Friday 8 June 2012

Brittany, France

Hi everyone, how are you?  We are currently staying just outside of Bath having driven up from Cornwall today.  We are on our way to spend the weekend with Louise from Ramblings of a Roachling who has very kindly offered to show us the area in which she lives.  Hopefully we will have some reasonable weather so some rambling can take place. As we have internet access tonight, I can tell you about our time lovely Brittany.

After leaving Azay- le-Ridea we drove along the Indre river, stopping briefly at the Usse chateau to take some photos of the exterior.

We drove along the Loire river for quite away and took these photos including these boats that looked lovely on the water.  
 
We crossed the river on this magnificant bridge.  


We continued to drive through rural areas and every now and then we would pass tractors hauling various types of machinery.  Here are a few shots we took along the way.

This big farm shed roof was covered with solar panels.




We saw a number of chateaus along the way taking the GPS route and discovered there was a medieval chateau in a city of Fougeres.  We walked around the chateau admiring the size and construction.
 

 As we drove further on into Brittany we saw foxgloves and white daisies growing wild by the roadside.

Our accommodation for the next few nights was at Mont Dol near Dol de Bretagne and decided to walk up to the top of the village and saw these lovely views.   
 
We climbed the top of this tower with the statue on top, the stairs were spiraled and very narrow....scary!

I found this huge dog to pat, he wasn't at all bothered by us walking around his patch of the world.

 More foxgloves growing wild and attracting the biggest, fattest bees we've ever seen.

The view from our bedroom window.

The next day we visited Mont St. Michel and had the most wonderful day.   I’ll let the photos do the talking.
Mont St. Michel with a wonderful crop in the foreground.
Views of the beach from one of the many vantage points.

 We went for a tour through the Abbey.  Here is a small selection of photos from the many we took.
People walking on the beach.

The following day saw us driving to Roscoff where we were to catch the ferry in the evening to Plymouth.  Our drive through Brittany was interesting with forested areas, dairy country, timber plantations and crops of artichokes and various grains.

Roscoff is a lovely city and we took a walk out onto the long jetty. 
 We quite a bit of time to fill in before we caught the ferry and were entertained by observing the different types of vehicles that were to be loaded onto the ferry.  There were motor bikes, a father with his son about 8 or 9 on bicycles, motor homes, trucks, even a man with a four wheel drive vehicle and trailer with an old tractor he had bought in Spain.  All very interesting.
French customs officials checking the interior of this car.
The trip on the ferry was not enjoyable.  Although it wasn’t rough, there was enough pitch that we found it hard to sleep on our bunks and kept rolling around.  We had both just gone into a better sleep when the alarm went off at 5.30am, our arrival time was 6.30 in Plymouth.  After having a quick shower, we started to leave for breakfast and had a crew member knocking on the door asking us to vacate the room.  We finally had some breakfast and I was still drinking my coffee when my tray was whipped away.  There is a very quick turn around time for the ferry to go back to Roscoff and they wanted us off.  We arrived in Plymouth to rain, rain, rain but with prospect of exploring parts of the Cornwall coast we weren't too bothered.

Cornwall will be the subject of my next post.

Bye for now,

Anne  xx




5 comments:

  1. Hi Anne, nice to hear from you again! As you're now in the UK you'll know how crappy our weather is at the moment... I'm really not hopeful for the weekend! I hope you brought along that book I sent you a while ago - perhaps if the weather is really bad I could show you around my Home and then we could visit a village or town you like the look of in the Peak District - somewhere with shelter! Just a thought anyway, we have waterproofs if it does rain and are happy to go where ever you'd like to see!

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  2. Beautiful pics Anne! Absolutely lovely countrysides and architecture everywhere. Thanks again for the field trip. :)

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  3. Sounds like you are still having a good trip. I've again been to many of the places you've mentioned/photographed - including that bridge. Lovely to see that it all hasn't changed in nearly 20 years :)

    Enjoy your visit to the UK - I hope the weather improves for you :)

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  4. what a trip you're having Anne, we love that part of France! (the whole of the Brittany/Normandy coast)
    Hope you're enjoying our little island - and that the sun comes out while you're here!
    fee x

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  5. what an amazing tour you are having! Wishing you sunshiny weather!

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