wA couple of trips where everything goes distressingly to plan can make you assume that everything will be OK every time.
So of course bright and afternoon ish we traipsed up the drive with a whole 6 hours to make the ferry, what could possibly go wrong.....
There were a few vias though, the T4 has a habit of dropping indicator lenses so first stop was the T4 place to get a new one. With an engineering solution to make absolutely sure it didn't fall out again, well, zip ties anyway, we set off to collect the double front seat we had purchased off eBay.
To assist our day we had brought my brand spanking, new and updated, Garmin Sat Nav. So far it had been as reliable as a hammer and as sensible as a professor of sensible. They do that just to dupe you.
We were heading from West Wales to Portsmouth via Swansea and Stroud, 6 hours allowed, what could possibly go wrong. Well, someone had been playing with the squawk box. Changed a few settings and, well, it took us up what I thought was an unusual route, but nothing wrong with that. Then of course it took us completely cross country along simply delightful country roads A road along which we made good progress but it felt, errrrhhh Wrong.
When we eventually got somewhere I realised this was not not "wrong" actually it was "bonkers".
Not just bonkers, but, from where we were: getting to the ferry on time would require some pretty spirited driving.
Ignoring the GPS I went off hell for leather heading down the M5 and then M4. The GPS took issue, in fact it had lots of issues. Every time I went one way it thought I should be going the other. According to it I could do nothing right. Mentally I have named it "management" but for don't tell her.
The pace was frantic, down the M5, with the semi headwind making the T4 struggle and buffeting it sideways in ways that the student found even more unsettling than I did. The M4 gave us an advantage, it was now always behind us. Then another discovery, the software was old so it knew about the "50 mph average speed" section that isn't there any more. This provoked an outbreak of pinging pandemonium as it insisted I was blowing a 20 MPH hole in the average speed allowed.
All this against a backdrop of a insistence that EVERY junction was the very one to turn off while insisting that we could make the ferry on time.
There was only the one thing to do - "off" switch.
We made the ferry with a small comfort zone.
A meal on the Bretagne is always a worthy thing it was so nice for the two of us to be together.
Then of course it was to the cabin. Now of course there is nothing nicer than retiring to your cabin with a nice bottle to enjoy a long quiet night. Of course, to enjoy a bottle you have to be able to open it.
My corkscrew is great and does many things, it does not open bottles from the car deck if someone leaves it on the dashboard. .
It was time to go and buy a cheap Brittany Ferries Corkscrew then, couple of quid, oh no, those are all sold out, but they can sell me a special bottle system thing for 12 pounds.
Time for some thinking, first thing to try was dismantle the cork with one of the van keys.
Hindsight is a great thing, there I was with a van locked up in the hold and me trying to open the bottle with a key.
I can sense the readership glee building, but no, as the key started to bend I acquired some sense, I used her toothbrush, brush end to shove the cork it.
Was this a good night?
Lets remind ourselves, the tail end of hurricane something or other was hitting the uk The Bretagne is a very good sea boat and the regular pitching gave the truth to that. Fortunately the sea was coming at her head on, the worst experience is taking a wave at a corkscrew 45 degrees, but it was still well beyond choppy. Fortunately the student contrived to sleep through this, she is not the most brilliant of sailors putting it mildly....
Morning arrived and with a foaming mouth full of toothpaste the management announced her brush tasted funny.
By sheer luck we were right at the front of the ferry and got off to a flying start to the day. Ignored the GPS all the way down to the house excepting it's fixed speed camera function which actually turned into something useful when it warned me in the nick of time.
The house is simply wonderful, the job they are doing on the roof is superb, if it is being hampered by the not too brilliant weather.Lunch completed the day another fantastic 4 course meal and change from 12 euros each.
After this the day could only improve so it was a drive down to the coast to test out our new camper van. The GPS performed relatively faultlessly, except for trying to take us across a non existent railway level crossing.
Down to La Trinite Sur Mer this is a place of special family memory. A campsite right next to a beach the place we took our children for their first proper holiday many years ago. They loved it, so much so that we went another couple of times.
I wandered the site, recognising the pitches from each year. Did we really put our huge tent in that plot then stick a huge LDV 400 LWB hi top in there too? I recognised the tree I used as a pivot point to enable me to get the back end round enough to reverse in, driving in having been abandoned in favour of reversing about 50 metres up the narrow aisle.
Finding the pitch from the first year, where we camped in three small dome tents with a Bedford Midi as our transport. The time Bethan stepped into the deep bit of the pool and promptly sank to the bottom. With noise filled bubbles coming up to the surface. Daddy had to grab her by the hair and hoist her to the surface.
