the box; it seems to have been so long awaited to be able to proudly write that in. But now it seems a bit……hollow? We can’t put ‘fireman’, or ‘nuclear scientist’, we’re definitely not qualified for either. If you work for MI5 or the CIA can you put ‘spy’ in the occupation box, I wonder? So perhaps now ‘European Driver Extraordinaire’ would look good for Rodney; sounds a bit more interesting than just ‘retired’. But am I qualified to put ‘writer’ as my new occupation; does writing 246 entries on our website, with pretty pictures, give me enough accreditation? We’re also both very accomplished at people watching nowadays, so maybe we’ll both put ‘spy’ in those little boxes on any forms that want to know what we do…..
By the time we reached Vannes, we decided to creep a little further and get to Carnac on Brittany’s south coast, a town that claims to be Europe’s oldest town, for quite a remarkable reason. We drove down to the seafront where everyone was wrapped up in their fleecy jumpers and looking decidedly cold. We didn’t join them. Instead we drove round to the 6,000-year old Carnac Alignments, a pretty amazing Neolithic site. There are rows and rows of menhirs, or standing stones, that travel across the countryside for quite a long distance. We parked Eileen near to the western end of them at Le Ménec and went for a stroll. One of them, the Géant du Ménec is over 3.5 metres high; hopefully those ancient people didn’t have to move that one. Further west there are thirteen rows of them traversing the countryside at Kerlescan and I have to say they were fascinating to see, plus you have to wonder why they were put there.
Just up the road we found Camping Les Bruyères, perfectly placed to settle into before it got any later. I spent the rest of the day busily typing, while Rodney researched where to go next and suddenly it was 10 o’clock. The sky was still light and I thought it was only about 9:15pm, but we had come so much further north and west, that we were thrown by the difference in daylight hours.
The next morning, I had another surprise when I stepped out on to damp grass; it’s been a long time since we saw any morning dew on the ground. It was a rather late 9:30am departure for us on Thursday, but the sun was shining and the air was refreshing. On route we spotted a campervan by the side of the freeway with a recovery vehicle in attendance. They had beside them an illuminated sign which read ‘véhicule en panne’ which I translated as ‘vehicle in pain’, though on checking the dictionary it actually means ‘vehicle breakdown’. For us as fellow campervan owners we feel that my translation is more in tune with how the van and its owners must feel…..
Pont Aven must win the award for ‘village with the most art galleries in a small place’; almost every shop was an artist’s showroom. Paul Gauguin apparently took many sojourns in the village and this has obviously inspired many other artists to set up in this pretty place. It also has rather an excess of watermills, there were fourteen, we didn’t spot that many there nowadays, and certainly none still functioning as mills, though they do make rather attractive restaurants, cafes and shops nowadays. We had a rather nice seafood lunch with ‘small vegetables’ on the stone terrace of Le Moulin du Grande Poulguin; the small vegetables turned out to be tiny little grated bits of carrots in the sauce, not peas as we had imagined. One other excess of the area seems to be biscuits, buttery biscuits which are all very nice. One shop had so many plates of samples to taste that we nearly didn’t want any lunch, they are rather yummy.
Our next stop was at Konk Kerne, with a name like that you can’t pass by. Most of the road signs in Brittany are in French and Breton which, like Wales, always adds to the confusion when trying to spot directions whilst driving. The Breton town of Konk Kerne, labelled in French as Concarneau, had us doing one and a half circuits of the doubly-named town, trying to find somewhere to park when all the signs said ‘no campervans’. Finally, just near the fishing port, we parked beside the road with no ticket to pay; that will do nicely. We walked round to the Ville Close, which is basically a small village surrounded by high walls on an island in the middle of the harbour, a wonderful set up. Though very touristy it had a lovely feel to it, especially as the sun was out and the chocolate orange ice cream was one of the best I’ve ever had! We also bought four delicious very buttery Kouign Amann cakes, I have no idea how you pronounce that, but later on we did know exactly how to eat them.
By now it was close to 6 o’clock, so we drove further west to Benodet and checked in to Camping du Poulquer in Benodet, almost every van in our section is British, maybe we are in Britain and not in Brittany.
This was our last two-nighter, so in the morning we got everything possible into the washing machine and played catch-up for a few hours, while everything flapped and dried in the sunshine. Later in the morning, we unstrapped the bikes and set off along the corniche to Benodet village. We turned off a little early and ended up missing the main part of the village, finding ourselves on the far side, where the Odet River starts to meander inland. A path followed the river for about a kilometre past the marina full of beautiful yachts and just past them were a couple of boats not looking very shipshape at all.
A ham and cheese crepe at the Creperie de Benodet proved to be a perfect light lunch, but then we overdid it…….with a chocolate pear crepe for me and a banana caramel crepe for Rodney, they were darn good though. To burn off the calories, we cycled round the corniche to the long crescent beach, spread our towels out and lay down for an hour. We hadn’t been to a beach since we were at Collioure a month ago and we didn’t expect to get the chance again until we got back to Sydney, so it was a nice change from street strolling. Only problem, the sea was freezing, so we did burn off two, or maybe three calories, back at the campsite pool late in the afternoon.
