By this Author: InvictaMoto

We had to be up and packed up ready for the inspection of the freecamp bathroom and kitchen.

It was easy to keep them clean despite them providing little in the way of equipment. Brushes yes but no cleaning products. Luckily we carry all sorts in the van.

The inspection was over by 10.30am and armed with our chit we headed for the bins and then reception and they cancelled the €100 deposit.

On the road everything seemed to be going okay. A few problems with the TomTom as we entered Concarneau.

Despite looking on Google Maps that the aire was off the main road into the city centre, we had another wild goose chase around the back streets.... at one point following a German registered motorhome.

We were about to give up when Tom actually took us back to the main road that we had turned off!!! And at the same roundabout. The aire was only about 400m from there. Looking at the map it looks as though it was trying to take us on a road that no longer exists!!!

This isn't the first time the latest map is installed before we came away hadnt shown junction changes, like roundabouts, that have clearly been there for a long while and since the last upgrade.

It had been spitting with rain on and off. With raincoats on we set off for the Ville Clos. A walled town connected to the mainland by what I guess would have been a draw bridge.

Our first stop was lunch. Not as exciting today as we just had the plat. Claire with rognons and me with dandrade. The former was veal kidney with mash and a sauce. Mine was flaked salt cod with mash and a sauce. Both excellent.

Then in the rain, we went across the road to the Ville Clos.

The town is full of shops and restaurants and it's possible to walk around the walls with the sea almost 360° around.

We invested in some kouignettes. These are small kouign amann cakes, probably 3 inches in diameter. We bought six. Two each of different flavours. The photo is the big 'uns.

The rain eased off and it was warm in raincoats. The walk back uphill to the van was a bit of a slog.

I have been having problems with TomTom and their website plan.tomtom.com. As a route planner it's not that flexible. Editing a route isn't the easiest once created.

The plus point is that you can import GPX files created in other app or websites. I use MyRouteApp. Over the last few days the upload hasn't worked. No error message. Simply that the route doesn't appear in "My Routes".

Added to this is that the place lookup on the planner doesn't always find where you want to go. Even if you type in the full name or even the coordinates from Google Maps. Nada too often.

I have a ticket logged with TomTom support. There initial reply was to tell me what to do. Step by step. The fact that I told them that's what I had done several times unsuccessfully in my initial call wasn't very good. They did say if that didn't work to send them the gpx file to look at. I have. It's Friday. It was 4pm UK time.

From Concarneau the plan was to move westwards to a Camping-Car Park aire at Pont l'Abbe. I finally managed to get a route to work on plan.tomtom.com by manually locating the destination on the map and "pecking" the spot a few times to get it to ask if I wanted to set that as destination!

The start point was covered by the "current location" option. Except it wasn't. It was the lunch restaurant....

We finally made it here to the Camping-Car Park aire at Pont l'Abbe around 4pm.

The aire looks quite new.

We had a walk to Netto. About half a mile away to get some milk and a few bits.

Tomorrow? Quimper if the day parking is available, then we head northwards.

Our last day at Flower Camping Bois d'Amour in Quiberon.

Apart from the day we got here the weather has been pretty decent.

Today after we had tidied up after breakfast we had another walk into town.

We were determined to get the wedding anniversary dinner or lunch we missed yesterday.

After a coffee we saw the Biscuiterie de Quiberon. We wanted to get something for our neighbour who sorts our mail out whilst we are away.

We bought kouign amann for us. It's a Breton tart. We had some last week but wanted more. It was a little pricey but it's quite a lump.

From there we went around to the restaurant from yesterday. La Corsaire.

We chose the €26 "menu express" with the entrée and plat option.

We both had fish soup and then diverged. Claire had the fish that came as scallops and masked potato. I chose the meat option and it was steak and chips. We had an entrée of paste and toasted baguette before the soup.

I was so pogged I couldn't eat all the chips!

The walk back was a little slower than the walk into town.

The site's wifi is more iffy. Plus 5G with Tesco isn't a lot better. We did however finish series three of "Granite Harbour" on iPlayer.

Dinner was another Chef Paul creation. Soupe des Légumes. Simply cut the top off the tetrapak and into the pan. Heat on a low setting for about ten minutes. And. Eh voila. Dinner is served.

Tomorrow we need to make sure the freecamp huts are nice and ckean to get a chit and the deposit returned.

Wedding Anniversary Day.

We had hoped to get out and have lunch as it's our special day.