This was a place of family memories. But now it was just me and the student. The whole thing made more vivid as the campsite was virtually empty of people and empty of children.
We are no longer the parents of children but the parents of adults.
We were there on this lovely campsite with it's lovely memories but now it was ours.
We walked the beach alone and it was - great.
Practicalities crept in, it was time to check the cooker
I had of course packed the cooker, one of our myriad camp cookers bought because we had forgotten the cooker again
Well not really, this was an original that had been fitted in the back of the LDV, it would have helped really if I had checked it.
Yup, we had the gas bottle, and the regulator, but the cooker was sell by date gone.
Oh yes - a cooker free zone.
An oh gosh moment as we realised that the local Super U was about to close.
A race into Carnac. to get a "camping kit" as that was cheaper than adding another cooker to the pile
Then it was out to the seafront restaurant and a meal eaten to the crashing back drop of the waves.
Before returning to the campsite and bed to the sweet sound of the sea.
Set up for the morning, what could be nicer, cooker, kettle with water cafetiere with coffee - ready to go.
We slept the night of the tired.
We awoke the morn of the refreshed.
Everything was there to have coffee in bed, all needed to light the stove was the matches that were in the cupboard blocked in by the bed.
Luxury locked in the cupboard - we are pretty good at this.
But we had the cooker, even though we were forced out of bed there is something nice about breakfast accompanied by the symphony of the sea. I really wished we had our canoes, would have made the day complete.
So it was off to Guemene to pick up some stuff we had ordered then lunch in a mates house.
Half way there she noticed we had left our load spreading boards in the campsite. Actually they are green goddess seat bases, but lets not let her notice how useful GG stuff is. So it was a mad dash back there, skip the supermarket and arrive with 5 minutes spare.
Spare minutes are a good thing, especially when the friends who have invited you for a meal have recently spilt up after about 25 years and want to unload. Ahhh yes, this was turning all complex.
Still, we managed to get clear, off to Guemene, load up and back to Roscoff. A decent meal (what another??) and on the ferry at silly o clock, arriving in the UK before dawn.
Half way up the M5 we pulled off and had a couple of hours sleep before an unhealthy UK breakfast in the services before home in the rain.
All in all a lovely couple of days and now back in the grind..
R
So of course bright and afternoon ish we traipsed up the drive with a whole 6 hours to make the ferry, what could possibly go wrong.....
There were a few vias though, the T4 has a habit of dropping indicator lenses so first stop was the T4 place to get a new one. With an engineering solution to make absolutely sure it didn't fall out again, well, zip ties anyway, we set off to collect the double front seat we had purchased off eBay.
To assist our day we had brought my brand spanking, new and updated, Garmin Sat Nav. So far it had been as reliable as a hammer and as sensible as a professor of sensible. They do that just to dupe you.
We were heading from West Wales to Portsmouth via Swansea and Stroud, 6 hours allowed, what could possibly go wrong. Well, someone had been playing with the squawk box. Changed a few settings and, well, it took us up what I thought was an unusual route, but nothing wrong with that. Then of course it took us completely cross country along simply delightful country roads A road along which we made good progress but it felt, errrrhhh Wrong.
When we eventually got somewhere I realised this was not not "wrong" actually it was "bonkers".
Not just bonkers, but, from where we were: getting to the ferry on time would require some pretty spirited driving.
Ignoring the GPS I went off hell for leather heading down the M5 and then M4. The GPS took issue, in fact it had lots of issues. Every time I went one way it thought I should be going the other. According to it I could do nothing right. Mentally I have named it "management" but for don't tell her.
The pace was frantic, down the M5, with the semi headwind making the T4 struggle and buffeting it sideways in ways that the student found even more unsettling than I did. The M4 gave us an advantage, it was now always behind us. Then another discovery, the software was old so it knew about the "50 mph average speed" section that isn't there any more. This provoked an outbreak of pinging pandemonium as it insisted I was blowing a 20 MPH hole in the average speed allowed.
All this against a backdrop of a insistence that EVERY junction was the very one to turn off while insisting that we could make the ferry on time.
There was only the one thing to do - "off" switch.
We made the ferry with a small comfort zone.
A meal on the Bretagne is always a worthy thing it was so nice for the two of us to be together.
Then of course it was to the cabin. Now of course there is nothing nicer than retiring to your cabin with a nice bottle to enjoy a long quiet night. Of course, to enjoy a bottle you have to be able to open it.
