A week in parts

Some of you might be wondering about the silence, lets start with a game of serious catch up. The last post predicted a lovely weekend away and it was not far out.

The student god bless her on the Thursday said that she had a baaad feeling, things were going far too well.

Up to Aber I went in the company of Bruce with loads of her stuff packed in the T4 Bruce drove well and the meeting place was found so, I was in some high class Government meeting for the morning.  Half way through, my phone rang, so I put it on ignore. Then it rang again and again. The fourth time I told the meeting I had better answer and, sure enough it was the Police. They were looking for a missing person, last seen with one of ours. Worst of all, our lad was not answering the phone. 18 male has gone missing with 15 yo girl (15 is she? thanks for the heads up officer!) and he's not answering his phone so the Police were a bit worried. I was able to reassure the Officer everything would be fine, then I remembered how his phone was broken and he had gone to get a new one. No wonder it was going to answerphone then. I phoned the man in question and, sure enough, his phone was on answerphone, I left a message to call me back. Back into the meeting and the phone rang again, so outside and fairly soon everything was cleared up and the Police had sight of the body and calm was restored.  Proper old style Penole, life with some unexpected drama thrown in.       
 
So it was meeting over and a drive back to Penole with a speedy trundle in the afternoon to make the ferry.

The pair of us went  off happy. Except of course that whilst I had been away that the student had been dealing with two bob, her grand daughters and the arm she broke that day  "I have a bad feeling about this weekend" said she yet again.

I dismissed her thoughts immediately, we got in the van, time was a bit tight but we headed off to Plymouth feeling happy and quite a bit free.

The trip down had all the feature of  a good plan and we rolled like a happy pair of bunnies into the ferry terminal. My heart sank, there was some sort of rally going through Plymouth with a whole load of vehicles allegedly heading for Spain with everyone in fancy dress. I had seen this sort of thing before, great if you are in a lets stay up till 4 am carousing frame of mind. Deadly if you have had a hard day and just want to get to sleep.

So anyways, the student and I settled for a lovely meal in the restaurant, some sort of message was boomed over the Tanny while we were there, I was locked in discussion of the days events with herself and wasn't really listening, it was quite hard to hear anyway.     

So it was meal over and time for bed. Next morning I was really pleased to see BF had allowed us an extra hour before waking us. This was great! I could see lights outside so we were in harbour. A couple of coffees later and we were heading off the ferry. Disembarkation at Roscoff it pretty slick but this morning it seemed a bit slow for some reason. Anyway it wasn't too long before blinking and drowsy I rolled off the the ship into a terminal I didn't recognise which was a chaos of TV crews, press, Douane, Gendermes, Police National I think Uncle Tom Cobley was around as well.  I dare say our faces were models of amazed bewilderment, the student certainly looked surprised amused and bemused. There was no time to ask questions, we were hustled out of the place at great speed.

Without giving us any options, BF had put us on a ship in Plymouth, then disembarked us in the Naval Facility in Brest. On the same ship were a group of cyclists who were planning a quiet ride into Morlaix who now found themselves 60 miles or so from  their point of re-embarkation.
    
The crew of the Armorique had staged a 24 H strike and so we had been unable to berth in Roscoff, we were in Brest. This was no big issue for us, not even bothering with maps we set the squawk box on the dash, followed instruction and went to the house. 

Lunch was dealt with at "les trois marchands" the usual 4 course E11.00 affair.
  
Nothing came in on my phone, so mid afternoon we loaded the van with goodies and headed for home. We were particularly pleased, we had landed in town just as the "foire au vin" was on in the Intermarche. Some really attractive deals had been offered and we had fallen head over heels for temptation Might be some time before I needed to buy wine again. Moule were E1.50 a kilo so with a fridge fully loaded with goodies we were ready for the off.  8.30 ferry next morning so we were fully primed for a nice evening in Roscoff and a sleep in the van.    

A drive to Roscoff and a smell of rodent. The ferry should have been on it's way to Plymouth, instead it was tied up at the quay. Into the terminal and a see of very unhappy Irish people, the staff were, as usual, friendly and polite  We were able to determine that the crew had staged a 24 h walk out which the management had dealt with by locking them out. This being France the crew promptly occupied the ship.

This had the makings of turning into quite something, little did we know but the other crews, hearing what management had done were in the process of bringing the whole fleet into port and tying up.

The student and I "reluctantly" decided that the best thing to do was to go back to our house and see what happened.

Little did we know what a week we had ahead of us.