Neither of us were feeling too great and for lunch we had soup! Cooked by me.

I won't bore you with the recipe as I simply had to snip the corner off the tetrapak and pour it into the saucepan.

A little later we set off to walk into Quiberon by the "grand plage". It wasn't as far as it looked on the map the campsite reception gave us.

We looked for somewhere for a coffee and we found one where we could watch the Belle Île ferry coming in and then out again.

We found Le Corsaire and had a pleasant half hour.

Then the walk back. Chef Paul used his almost Michelin 🌟 skills to open a ring-pull can of lentils and meat. Using the same saucepan (washed of course) another meal was quickly heated up.

Tomorrow.

Hopefully, the weather will be better again tomorrow and we can get earlier and we can get our anniversary lunch. Oysters anyone?

Rather than update the Day 13 post with photos of the pitch I thought they'd go better here.

The weather doesn't look very good in the morning photos. It has been raining on and off during the night. More is forecast....

For the price you would be very hard pressed to get all this for a little over £21 a night back in UK. We pay more than that at our favourite CL's in Suffolk.

The one disappointment is that in the low season the restaurant is closed except at weekends.

We didn't leave the aire at Josselin until around 11am. We needed to do the waste and rubbish bins and were in a three van queue.

The front van was unable to move as there were two vans trying to get in. The first was having a problem with the barrier.

Once away the TomTom Camper Max had another routing problem, taking us back into the village and then trying to loop around the river towpath. We had to wing it and followed the road signs to the N24. Finally, it got with the program and we headed towards the motorhome dealers as planned.

The dealers was on a newish looking business park. It did seem that prices of new motorhomes and vans seem lower than at home.

The Elsan blue "teabags" weren't though. A tub of them was €24. We usually use the Thetford branded ones.

I set the next destination for the campsite in Quiberon. Despite it being pretty much one road, TomTom kept trying to take us off in different ways including several times to do a 180° turn at roundabouts.

Once again we were only about 35kms away before it and the road signs corresponded.

We arrived about 3pm. When we checked in they asked if we had an ACSI card. We do.

I was expecting to pay around €67 balance but this came down to €47 with the card!

Working it out using the conversion to £ sterling on my Clarity Card shows that the stay totals £64.62 or £21.54 a night.

We have the Freecamp pitch. I thought it might be more "luxurious" for our wedding anniversary to have the private facilities on the pitch.

Freecamp gives us a covered outside picnic table and a small building with a kitchen in one side, and a shower and loo on the other. I'll take some pux tomorrow.

Once settled we are a salad box from Aldi. We had done a bit of shopping on the way.

With that out of the way I needed a lie down. The side effects of some of my drugs, and thankfully I'm currently off the statins, are tiredness. I have no problem driving but like an old man I need a nap.

Then we could go for a short walk to find the beach. It's not that far. We had a walk along towards Quiberon itself.

It's very rocky with a small sandy beach. We both took a few photos.

Lots of Atlantic Wall bunkers

Cormorants on the lookout

Then it was back to the van. It started to rain and so we were van bound. We have quite noisy neighbours with a pop-top VW van. They talk loudly to their small child... a lot of goo-goo talk!!!

I had seen the site had a restaurant for our wedding anniversary dinner tomorrow. But it's only open weekends as it's not prime season.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be better weather and we can walk into town for lunch.

Sunday 4th October

After a week in one place we are back to touring for a few days.

The first stop was the Intermarché at Bernières sur Mer and then on the road to Caen and the A84 toll free motorway westwards.

The destination was the Camping-Car Park aire at Beauvoir. We have been before and it's huge with 180 pitches.

We arrived around 3pm and found a space. They aren't that well marked out!!! Then I found the 10m EHU cable wasn't long enough. I moved a little. No better!

As Claire chatted to the couple from Cornwall, and whose names we forgot, I moved spaces to the otherside of the wooden fence. The cable fitted perfectly.

Once settled we took a walk towards Mont Saint Michel. Its 5kms away. We managed 2kms... it was getting a bit late, and after we had stopped for coffee at the Saint James shop.

We had the table and chairs out in front of the van in the shade. Then to the back.

In the afternoon I started a chat session with Tesco Mobile. We seem to be burning through our 30gb roaming limit on the phones. We use them as mobile hot-spot since the 30gb on the Lebara sim in the router stopped working.

