We finally reach Brittany – Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer

I know motorhomers who will drive across Spain in a day. We did it two days during our race back home at the start of the covid outbreak, but moving quickly just isn’t us. We don’t like long driving days, which is why it has taken us over a week to get from Calais to Brittany – our destination for this motorhome tour. It really is a good job we’re not on a two week holiday away from the office like we used to take, instead we have five weeks to explore. Obviously, if we’d realised we were going to tour Brittany on this trip when we booked the ferry, we’d have probably booked the Portsmouth to St Malo ferry, oh well, it’s a lesson learned for next time.

We rolled out of Honfleur before 9am on Friday morning with a long drive ahead of us. We’d used a bucket to empty our grey water tank the night before so we didn’t risk losing our space to the constantly prowling late arrivals and to save us from the never ending queue at the service points in the mornings. We used the toll road to get us to Caen, which was worth every bit of the €5.60 it cost, as we both listened intently to every whistle, wheeze or change in engine noise from Zagan giving a hint that his wheel bearing might be about to go again, but fingers crossed, so far its doing OK.

Arriving at the Caen périphérique, which sounds so much better than ring road, we nipped into a huge shopping centre with a mission to buy a French SIM card. Yes, we’ve finally admitted that we use way more data than we ever realised. When we first started to tour back in 2011, we had 25mb a day allowance on our phone – that’s why some of our early posts had no photos, as we had to wait until we found some free wifi to upload them (and then sometimes forgot). Just a couple of years back we used around 5gb a month, but now we both have smart phones with apps that just seems to suck away our data allowance even when we aren’t using them, we’ve realised our 12gb roaming allowance on our UK SIM just won’t cut it. I won’t go into the details as Jay’s just written this post full of hints and tips about buying a local data SIM when abroad.

After a little happy dance once the SIM started working (these things are always touch and go) we headed into the supermarket for a tasty French food stock up, along with lots of healthy fruit and vegetables – honest! I was surprised to see a trolley disinfecting machine at the entrance to another supermarket that we stopped at, not the usual stand with sprays and cloths, but an arch that you push the trolley under which I can only assume sprays it – I decided to avoid it as I already had my bags on the trolley. Fortunately at the Carrefour, there were no such challenges to tackle.

Back on the road we made full use of the free motorways from Caen, squinting at a grey bump on the horizon that was Mont Saint Michael, and skipping past lots of places folks had recommended to us – sorry, we’ll save them for another time. It was just after 1pm when we reached the motorhome aire at Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer (N48.589676, W2.189154) and found it to have lots of spaces left – phew. We coughed up our €10 a night and settled in.

Our time in Normandie hot spots had us worried that everywhere would be full by lunchtime. The aire here has around 60 places, but there were only 45 vans in at the last count. Of those, 40 were French registered, which is a massive change from the array of international plates at our previous stops. This could be because it is situated next to a large campsite which looked quite full, we’ve only seen this level of motorhome acceptance in France. I can’t think of any other country where the municipality would put a motorhomes aire, including a service point stop, right next to a campsite.

Saint-Jacut is situated on a peninsular between two sea inlets, and as we drove to the aire I could see flashes of sea views from both sides of the road. After a spot of lunch we set off for a look around, but didn’t get very far. Jay spotted a chap walking to the beach with a small rake and a bucket which could mean only one thing – free seafood. The two sea inlets are very shallow and when the tide goes out, they empty of water so you can walk across to peninsulas on the either side of Saint-Jacut. The tide was out as we set off for our walk, so it was prime time for collecting coque (cockles).

Many years ago Jay wrote a blog post about his first experience of collecting cockles and named it 1001 coque jokes – it was our most read blog post for years, although I suspect that was more due to the title than the content. Of course the coque jokes flowed thick and fast once again, as Jay dug them out of the sand with his hands. Those that were too small to eat were put to one side, where I sat fascinated watching them bury themselves back in the sand.

After a quick trip back to Zagan to soak the seafood, we set off for our walk again only this time we ended up going much further than planned. Sitting on a bench overlooking the empty bay we could see people walking out to the rocks in the distance, one fella even cycled out there across the sand. Looking on maps.me there were marked footpaths out into the sea to these rocky outcrops also known as the Ebihens archipelago. The sun was shining and the timing of the tides was right, so we headed over to them too.

As we neared the first lump of rocks (I really don’t know what to call an island when it’s not an island because the sea is out) we could see the bicycle propped up against a small boat, the fella was now out in a larger boat looking after the rows of metal bays attached to wooden posts that made up an oyster farm. We peered into the bags that had been exposed by the low tide, each filled with gnarly oysters. They were also all around us clinging to the rocky out crops, and the sand was covered with shells of ones that hadn’t survived. If we were oyster fans, we’d have been in heaven, but we were just happy to stare at them and not risk stabbing ourselves trying to prise one off a rock. Out in the bay there were endless rows of upright posts, a huge mussel farm servicing the voracious French appetite for moules-frites.

I later found out (on my morning sightseeing jog which took in a tourist trail with information boards) that the village of Saint-Jacut grew up around the walls of an old abbey, the latest version of which still exists. The main economic activity of area in the 17th Century was fishing, especially for mackerel and it was only in the 19th Century that oyster fishing developed, and in 1870 oyster farming was introduced. Around the same time Saint-Jacut also became a seaside resort, adding yet another source of revenue for its inhabitants. During the 20th century tourism became the main economic activity, completely replacing farming and fishing, and you can see this as you walk around the place, it’s all so pretty and well-kept.

Back on the beach, there were still plenty of folks walking around, we decided that the tide wasn’t coming back in any time soon. We carried on out to more rocks, where we saw a couple with a tripod and a long lens pointed at an island a little further out still surrounded by water. It turns out that it is a nature reserve for birds, which explains the long lens. Eventually it was time to make our way back to the peninsula and to take a view of the ‘not currently islands’ before they became islands again. Which they do twice a day, like clockwork.

We’ve had a great couple of days walking, running and cycling around here, but it’s time to move on again. Tomorrow we’ll carry on further west to explore some more of this beautiful coastline.

Ju x

Oh and in case you were wondering, Saint-Jacut peninsula is surrounded by water, but like a lot of England there is still a hosepipe ban in place.