travels in a motorhome: Untitled

Tuesday 29th September 2015

We're back!!

Not the most auspicious start to this trip though. We left home at 4pm Monday heading for the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone where we planned to sleep overnight before catching the 8.50am train on Tuesday that I had booked a week or so ago. We arrived at Folkestone at 11.30pm to be told that, in fact, I had booked the train for Monday morning so we were 14 or so hours late. Not to worry though, we could be put on any of the trains leaving in the next few hours at no extra charge. I asked if we could wait for a 9am train so we could get our heads down for a few hours but apparently we can no longer park for in excess of four hours now at the terminal for security reasons. So, we booked the 3.27am train and tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep for a couple of hours. We arrived at Calais at about 5.15am local time and drove the couple of hours to Le Crotoy, 50.218646 1.634077, parked the van, drew the blinds, went to bed and the next thing we knew it was two o'clock in the afternoon. We've been for a walk in glorious sunshine under a big blue sky and a bracing wind but we still feel a little fuzzy and "tired round the edges" as Phil says.

We stopped here a couple of months ago on our way home from our last trip and the car park here was very nearly full, holding approaching 100 motorhomes and when we arrived this morning we were surprised to find it almost full again. Mostly French folk but some German and Dutch vans too plus about another ten or so UK motorhomes. Probably at least a couple of million pounds worth of vans here tonight; gotta love the grey Pound/Euro keeping all the Motorhome manufacturers in business eh?

This is our sixth European trip in the van and this time we intend to revisit places in France and Spain and explore a little further afield. The plan is to travel down through Normandy, Val de Loire, Limousine and Aquitaine before entering the Basque region. From there it's the northern coast of Spain with a diversion for the Picos de Europa, then to Galicia and then south again into Portugal. We've never been to Portugal before but we have plenty of recommendations of places to visit on the Atlantic coast so we'll hug the coastline all the way down to the Spanish border and then inland to Seville and Andalusia before ending up in Bolnuevo on the Costa Calida where we hope to spend a few months before returning to the UK next spring. As usual we'll miss family and friends but they're never too far away with Viber, FaceTime etc....

Tomorrow we are heading for Broglie, south west of Rouen.

Wednesday 30th September.

We're parked up this evening at Broglie a pretty little village with a beautifully landscaped Aire de Camping Car 49.005603 0.529663, it's €5/24hrs but when we stopped here earlier in the year nobody came around for the money and nobody has come around yet this evening. There are about ten motorhomes here now and a couple more will probably turn up so that's €60 the village is missing today but hey ho, maybe the person who collects the money is on holiday.

The river running through Broglie: