16 - 190902
Souillac; Limoges; Poitiers; Parthenay; Cholet; Nantes; BRITTANY, Auray; Carnac.
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We enjoyed travelling through the wooded hills which are reminiscent of inland Cornwall, Devon and Somerset with great rolling dipping straights on the RNs as we moved further west and into maritime Brittany.
At some midpoint that day Jo noticed that the Zig unit had shut down, (thereby disabling the fridge, water pump, interior lights and sockets). In the engine compartment I found a blown fuse, bought two replacements at the first garage we came to and fitted one. Back in action - total holiday expenditure on repairs - €1.50, (say 40p), for the one fuse.
This was another too-long-really day. On such days, before I became completely boggled, (and whether or not the navigator wanted to), I would stop and plead for coffee, but it generally hadn't seemed to revive me much at all. I think it was only on this day that I discovered I'd been drinking decaffeinated coffee throughout the holiday.
I'd been to Carnac 30 years ago and thought I remembered that the alignments of stones sort of wade out into the sea. They don't, but they must do somewhere, surely, because I have a clear image of standing stones "marching" down a beach into a sunset sea. Help!
On 121004, (two years late!), Keith Morris sent me the first answer: L'îlot d'Er Lannic, Morbihan, Brittany may well be exactly what I had in mind. The puzzling thing is though, in this life, I've never been there.
".....Certains menhirs reposent à 1,5m sous le niveau des plus basses mers actuelles. Compte tenu des marées, cela suppose un niveau marin inférieur d’au moins 6m lors de leur implantation."
Now that's what I call global climate change.
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We were disappointed to find that the stones are fenced in most of the way along, (to stop them from escaping?).
The visitor centre, Archeoscope, was closed. No wonder - it was so late that Jo needed the lights on to see what she was cooking.
170902: Carnac; Auray; Quimper; Pointe du Raz; Douarnenez; Carhaix Plouguer; Guingamp; Pontrieux.
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We
returned to Archeoscope and went inside
to book an English language tour of whatever they have inside the semi-
underground building there. We'd
missed the start of their morning tour by 15 mins.
We walked into a very large circle of stones which stand at the very end of the lines. Within the circle are old buildings, farm-related originally, I guess. If you have half an ounce of sensitivity you will notice and enjoy a most spookily pleasant, relaxed and quiet "vibe" within this circle, not unlike that within the modern stone circle at the Glastonbury festival site, (No, really, it was only cider). |
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We drove off east along the rows of stones. Calculations vary but there are very nearly 3000 large standing stones here. Every so often there are large gaps in the rows.
Part way along we came upon another visitor centre and walked straight into a minor French Revolution, (see www.menhirslibres.org - I promised the folks there that I would put this link up).
The building and a large segment of the alignments had been taken over! The demonstrators believe that the natural moorland vegetation around the stones should be conserved AND that the public should have free and unrestricted access. The complaint, and well-founded it would seem to be, is that they don't want the prehistory of Carnac to be turned into Menhirland, (as in Disneyland), (as in Archeoscope, which they ask tourists not to visit, so - good job we'd got there late then!).
It seems that on 051002 there was a demonstration in front of the town hall in Carnac.
Every few miles Brittany kept reminding me of the run from Sennybridge to Llandovery, (oh, allright, Pont Senni to Llanymyddfri), on the A40, of west Wales generally and of Western Ireland and of the less tourist-tacky parts of Cornwall.
I sense that Brittany is a very proud place, delighting in its letter Ks and its bilingual road signs. When we return I'll be tempted to put a Cymru sticker onto the van and fake up our Celtic connection.
Brittany with the vernacular architecture of its cottages and the almost complete absence of industrial ugliness is certainly very smart, almost neat.
We do like collecting furthest west points, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and now Brittany. The Pointe du Raz was very busy, but well worth the visit. Oddly enough one drove into the parking area for free and had to pay €5 to get out!
I can almost smell still the windfall cider apples at the campsite at Pontrieux. It was a very good one, similar, (but without the New Age-type stone structures), to the site at Sneem on the Ring of Kerry. It was only here that I managed to translate an infrequently seen road sign, "Roulez Au Pas", drive at walking speed, because the campsite owners had painted a snail in front of "Pas".
180902: Pontrieux; St Brieuc; Dinan; Avranches; Caen/ Ouistreham.
A grey morning and an uneventful day travelling steadily on fast roads. In Ouistreham we filled up with diesel and shopped for odd stuff like tinned endives and salsify, Normandy cider, cheap chocolate & white haricot beans in tomato sauce.
Back again on Les Hautes Coutures campsite we dried out the awning. It was starting to smell like a rabbit hutch after four days squashed up and wet with early morning, (Dordogne!), condensation.
