Our tour begins

Today it feels like our tour has actually begun. After the emotional rollercoaster of saying goodbye to everyone, the last minute stress of getting the house sorted and the minor technical issues of a warm fridge and no skylight – it now feels good.

We were so lucky with the Hymer dealer sorting Dave out in just a couple of hours. OK it was a Friday afternoon and people warn about buying goods produced then, so we stayed local for a couple of days to check everything is as it should be. As we drove down the narrow roads to Villers-sur-Mer there was another bang on the roof, not as loud as last time, so pulled over while I headed back up the road to see what had fallen off now. I scoured the ground but couldn’t see any likely suspects – then from behind me I heard a noise of something hitting the ground, then another, the trees were dropping what looked like conkers but without the shell – we’re possibly still a tad paranoid!

Villers-sur-Mer is just what we needed. A nice small Aire about 10 min stroll along the seafront to a small town (looks a bit like the square in ‘allo ‘allo but without the toilet). The only downside is the ‘no dogs on the beach’ signs, they’re everywhere. But it seems the locals pay no attention to them so Charlie has had some major stone chasing and dead crab eating sessions – that dog loves the seaside.

We stopped for a couple of nights to enable us to relax fully and to try to get out of the feeling that we have to get across France asap – it’s also helped to get the budget slightly back on track.

D6 003 Villers sur Mer

We’ve now walked pretty much every inch of the town – got a tad lost on the way home on the first night and ended up on an estate straight out of Stepford, far too clean and tidy – and after watching a beautiful sunset from the beach last night it’s time to move on.

D6 008 Villers sur MerWe’ve decided not to go back to Honfleur, which is just up the coast, we drove through it once many years ago with Ce & Jamie and always said we’d go back, but now we’ve built it up to such a paradise we’ll only be disappointed. So with J’s new haircut (courtesy of me and the kitchen scissors) and his amazing French – he’s been chatting to everyone, I’m mainly keeping quiet – we’re off to a French Passion site on a farm where they make cider. These places let you stop for free, you’re not obliged to buy anything, but in the words of a couple met at our last stop ‘you just buy one bottle of wine, and you’ll need that anyway!’

We’re still having technical issues getting onto wifi, seems the networks are all locked down, so for now it’ll be text updates only and the map won’t work yet either – sorry folks, we’ll get it sorted as soon as we can.

Ju x

Distance travelled so far: 781Km

7 replies
  1. Nik Nak Noo says:

    Beautiful sunsets, crab for Charlie, homemade cider, sounds horrid!.. You sure you don’t want to come back!?.. : D
    Glad you’ve managed to get back on track! xx

    Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. […] 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 […]

  2. […] We set off for our trip of a lifetime in October 2011 with the aim to ‘turn right at Calais’ and we just followed our nose as we went. Pet Passport rules changed while we were in Portugal, making it easier for us to take Charlie to Morocco, so we got brave and crossed the Straight of Gibraltar for a winter month in North Africa. We learned a lot about ourselves in the process, and wrote a book about how to independently go there in a motorhome when we got back. Back in Europe we headed east through Spain and France into Italy, across the Balkans and Eastern Europe before heading back to the UK in September 2012 via Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. […]

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