My corkscrew is great and does many things, it does not open bottles from the car deck if someone leaves it on the dashboard. .
It was time to go and buy a cheap Brittany Ferries Corkscrew then, couple of quid, oh no, those are all sold out, but they can sell me a special bottle system thing for 12 pounds.
Time for some thinking, first thing to try was dismantle the cork with one of the van keys.
Hindsight is a great thing, there I was with a van locked up in the hold and me trying to open the bottle with a key.
I can sense the readership glee building, but no, as the key started to bend I acquired some sense, I used her toothbrush, brush end to shove the cork it.
Was this a good night?
Lets remind ourselves, the tail end of hurricane something or other was hitting the uk The Bretagne is a very good sea boat and the regular pitching gave the truth to that. Fortunately the sea was coming at her head on, the worst experience is taking a wave at a corkscrew 45 degrees, but it was still well beyond choppy. Fortunately the student contrived to sleep through this, she is not the most brilliant of sailors putting it mildly....
Morning arrived and with a foaming mouth full of toothpaste the management announced her brush tasted funny.
By sheer luck we were right at the front of the ferry and got off to a flying start to the day. Ignored the GPS all the way down to the house excepting it's fixed speed camera function which actually turned into something useful when it warned me in the nick of time.
The house is simply wonderful, the job they are doing on the roof is superb, if it is being hampered by the not too brilliant weather.Lunch completed the day another fantastic 4 course meal and change from 12 euros each.
After this the day could only improve so it was a drive down to the coast to test out our new camper van. The GPS performed relatively faultlessly, except for trying to take us across a non existent railway level crossing.
Down to La Trinite Sur Mer this is a place of special family memory. A campsite right next to a beach the place we took our children for their first proper holiday many years ago. They loved it, so much so that we went another couple of times.
I wandered the site, recognising the pitches from each year. Did we really put our huge tent in that plot then stick a huge LDV 400 LWB hi top in there too? I recognised the tree I used as a pivot point to enable me to get the back end round enough to reverse in, driving in having been abandoned in favour of reversing about 50 metres up the narrow aisle.
Finding the pitch from the first year, where we camped in three small dome tents with a Bedford Midi as our transport. The time Bethan stepped into the deep bit of the pool and promptly sank to the bottom. With noise filled bubbles coming up to the surface. Daddy had to grab her by the hair and hoist her to the surface.
This was a place of family memories. But now it was just me and the student. The whole thing made more vivid as the campsite was virtually empty of people and empty of children.
We are no longer the parents of children but the parents of adults.
We were there on this lovely campsite with it's lovely memories but now it was ours.
We walked the beach alone and it was - great.
Practicalities crept in, it was time to check the cooker
I had of course packed the cooker, one of our myriad camp cookers bought because we had forgotten the cooker again
Well not really, this was an original that had been fitted in the back of the LDV, it would have helped really if I had checked it.
Yup, we had the gas bottle, and the regulator, but the cooker was sell by date gone.
Oh yes - a cooker free zone.
An oh gosh moment as we realised that the local Super U was about to close.
A race into Carnac. to get a "camping kit" as that was cheaper than adding another cooker to the pile
Then it was out to the seafront restaurant and a meal eaten to the crashing back drop of the waves.
Before returning to the campsite and bed to the sweet sound of the sea.
Set up for the morning, what could be nicer, cooker, kettle with water cafetiere with coffee - ready to go.
We slept the night of the tired.
We awoke the morn of the refreshed.
Everything was there to have coffee in bed, all needed to light the stove was the matches that were in the cupboard blocked in by the bed.
Luxury locked in the cupboard - we are pretty good at this.
But we had the cooker, even though we were forced out of bed there is something nice about breakfast accompanied by the symphony of the sea. I really wished we had our canoes, would have made the day complete.
So it was off to Guemene to pick up some stuff we had ordered then lunch in a mates house.
Half way there she noticed we had left our load spreading boards in the campsite. Actually they are green goddess seat bases, but lets not let her notice how useful GG stuff is. So it was a mad dash back there, skip the supermarket and arrive with 5 minutes spare.
Spare minutes are a good thing, especially when the friends who have invited you for a meal have recently spilt up after about 25 years and want to unload. Ahhh yes, this was turning all complex.
Still, we managed to get clear, off to Guemene, load up and back to Roscoff. A decent meal (what another??) and on the ferry at silly o clock, arriving in the UK before dawn.
Half way up the M5 we pulled off and had a couple of hours sleep before an unhealthy UK breakfast in the services before home in the rain.
All in all a lovely couple of days and now back in the grind..
R
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