Vacances en France! Part 1

 

We’ve just back from 1 week in France on the motorbike.  We caught the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe, and stayed in Normandy for the first few days.

 

We stayed with a lovely couple at Le Chat Chocolat near the small town of Forges-Les-Eaux.  We visited a lovely chateau at Vascoueil, which had a lovely sculpture garden:

The highlight of our time in Normandy was our visit to Lau, my friend from www.simplify101.com!  We have been on several online classes together, so it was lovely to meet for real!  Here she is with her lovely family (and me!)

After a gorgeous lunch she took us around her city of Rouen for a tour.  It is a very beautiful place!

 

Here is a splendid view of Rouen cathedral and the city from one of the surrounding hills.

That day was a beautiful warm sunny day.  Alas!  The rest of our holiday was not!  It rained and was cold!  Not the best weather for biking.  Never mind, we carried on, and the next day visited Monet’s Garden at Giverny.  We really loved it!  It was quite a thrill to actually be there in such an iconic place.

We had heard that there was a World War II site nearby.  It was a German V1 bomb launching site, so we made our way there.  It was a small clearing in a forest, this actual site had been bombed and was never operational, but had been kept in it’s original state.  The fact that the weather was so miserable and wet, and all the tall trees about, gave the site a really eerie feel.  Here’s a V1 bomb on it’s launch pad pointing directly at London!

 

The next day we set off for Brittany (Part 2), in the pouring rain!  We hadn’t realised quite how big France is, and suddenly realised that it was like going down to Cornwall from here – a very long way!  Luckily the roads in France are much better than ours and not so busy, so no traffic jams or hold ups!