We decided that 100gb for £14 was the way to go. The current contract actually ran out in November 2024. We worked though with Rishi and now have 100gb each. In fact with the "treat" it's £13. The older contract was costing us £11.70 a month.

Monday 5th October

We weren't in much hurry to leave and the destination was Josselin in Brittany. I had programed a stop at Fougères on the way as they have a massive castle. On the way I thought "It's Monday".... the castle will be closed. It was.

In fact it seems practically everything was closed. We parked in the official marked motorhome parking at €2 an hour.

We had a wander to the castle and looked for a coffee. Only two restaurants open and both only doing lunches.

So it was back to "Chez Nous"... We chatted with a couple from Belgium 🇧🇪 with a dog. It was a Bleu de Gascon. A rescue from being a failed hunting dog on death row.

From there it was Josselin. I had Rennes on the route with a park up that allowed day parking for camping cars. I removed it as time was getting on and we went straight to the Camping-Car Park aire in Josselin.

When we arrived the satnav took us through the tiny streets. Then it wanted to go up a street with a clear "no campervans" sign.

In the end we arrived. We had to wait to get in as there were two vans blocking the entrance. There are two service points but the chump in the second van didn't even acknowledge we were waiting. British.

Then it seemed the had a brainwave and moved onto the vacant service point. And we were in. Plenty of spaces. Loads of British.

We setup, then had a chat to the couple behind us from Wales with a spaniel. We seem to be talking to people with 🐕....

The walk along the river to the castle only takes about 15 minutes. What a beauty it is.

We went up to the town where there was a bar doing a roaring trade. It was open! We had a beer and Claire a menthe de l'eau. Then we retraced our steps down to the river and back to the site.

Another superb site. Wonderfully placed for the castle and town.

Tomorrow? We are off to Quiberon.

Life flashes past when you are away doing nothing.

Today, apart from a walk to the Carrefour we have done very little. We bought some very nice chocolate tarts. Along with eggs.

A bit of reading. A light lunch of scrambled egg on toast.

Plenty of reading and the day got away from us.

As we are leaving tomorrow we decided to pack away all the outside "camping" stuff.

In the morning we'll just have to disconnect the EHU and pack away the Milencos.

Well into week two now. We have been saying we must go to lunch for moules frites.

So today we decided it would be today.

A different way into town today. Past the Gare to take in the large and very clean looking church.

It's huge.

The way from there, and following the signs to the tourist office, took us right to the "border" with neighbouring Bernières sur Mer.

We came out a few hundred yards up from the memorial we visited yesterday.

Nearby is the Pub le Crabe Vert. We saw people eating there yesterday.

Moules Marinières.

We walked slowly back to the site. The washing was almost dry.

We had a "lazy" afternoon after that.

Later we met a couple of fellow Instagrammers, Paul & Gills Adventures. Nice to meet them.

After moules we decided we didn't need a cooked dinner, so we had a cheese and tomato baguette.

Another evening of YouTubes and "Granite Harbour" on iPlayer.

Tomorrow is our last full day here at Sandaya.

Day 7

Is it really the end of a week already.

Another day of not doing much. We did go to the laundry and do some washing.

The rest of the day was spent moving the whirlygig dryer around the pitch and the vacant one begind to "find the sun".

The pitches are very shaded with many mature trees.

For dinner we decided on a single pizza 🍕 and loaded frites instead of cooking.

Very nice as well.

As usual we read and then in the evening watched some YouTube and a programe on iPlayer about a Jamaican born Royal Military Police officer becoming a copper in Aberdeen. It looked grey and granitey as I remembered from visits in the 70's....

Day 8

Today it started sunny. It stayed mostly sunny. With no rain....

After emptying the cassette again, we set off for the town and beach.

I took the Canon with me in it's case. Perhaps, I should have brought the usual case as well, as lugging around the 300mm Tamron zoom adds to the weight.

The Gare de Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer is a short walk away. It looks like many station buildings in France. Except. There's no railway line. The line closed in 1950!

From there we headed towards the sea and the promenade. We eventually popped out about halfway along. There plenty of houses and villas, plus some restaurants.

We stopped for a coffee at one in the sun called Papagayo.

Once done we continued past the Office de Tourisme (fermé!) to the German gun emplacement bunker called Casemate 27.

Here there are flags of allied nations and a monument to the Canadian armoured troops and Royal Marine Commando that came ashore on June 6th 1944. D-Day.

There are some beach huts along the town section of the beach.

