Friday 9 October 2015

Bonjour mes amis (I think)

Well we made it to French soil after a rolling crossing.  Because we hadn't had time for breakfast we decided to fuel up with a full English (French style - never order scrambled egg on Brittany Ferries)!  We docked at about 1.45pm local time and we decided to motor for only 60 miles to our first stop.  I used our "Motorhome Guide Camperstop Europe" book to find Guilberville.  A quaint little town built around the church but being expanded with modern housing (as seen behind the G).
 
The parking area had no hook up for the electric but there was a chemical dump so our batteries came in useful for running the TV - still catching up on loads of films that were recorded in UK.
There was only one other customer which meant it was nice & quiet (we're the one in the background).
We found a pâtisserie/boulangerie in the village so we made our first purchases, a baguette, pain au chocolate and a type of custard tart - Yum Yum.
Our aim the next day was to go to...
which is where GJ's cousin lives, about 17km from La Rochelle.  When we got to Elspeth's house, we took Kevin apart to find the keys which she had previously sent us.  As we couldn't find them, by a process of illumination, we contacted our friend Paul who is looking after GJs Range Rover until we come back over for it and he found them in the glove-box back in the UK. Sacré bleu!
We then had to contact Elspeth who happened to be in Australia and 10hrs ahead of us. So in order to kill time until we could realistically wake her, we motored down to the town of La Rochelle.  We were fortunate that there were a couple of designated free spaces left in the car park.
That's us, fifth one down.
As we were in the centre of the town, it made sense to go out and find some food so we left Bracken in the van and made it to a small square in the centre with a typical "Paris Bar" on it.  We couldn't resist the lights and ventured in.
I thought I was in a movie.  I had Blanquette de Veau (sorry for those who don't agree with Veal) and GJ had a blue rib eye.
Our first proper French meals - very nice too.
On reflection, we couldn't have planned things any better.  We managed to speak to Elspeth who arranged with her builder to let us have a key the next day, which is why we ended up staying in La Rochelle.  If we had managed to go straight to the house, we probably would never have actually taken Kevin in to the town and would therefore have missed out on the pictures that will be on the next blog.
Milage this time 292 miles
GJ H & Bracken
 
 
 

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