Vacances en France Part 2

 

We arrived in South Brittany after about 7 hours travelling!  Mostly in the wet, and my trousers had leaked! 

A word or two about the satnav!  Maurice spent an inordinate amount of time fiddling with routes and via points!  But, it did invariably get us to the correct place without too much bother.  It just had a weird sense of which was the quickest way sometimes, sending us down tiny country lanes or straight through the middle of towns instead of a lovely smooth bypass!

We stayed with another English couple at Le Petite Charrue.  It would be easy to say that we were boring and not very adventurous staying with English people in France!  But in our defence, we don’t speak much French (I have schoolgirl c1975 French, Maurice has none!), and it turned out to be really interesting talking to these English people who have made their lives in France.

The next day was the reason we had come all the way to Brittany.  We started the morning looking around La Roche Bernard:

And then we had lunch and spent the rest of the day with my old school friend Rachel, and her delightful husband Herve.  Rachel and I were best friends when we were about 12, but then her family moved away.  We have kept in touch for 40 years!  We haven’t seen each other very much during that time, I think the last time we met was about 20 years ago!  Herve is holding their gorgeous little grandson Gabriel here.  Rachel and Herve are professional folk musicians, you can see their website here.

We spent the rest of our time in Brittany riding round the Golfe de Morbihan, a vast inlet with hundreds of little coves and inlets, and some beautiful little fishing villages.  We visited Carnac where there are hundreds of neolithic stones all lined up in some formation depicting the movement of the sun and moon.

We also visited the main town of the region – Vannes, with it’s lovely medieval centre

Now we were on our way home, so we rode back towards Dieppe stopping for 1 more night near Bayeux (Part 3)

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!

10 things on 10th

A day late!  But yesterday was my DH’s birthday, so here’s 10 photos of him!

 

Happy Birthday Maurice!

Goodwood Festival of Speed

 

What a truly fabulous day out we had on Sunday!  Goodwood Festival of Speed is arguably the best ‘petrolhead’ event in Great Britain, maybe even in the world.  Where else can you see world champions in Forumla 1, rallying, touring car, motorcycle racing and extreme motorcycling all in one place?

The event takes place in the grounds of Goodwood House, ancestral home to the Earl of March.  He has been organising this fabulous event since 1993, which centres on a hill climb race, the road snaking up the hill to the top of the South Downs with a lovely view towards the sea!

We always start by walking around the paddock.  The paddock is open to the public, enabling you can get close up to the cars and bikes and very often spot the racing drivers there and then!  This year we glimpsed Lewis Hamilton (that’s him in the sitting in the car with the yellow helmet on!)

 

John Surtees on an old Honda racing bike:

and 2 heroes from the recent Isle of Man TT motorcycle races, John McGuinness, and Guy Martin

As I said you can get really close to the cars and bikes, and there are often historic racing cars and bikes which champions have driven

You can watch the cars being prepped for the hill climb:

There is so much more to see though!  In recent years there has been a statue with a motoring theme erected in front of Goodwood House, this year an e-type Jaguar made of steel pipes, to commemorate it’s 50th anniversary.

It is a very popular event, but there is plenty of room for everyone!

We always marvel at the organisation, for example, I only had to queue behind 2 ladies for the toilet, as there are plenty of facilities all around the site.  There are lots of eating places, sadly we didn’t eat or drink at this one!  We took our own picnic, but bought coffee, again very little queueing.

There are plenty of other shows to see too!  Like the Cartier et Luxe show for classic cars, on the lawn by the stables.  There’s usually a jazz band playing there to add to the atmosphere!

On the lawn this year were Chris Evan’s ‘Magnificent 7’.  Chris is a national DJ (currently doing the breakfast show on BBC radio2).  Each year he organises a drive in each of these magnificent Ferraris down to the New Forest, which is auctioned off for charity.  This year the winners had to pay in excess of £60,000 to get to drive these most beautiful of cars!  This black one used to belong to Beatle George Harrison!

 

Two of the best looking super cars are this carbon fibre Buggatti Veyron (Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear’s favourite car and will set you back only a cool £1million!) and this gorgeous red Alfa Romeo Spyder.

We walked right to the top of the hill climb this year, where they hold a rally car competition.  It was a great photo opportunity!  Here’s my best 2 photos!

 

 

This Land Rover experience was quite mind boggling!  The ramp that this car has driven onto is about to lean drastically over the right, and the car is then driven round a champfered bend, then up and over a lorry!  It is quite scary to watch! 

But not quite as scary as the extreme motorcyling!  These guys are crazy!!  They were riding up a ramp, leaping into the air, performing acrobatic tricks, even in some cases letting go completely of the bike, then jumping back on it still in mid air and landing again!

Finally feast your eyes on this gorgeous beauty, a 1935 Mercedes Benz!

We spent about 7 hours wandering around looking at everything and it was the most gorgeous sunny warm summers day!  I can’t think of a better day out – and it is only 30 minutes ride on Maurice’s motorbike to get there!