We decided to walk back and have lunch and a "lazy afternoon".

On the way past the Snack Bar we got a croque monsieur to share. It wasn't that good. Not a patch on the pizzas.

The washing was finally dry and so I could dismantle the whirlygig and stow it away in the garage.

Tonight we will eat in. Cassoulet Toulousain. A large tin for two people.

Hopefully the weather might have looked up for a few days so we can get out again for another walk along the coast.

We had a chat about where to go after we leave here on Sunday. The rough plan was to maybe try Mont Saint Michel. It looks as though it's €25 a night in the parking area. The short term parking is expensive so we may go to the Camping-Car Park aire nearby and see what occurs.

We have two nights after here before we get to Quiberon campsite.

Day 5.

It started raining last night. It pretty much poured down all night and all day.

It was heavy at times and we have barely been out of the van.

It's been Kindle time.

By bed time, we had thunder and lightning.

Day 6.

Today after almost 18 hours of rain it cleared up.

We decided to get out the camping gear, mat, table and chairs. And "just in case" the roll out awning was deployed.

It's been cloudy most of the day and to be honest chilly at times.

We did have a walk late morning to the Carrefour Local supermarket. A slight diversion towards the sea and the casino before making some purchases.

With my left foot still painful I had had enough by then. Last week's steroids had not had much long lasting effect. The huge turmeric capsules that proved almost "miraculous " in Florida not having the same effect here.

Late afternoon there was some brief sunshine, but overcast is the weather situation for the day.

Tomorrow? Hopefully a bit more walking to check our St Aubin sur Mer.

With Day 3 consisting of the drive to Cabourg from Le Tréport that was consumed with visiting four different supermarkets, one purely for diesel, there's not much to report.

We did stop for lunch on the west side of the Seine after conquering the Pont de Tancarville. The toll for Class 2 vehicles was €3.70 and our Emovis tag dealt with it.

After we ate, healthy salad bowl, we took a walk to get a view of the bridge.

I took the Canon. There was a problem with the memory card and all the photos were knackered. Luckily Claire had her phone with her and thst caught this image.

We ended up at Cabourg around 3pm. The aire by the Hippodrome on Search4Sites says space for six vans. It was ram packed with nine vans. Too much of a fire risk! I do like to be able to open my door....

We continued to the other park up at the Carrefour Market car park. Also free plus the benefit of another supermarket very close by.

We found a nice space that was tree free. There was always one empty car space free on either side of us.

Day 4.

We had a very quiet night. With it being Sunday the Carrefour is open until 1230pm. We were in good time to get a few bits for the day.

From here the plan was to visit the Merville Battery and maybe Pegasus Bridge on the way to the campsite.

These are already written up on Blogger - links here:

Merville Battery.

Pegasus Bridge.

From there to Sandaya Côte de Nacre. We checked in about 3.30pm. Got a bit heated being unable to find our pitch from the map... then encountering a caravan bloke hitching up to leave part blocking the entry lane. We didn't know he was leaving from pitch 102.

We sat there whilst he and his wife ignored us. Then they started waving for us to go back and around. Our pitch was three along, 105. Reversing around 150 metres with nowhere to reverse to was never going to happen!!!

In the end he backed up a foot to let us slip past. Simple? Why bugger us about?

We then got the evil eye from the Germans opposite them! 🖕

In the end, we are here for a week. Planned to save Reggie too much stress and not much walking.

We have EHU so it doesn't matter if we don't get much solar.

Tonight?

Rest and do sweet fanny adams.

The plan for day 2 was a gentle run along the coast to Eu, then across a river to Normandy. And to a France Passion aire at an auberge.

Things changed. We got to Le Tréport and found that for day parking at campervan seens frowned upon. They do provide two camping car park ups on the top of the cliffs.

We chose one of them. In the end after coughing up €8.50 to park we decided to stay. For an overnight it's very good. I cancelled the reservation at the Auberge.

When we arrived it said there were 12 free pitches. We were lucky as there was one near the end of a row, and the guy in front was leaving. We shifted forward. No one in front.

We set off for the funicular down to the town. It's free with four cars constantly on the move.

We walked along the seafront past the casino and along the harbour. The restaurants were doing a great trade. Barely any not full.

We had a "formule crêpe", a sugary crepe and a coffee.

Another walk and back to van via the funicular. It seemed everyone had their tables and chairs out. So we did. Sitting in the shade provided by the van.

