Concarneau and Narbonne Accessories

Owning a motorhome comes with the need to procure and fit a seemingly never-ending stream of new plastic bits. Parts of our rolling homes seem to endlessly snap, smash, fling themselves to the floor, refuse to work, refuse to stop working or discolour.

It’s not their fault, they’re just showing their displeasure with the hammering they were never really designed to take. A chap wrote to me a few weeks back, fed up with the fact a small but important plastic part of his van had broken. I’m sorry to say I wasn’t as sympathetic as I should have been. Stuff breaks on these things. No matter how much you’ve spaffed out on second hand or even a new shiny van, you’ll still be faced with endlessly busted bits and bobs. Pack glue and gaffa tape folks.

We’ve always got a list of stuff that needs fixing, with varying degrees of urgency. At the moment it reads like this, all low-urgency:

• a broken freezer door hinge,
• a sheered-off drain down valve,
• a replacement carbon filter for the SOG unit,
• a new magic bit to make the fridge easier to light,
• a snapped window blind catch,
• replacement grey plastic window lock sliders.

Many moons ago we came across a French specialist motorhome parts shop called Narbonne Accessories. We happened to be in Narbonne at the time, in the south-west of France, but they’ve shops all over the country. Having spotted one on the outskirts of Quimper, we eyeballed their catalogue and it appeared they at least had the SOG unit filter if not the other bits, so over we headed.

We were a tad too optimistic and unprepared and, if I’m honest, tight. Their catalogue (which you can view online here) lists out much more stuff than they have in the shops. They didn’t have the SOG filter, or any of the other SOG unit parts. They don’t do motorhome-specific stuff like the plastic window sliding lock bit we need (figures, they’d need an enormous warehouse of stuff which few people need).

They did have what looked to be the correct hinge, and the fridge switch thing which I think we need, but we weren’t convinced they were the right parts, and we were pretty sure we’d get ’em cheaper online at home. So in the end we just looked around and geeked out on all the Lithium batteries, battery to battery chargers, reversing cameras, air suspension and electric bikes.

The burning hot August sun we sweltered under when we first arrived in France has given way to autumn downpours here in Brittany, and one came just as we legged it across the car park to Zagan. Under heavy skies and occasionally half-blinded by the bucketing rain, we drove across the free dual carriageways to Concarneau.

On the way we passed a Total Energies fuel station with all the prices blanked out and all lanes coned off. Not thinking much of it, Ju later spotted the fact they’ve knocked 20c a litre off their fuel (as a way to give back some of their recent profits, they say), on top of the 30c the government has knocked off at the moment. With almost 45p a litre reduction, they’re proving popular (!) and we’ve since passed another couple of sold-out Total Energies stations.

Concarneau was another recommendation through the blog – thanks again to whoever sent it! Brittany’s 2000km of coastline has so many places to visit we could be at it for months. Having pointers for places to go is reducing our mental overhead when staring at the map and guidebooks. That said, I think we ended up staying somewhere a little distance away from the recommended spot, ending up in a €6-a-night aire a stone’s throw from the sea at Pontic (N47.86337, W3.905562).

The aire again proved popular, overfilled with 20+ motorhomes and campervans. What’s going on? We’re well into September now and the rentrée (back to school) is over, so there should be far fewer vans knocking about. Nope, not what we’re seeing anyway. The stats back this all up. According to the European Caravan Federation, this is what has happened with motorhome registrations across Europe (source article here):

“The motor caravan segment was again extraordinarily successful in 2020, growing by a strong 20.1 percent – despite or because of Corona – and reaching a new high. 159,082 new registrations mark the fifth record year in a row and represent a doubling of 2010.”

So, there are a ton more vans out on the road and they’ve been seriously cranking up year-on-year for half a decade. We can’t complain, we’ve written a range of guidebooks to encourage folks to travel in a motorhome. And even though the French overnight stay network is busy in August and September, we’ve always found a space in our first-choice location. We’re picking places which will be attractive too, for being low-cost and/or well-located, so it’s not saturated by a long shot.

Back to Concarneau, or the much more fun Konk-Kerne in Breton. The aire is set alongside a small wood, and the GR34 coastal path. About a mile walk along the granite rocks fading into the sea brings you to an electric boat ferry. It proved my favourite part of our visit, big kid that I am. The small, silent and modern craft shuttles back and forth across a narrow stretch of sea to a high-walled town set on what used to be an island.

A euro apiece (each way) saved us a miles-long trek around the modern-day fishing and ship repair area at the rear of the bay, although the high-and-dry ships, racing yachts and fishing boats were fascinating to eyeball from the ramparts of the old city.

I’m hesitating to say it, but I can’t help myself. The old, sea-walled town of Concarneau felt to me like Brittany’s version of Croatia’s Dubrovnik. I’m not well qualified to make the comparison, as a combination of parking restrictions and heat thwarted our attempts to get into Dubrovnik. But that was my gut reaction as we walked up the ramp from the boat and into the streets of the medieval Ville Close.

As we walked into the grey granite-streets I’d mentally steeled myself for an assult of tat shops. Places like this, which have long lost their original purpose, have often surrended themselves to the shopping demands of bored tourists. Serious amounts of weird stuff gets made and shipped from China and flogged to us tourists as souvenirs. Eventually, having sat gathering dust for a few decades, it ends up in charity shops or landfill.

Thankfully Concarneau has resisted this urge, and the shops (on the whole) were flogging good quality, usable stuff, like those blue-striped tops and bright yellow waterproofs which seem to serve as a Breton uniform. Either that, or stuff you can eat, like chocolate, biscuits, fish soup or sardines, all Breton-themed and nicely packaged.

In all we spent an hour or so wandering the old town. Looking out from ramparts gave great views of the yachts moored outside and the huge ships in the inner harbour. Looking inwards and down, we could see into the gardens of houses, some packed with plants and giving the feeling we weren’t just in a kind of make-belief tourist world. Folks actually live in the old Concarneau too, very nice to see.

When we made it back to Zagan yet more motorhomes had arrived, spilling out of the aire into the surrounding car parking. Everyone found a space somewhere, and other than some muppet-youf honking their car horn and screaming about 11pm, we all had a good night’s kip. Thank you Concarneau, we really enjoyed our short stay!

Cheers, Jay