Never since I was a child have I so much wanted a holiday not to end.
190902: Ouistreham; Portsmouth; Lancaster.
The van was lighter when we'd left England, (with the bluster of Bush and Blair in our ears, reports of imminent plagues of mosquitoes in central Europe and the World Summit making little progress in Johannesburg).
Have you ever tried to look at Britain as if you were on your first visit here from France? Take the most direct route between Portsmouth and central Lancashire and you will see some OK scenery over the Berkshire Downs and some pleasant woodland in Staffordshire and that's it! The Forest of Bowland is the first real sight for sore eyes. The rest varies between grim and boring and in the same way that France seemed to be a very big country, England, and especially its roads, seemed to be very cramped.
We returned home to the bluster of Bush and Blair, mosquitoes in Northern England, (really, but they didn't bite us, yet), and the World Summit having made very little progress in Johannesburg.
Ah, well, at least I hadn't bought any Esso.
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Map - We used Michelin's Tourist and Motoring Atlas 2002, 1cm throughout the holiday. All but one of the autoroutes shown as being under construction were already open. You might want an even smaller scale for areas where you're spending a long time, but 1:200,000 was adequate for us. Road signing - very, very good, (after a few minutes familiarization). A competent navigator is damned useful, but still N.B 120902, Toulouse. The Michelin Green Guide is informative, (and popular with the French), but on several occasions I found it to have too little or no information on places I was wanting to learn about, but then it's a small book for a big country. Roads Péage isn't too expensive and it's a good way to cover the miles quickly, but you might as well be sitting in a low flying helicopter for what feeling you might get for the areas through which you travel. Much the same are the modern(ised) dual carriageway routes nationales. Nowhere did we find road surfaces any worse than one might normally encounter in Britain. But for the fact that one of our front shock absorbers is squeaky I'd have been disappointed at the shortage of chaussé deformé. Language - In 1974 this web weaver failed his A level French. On this holiday he got by, easily. (N.B. The French generally don't speak English - and indeed why should they?). Here's a good on-line dictionary: example - rouler transitive and intransitive verb, roll (along or about); transitive verb figuratively turn over (in one's mind); colloquial, cheat (someone); colloquial, rouler sa bosse knock about the world; se rouler roll (up); intransitive verb travel; motoring run; motoring drive; commerce circulate (money); figuratively rouler sur turn on (conversation). Campsites generally top quality with loads of facilities, no sites more expensive that Britain's and in September often very much cheaper and sometimes less than a quarter full. We did no "wild" camping, (as if we really could in a vehicle like this), nor did we see anyone else doing it. The crossing with Brittany Ferries cost a lot, £307. (The RAC quoted £317 for the same crossing). |
The RAC wanted £227 to provide cover in Europe. Stuff that - have some faith, I thought. And we did and it worked, but if we'd been made unroadworthy in a collision we'd have been badly stuck! Route Planning - The routes shown aren't too detailed, because details can be very boring and it's more fun to plan routes yourself! Ours were made up daily. (Spike Milligan, "We haven't got a plan, so nothing can go wrong!"). Driving on the right - is easy with clear views all around and over every car and smaller van. I found it very much easier than driving a locally hired left-hand drive vehicle, but having a competent driver in the front passenger seat is invaluable when it comes to judging distances and speeds for overtakes, [especially in what is really a SUPV, ( Slightly Under - Powered Vehicle)]. Diesel, (aka Gazole), cost about half the UK price, (not green by any means, but Britain's is no greener because our government doesn't seem to use the extra revenue to fund green ventures). And bear in mind that when the Brits are abroad we are representing the "Dirty Man of Europe". (Makes you proud, doesn't it). It seemed that a significant majority of French- owned vehicles are dirty old diesel- powered. I don't even pretend to understand high finance, and the Greens say we should stay out of the Single European Currency, but how the hell can changing to Euro coins and bank notes adversely effect our British sovereignty? (Sovereignty: supremacy of authority or rule as exercised by a sovereign or sovereign state; royal rank, authority, or power; complete independence and self-government; a territory existing as an independent state). Food - the French have a slowly improving concept of vegetarianism and organic stuff is in the supermarkets, etc. French shoppers very reasonably seem not to suffer from a desperate need for all their fruit and veg to look like uniformly sized pieces of shiny plastic. Food shopping - Don't worry about the language. If you're bone idle, as we mostly were, you can go into supermarkets, (which of course are very similar to ours), pay with your credit / debit card and if you really so choose, not speak a word to anyone! Leader Price was Jo's favourite food store - she's a demon bargain hunter. |
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