Later we had a walk the other way from the site and came across a memorial to the Free French Airforce.

Another evening of YouTubes and a Reacher on Prime.

Tomorrow we head towards Cabourg for a night before the week in the Sandaya.

It was around 2pm when we got to Cayeux-sur-Mer and the Camping-Car Park aire.

We had a coffee and then togged up to walk along the seafront to the town centre.

It's not far and we saw people had begun to dismantle the beach huts that line the boardwalk along the seafront.

We stopped for a crepe before walking back.

We had a quiet night. Watched a few YouTubes.

We were up bright (or not!!) early to get ready for the exhausting 8 mile drive from home to Eurotunnel.

Five twenty a.m. is way to early to be up and loading the final things into the van for a "no later than 6.15am" departure.

Our Shuttle train was due to depart at 7.46pm. To ensure we were there in time for check-in that closes an hour before departure, we were away dead on 6.15am.

With a short queue for the check-ins we were parked up in the "long vehicle" by the closing time for our train.

Check-in was more exciting due to the number of Ferrari and Lambo supercars queuing to get through. The noise....

We had coffee with us from the Tassimo in the kitchen, but bought some croissants.

It was relatively painless getting through the two border and passport controls. They barely looked at Claire's Irish passport. Mine got a little more scrutiny.

Eventually we loaded the train. It left a scandalous 2 minutes late!!

Once on the French side we were soon on the A16 heading west. Some roadworks briefly held us up but not for long.

We stayed on it, and the péage section until Le Touquet.

A simple park and have a coffee idea blown due to the lack of parking for a 6m van.

In the end we gave up and headed for Berck sur Mer. We didn't make that as Leroy-Martin had a huge car park and opposite was a Carrefour Market and a boulangerie.

A small shop and then a coffee ☕️ in Sophie's excellent bakery.

Once suitably refreshed we were on the road to the Camping-Car Park at Cayeux-sur-Mer.

That's were we are now....

Since we decided to have an earlier holiday in Europe, mostly to avoid as much of the expected heatwaves that plagued Europe this year.

The infrastructure isn't geared up for 35 °C plus temperatures for weeks on end, not here and not in Europe either.

We booked the Picos and Pyrenees in June because the mountains are cooler. Instead, the daily temperatures were hovering around that 35° mark all day and one day touched 41 °C in one place.

So rather than "suffer" that we have returned to what we used to do, a timeshare trip in February around Claire's birthday.

I spent a few hours looking for campsites. It's very popular with "snow birds" from Northern Europe who stay for months at a time. Prices were also quite high! I found a couple that appealed until I saw the price for a week's stay.

So I decided to see what RCI (https://www.rci.com/) could offer.

Although I sold the timeshare (simply to get rid of it earlier in the year) the buyers were aware that the 2024 and 2025 years had been "banked" with RCI, but they could use the 2026 year onwards in December and use the apartment.

The 2024 banked year has to be used by the end of this year. But the 2025 year can be used right up until December 31st 2027.

As we don't have the constraints of needing pet friendly accommodation, I expected the search to be full of places. Wrong.

With dates chosen to cover Claire's birthday, the search revealed two resorts in the Málaga area and four in the Valencia area. None of the latter were that attractive.

As usual Kione at Playa Romano in Alcossebre was there. It seems to always come up. We have been there three times before since 2022 as we had Reggie as they are dog friendly in some apartments. Last time in the autumn of 2025 the apartment was okay just not well situated! Plus in October, everything outside the town itself is closed. No restaurants or bars. Even the onsite pizzeria looked like it was mothballed months before.

So I moved the search to the two in the Málaga area. Both actually to the west in the Calahonda area. It's off the N-340 main costal road between Fuengirola and Marbella. It's an area we know reasonably well as we have stayed in nearby Torrenueva several times. Another timeshare that started off nicely and the a terrible apartment over the main reception! It's always a gamble in Europe. The places we exchanged into in Florida and Arizona were all much better.

In the end I chose Crown Resorts at Club Marbella. It gets 4* on the reviews on RCI, and 3.8* on Tripadvisor

There is plenty of car parking across the road and so I don't see any problems there. Malibu Molly is fully alarmed and has a tracker. No doubt I will affix my "not sleeping in the van" sign in the front window again! Just in case the police or locals get nosey. I did the same in Alcossebre!

So that's a start. I have created a journal on Motorhome Fun that is shareable.