Coast of Vannes up to Rennes and back again

Ignoring our "only a few kilometres a day" habit we made the trip from St Gilda's, on the coast south east of Vannes, back up to Reguiny, a town in our old hunting grounds, in one hit. Our plan was to get the medical check-up over and done with, head on up to Rennes to visit Ikea for a couple of bits 'n bobs, then drive back down to St Gilda's for a real rest. We'd tasted leisure time at last and most definitely wanted more!

Friday 12 May 2017
Reguiny is within spitting and whistling distance of where we used to live which meant we hadn't needed to stay overnight there before, but had had our eye on it for a time like this as it was relatively close to Pontivy Hospital. It's a typical small Breton village boasting a public swimming pool (piscine) and a pleasant lake area where we could replenish our water and empty our tanks.

The weather was cool with soft rain ... perfect for enjoying this view from out of Milly's front door and windows. Bridie was in doggie paradise with all the sniffs she could sniff in this delightful mini forest we parked next to.

We completed a busy appointment-filled day with lunch with good friends, the Tomkins and the O'Neills, at a well-known restaurant called La Hangar in Ploermel, another close-by town. La Hangar is a converted railway warehouse, now a very worthwhile restaurant and household novelty shop with to-die-for huge merengues, biscuits and nougat to tempt even the strongest will power.

For our overnight stop we headed east towards Rennes where Ikea is, and stopped at the Tregu Aire near to Pleland le Grande, for the night. Lovely, peaceful and next to a lake of course!

Above and below is Tregu Aire near Pleland Le Grande

13 May 2017, Saturday
I could hardly believe that my youngest, Gary, turned 35 years old on this day! Oh wow. Only way to celebrate is to go to Ikea and buy things. LOL. He's living in Cape Town, and is the GM of a well known and well established restaurant there called The Wild Fig ... anyone been there? I haven't seen him for close on five years ... that is heart-breakingly long. Sniff.

Rennes (Ikea) was our turning point on this leg of our journey and we headed south again, stopping off for a rather eventful night in Plumeliau. When we got there, the town itself was closed off, seemingly for a celebration or fete of some kind. We were able to navigate around the town and find the motorhome aire - at the side of a lake - and settle down for a bit of a Milly houseclean and a Bridie training session.

The evening and night was peaceful until 3am when we were loudly awakened by someone literally thumping heavily on our door and yelling something French at the top of his voice. Even Bridie was too shocked to bark. Alan's first reaction was the best ... he sat bolt upright and yelled something very loudly. I can't remember what he yelled ... I think it was Voetsak! (Ha Ha Ha ... a very South African / Afrikaans expression for a strong version of Go Away!) with an expletive or two. He has one of the most powerful male voices I have come across, when he wants to use it, so it was extremely effective.

On investigation, whoever it was, brave person, had run off by the time we put the outside light on and peered out the windows. Later that morning when we emerged from Milly after breakfast, we found that the thumping-door gentleman had pulled our windscreen wipers away from the windscreen, and they were sticking out like feelers, but luckily not broken and no other damage anywhere.

In South Africa we call the mischievous game of knocking on someone's front door and then running away and hiding, Tok Tokkie. I'm too much of a scaredy cat to have done it myself. The only invasion of a stranger's territory I've ever dabbled in, at the age of about four, and encouraged by my fun-loving grandfather, was dialling random numbers on the big black telephone to see if it would ring. One day a kindly male voice answered my random number dialing and I got such a fright I slammed the phone down and jumped wide-eyed onto my grandfather's lap. He chortled merrily and said "Who was that?" and I replied "Mr Nobody". I never did it again. So brave.

And so on to an Oyster Farm ...

Pontivy to the Coast of Vannes

Yay! All duties and medical appointments, except for a checkup in a few days time, done and dusted. Finally time for us to become people again, to begin to enjoy each other's company again ... and to train the dog!

Saturday 5 May 2017
Driving for only a few kilometres a day is our plan. A hop and a skip down the road from Pontivy, next to a lovely spot at the canal-side in Gueltas, amongst cool trees and with a view to an old long boat moored on the opposite bank,is where we spent our fourth night.

St Gueltas

This is likely to be a heavily image-rich blog post, hence the image collages.

Feeling the need to just chill the stress of the house move out of our bones, and to sit and read for a day, we moved ourselves to the more formal aire at the sports ground in Gueltas, so we could service Milly's tanks, and spend another peaceful night.

Our hopes for staying there two nights were dashed by hordes of little eight-year-old fellas coming to play football on the sports field, and rushing around us playing cops and robbers while they waited to kick ball. That was fine except for the fact that Bridie wanted to play too and our peace was smashed into smithereens by her excited barking. We decided to move.

No problem. Just a kilometre or two down the road was one of my favourite overnight stops at St Samson, a tiny town on the banks of the Nantes to Brest canal. On the opposite bank is a nicely tarred tow path so we're often waving to friendly cyclists and walkers as it's a popular and well-used facility. We stayed an extra day here and I did what I haven't done in years ... spent the day reading a book!

