Bretagne to Normandie – Saint-Valery en Caux

With still nearly a week left of our trip, it was finally time to turn around and head back towards Calais. In our previous lives we’d have only had a week or two in total for any trip. We’ll be out for five weeks this time, and I have to remind myself how fortunate we are to be able to tour in our motorhome for these extended periods of time. We’d looked at the cost of getting the ferry back from St Malo, but in the end we decided to drive back up to Calais and stop at a few places along the way.

Our last night in Port Louis was a noisy one. As night fell, drums started banging. Lots of people, playing lots of drums! Then whistles in time to the drums and cheers at the end of each ‘song’. It sounded like one of those corporate team building events we used to have to take part in, but it was Friday night. As 10pm rolled around, we figured it would stop, but no. Around 10.30pm the drums went a bit quieter, we suspect they moved inside as it was getting chilly. Finally around 11 peace returned to the aire. Or so we thought. Whoever was doing the drumming decided to carry on chatting and shouting until around 4am. Fortunately they had now moved further away from us, but they still managed to keep us awake.

The following morning with bleary eyes I headed out for a run. Reaching a view over to Lorient I stopped to take a photo. By the time I’d put my camera away the view of Lorient had almost disappeared into a thick fog bank which was heading in my direction. Needless to say, it was one of my fastest runs back to the van in a while as I struggle to navigate my way around even when I can see! Safely back at Zagan the fog missed Port Louis and we were baked in sunshine. Hearing a booming fog horn, I went to look out over the harbour expecting to see a cruise ship setting off, but there was nothing. The wall I was stood next to followed the coast then disappeared, and there was no sign of Lorient, just a couple of kilometers away across the bay.

We used the free Breton motorways to whisk us to the town of Fougères to the east of Rennes. We’d been here before, over ten years ago, in the first week of out year-long trip of a lifetime. What a first week that was. Our only plan was to turn right at Calais and travel for a year, but before we’d even left England we’d lost the main skylight of the van and discovered that our fridge didn’t work on gas so our stash of British bacon and cheddar cheese was gone, disaster! We’d caught the ferry anyway, and managed to get both fixed at a motorhome dealer near Honfleur. Suddenly our budget was a fair bit smaller, but we were finally off on our adventure.

As we walked around Fougères we both realised that our memories of the place were very different from how it actually is. For a start it’s much nicer than we remember, but then in those days we didn’t have maps.me or unlimited access to the internet to find out good places to go. Also we both thought that the aire we stopped in was right under the chateau walls, but it wasn’t. It was certainly free when we visited, but now you have to pay for that aire in the daytime, so instead of that aire, we chose a car park near the town’s other aire, slightly further out for a free night (N48.356911, W1.20153).

There were around 15 motorhomes scattered across the two areas of the car park. There were also lots of people running and cycling as the car park sits on a via verde – an old train line that is now a walking and cycling path that stretches for over 30 kilometres. It would have been great for my long run of the week, but this was just a quick overnight stop, so I’ll have to save that for another trip.

Unfortunately our sleep was again interrupted, not by drums or cars flying around the huge car park, but by a group of lads who were just sitting on a picnic bench and laughing and chatting with the odd bit of shouting until 2am. It’s one of the joys of motorhome life, you do get to experience what people get up to in car parks in the early hours. We had a bit of a lie in the following morning, before hitting the road. As it was going to be a 300km odd run, we opted to use the toll roads to make life a bit easier for ourselves. Well I say easier, Jay has a sore shoulder at the moment, so it really hurts him to reach the automated toll booths. They have a high one for lorries and a low one for cars, but of course we’re in the middle. So I had fun clambering over him to pay for us, and I’m sure he overshot the booths slightly more each time to see how far I could reach.

With all these miles it was soon time to fill up with diesel. Thankfully the French government have reduced fuel prices by 30c a litre and Total Energies have knocked an additional 20c off at their stations. So while we normally fill up at a supermarket station, Total are now cheaper than the supermarkets. The down side is a lot of them are out of fuel all the time, but we managed to hunt one down and brim off Zagan’s tank at €1.70 (£1.47) a litre – yes folks we treated him to some Excellium. We have no idea how much fuel is at home at the moment, but if we can find another Total, I think we’ll fill up again before we head over the channel.

Arriving at Saint-Valery en Caux we followed the signs for Camping Car parking, and ignored little yellow home-made looking signs offering the same. We knew the aire we were aiming for was right on the sea front, so didn’t want to go to any others. As we reached the port area the bridge in front of us lifted up to let boats out from the marina, at this point Jay realised that we were on the right side of the harbour for the aire and shouldn’t be crossing the bridge. Then we spotted a sign for the aire, which was pointed down a closed road.

As the bridge continued to rise, we swung around and I grabbed my phone to work out an alternative route to the aire. It turned out to be quite a long way around and taking in some of France’s finest narrow roads, some of which had cars parked down the side of them. We’re not a long motorhome, but at times like this we feel really wide.

Several kilometres later we arrived back at the harbourside, all of 20 metres away from where we’d done the u-turn at the lifting bridge. It turns out that the small yellow home-made signs we had seen on the way in were the diversion signs, but there wasn’t anything to tell us that’s what they were until you had already diverted. At leaset we’re not the only ones, as we have walked around the town we’ve seen numerous lost looking motorhomes having crossed the bridge.

Arriving at the aire – which we now remember we’d tried to visit in 2012 but it was full – we were a tad wrung out after those last few kilometres. We squeezed into a comedy tight space where we could only just get our habiation door open, but that was made up for by the sea view out of the windscreen.

We’re in Normandie now with its red brick and locally-sourced stone houses, as opposed to the granite we saw across Bretange. We went for a walk around the town and ended up at a couple of monuments on the cliffs overlooking the town, one was to the first people who flew from Paris to New York (it seems this was the last point they were above French soil). The other was to the 51st Highland Division who were forced to surrender here in June 1940 after the boat that was supposed to evacuate them didn’t make it due to fog. We’ve visited countless war grave cemeteries on our travels, they’re mainly filled with graves of the British or Americans, but here alongside those graves are over 200 French graves, nearly all from a two week period in June 1940.

Jay is fascinated by all things war and told me countless tales of how the Scottish came to be here, why there are French graves in the war cemetary and how 89 American soldiers were killed here and 152 injured in January 1945. It wasn’t a bombing or battle, simply they had arrived in Le Havre and were being transported overnight to Saint-Valery en Caux. Unfortunately the train they were being transported in was overloaded and the brakes failed on its way down hill into the town, the engine bursting through the train station and the 45 box carts being used to transport the soldiers piled up behind it. They’d been in France for only around six hours.

We’ve had a lovely couple of days relaxing and wandering around the pretty town. We’ve sat and watched boats go in and out of the harbour and marvelled how its entance contains no water at 9am, then is almost lapping the edge of the massive harbour walls by 3pm (the area where the boats are moored is protected by huge gates to keep the water in at low tide).

This afternoon we had a ‘Menu’, which consisted of three courses, a drink and a coffee all for €16.50 each, I’m sure we’d never get anything like that back home.

I’d happily stay here another few days, but unfortunately we need to move on tomorrow and get a bit closer to Calais for our ferry on Thursday morning. However if we’re back this way in the future, and there’s space in the aire (today the front row filled up by 11am, the rest of it by noon and there’s been a steady stream of motorhomes driving in and leaving because it’s full – which must be gutting after driving that diversion) I’d certainly stop here again.

Ju x