Chill out day was putting it mildy ... I was so chilled I forgot to take photographs so these pics are of St Samson on a previous trip in 2016.

St Samson

7 May 2017, Sunday

On Sunday morning we spent time getting Bridie used to playing with her squished blue football whilst on a long lead. There's a suitably big piece of ground next to the small harbour at St Samson, with the usual French boules pitches, and she can run fairly free. She's a nervous German Shepherd (as most of them are) and folk often don't realise that some dogs are more afraid of people than the other way around - so we do our best to keep her away from too many scary folk and make sure she's on a lead all the time. A 30 foot lead, linked to a couple of normal length leads, gives her quite a ball throwing distance to run around in.

On a Sunday afternoon drive, we followed our noses of curiosity and visited the town of Le Chez, 10 kilometres or so down the road from Rohan. Rohan is the very close neighbour to St Samson.

We parked amongst the motorhomes in the designated parking space but there were way too many folk staying there for our comfort. A walk into the centre of the town confirmed that no restaurants or bars were open, so we decided to simply enjoy the views along the riverside and head back to Rohan.

As you can see from the images below, Spring hadn't quite arrived

and the days were cool and darkish

Alan has long wanted to try out a certain creperie (pancake restaurant) in Rohan, so we did just that for our evening meal. It was okay but nothing really to write home about and I am sad to admit that I don't remember the main meal at all. Yummy desserts though ... Alan chose chocolate and I chose apple ice cream.

Opposite the restaurant, as we were walking along the tow path alongside, we spotted this really ancient building which could well have been standing since medieval times. These are the gems which make travel so worthwhile. Their calm survival through good times and bad is very comforting I find.

Ha ha, I'm going backwards in time here. Also before our nondescript meal, we stopped at a roadside cafe to enjoy the late afternoon sun with a beer in our hands. As with every pub in small towns, there is a local who, possibly out of loneliness, befriends everyone who sits there. This pub was no exception and I snapped a sneaky pic of the friendly fella who picked a rosebud from the flower bed to present to me. I have no idea what he was saying to me and he has no idea how his lovely action was balm to my still wounded and tired soul. Here he is, guarding the door to the cafe with the white rosebud lying appreciated next to my ice cold beer. I wonder if he realises he's a healer!

8 May 2017, Monday
This is the day we really started heading south and began to feel freedom blowing through our hair. We could have made it down to the coast in one day, but travel is all about the journey and the stops along the way. About halfway between the home we had just left and the coast of Vannes, we pulled in to the Aire de Pompas, between Meucon and Plescop, for another restful night on the road. This aire really is a roadside picnic spot, enough off the road for privacy from the traffic and with a view out to the rolling countryside.

9 and 10 May 2017, Tuesday and Wednesday

A short and visually interesting journey along some coastal bits, brought us to St Gilda's for a couple of chill-out nights. Potential wild camping spots that we found were not the best, so we checked in to the municipal campsite for a couple of nights and found a parking spot right near the gate to the beach. As the camping season was just beginning, there was loads of space for us to relax in.

Our two days were filled with beach walks, one of the best sunsets I've ever witnessed, hours of reading and more hours of not having to think about anything in particular. The most valuable rest we've had in years!

Bridie was a scream on her first visit to the beach. The Atlantic was literally lapping on the shore pretending to be a lake, with "waves" no more than an inch or two high by the time they reached the sandy bits. This being Bridie's beach maiden run, and herself being a typical take-no-chances German Shepherd, she jumped about six foot high each time a ripple-wave broke against the beach. Finally I was able to encourage her to follow me out until the water touched her tummy, but she was not a happy girl until she was safely back at Alan's side on the sand.

 "Uh uh. Can't go in there. I'll drown!"

"I'm off. Not for me thanks."

Her first-time experience didn't end there though. We sat away from the water on dry sand just to soak up the atmosphere and the sounds ... and she discovered that her passion for digging had free reign. She was digging frantically, getting about six or eight inches down before moving on to a fresh patch from which to fling sand at us. Every now and then she'd look up at me with a frantic look in her eyes as if to say: "I can't cope Mum! There is so much digging to be done here how am I going to do it all!" Those memories are even more precious to me than the breath-taking sunset that evening.

I'll end here, before our trip took us back up north for a few days again, with some of the many, many photographs I took at St Gilda's. Here are our moments, in no particular order ...

 Just one shot of the many I took of That Sunset

 Don't miss the moon!

 The frantic digger

 A few pics now of the beach walk and coastline

And back up north we headed ....

Settling in to a new future

It's taken me four months (somebody please slow down that ticking thing!!) to find the space in my head to write about the three weeks between leaving the house at La Ville Oger and moving in to Melody in Pors Peron. There have been huge changes in our lives in the past 18 months and I've had to process it all so that I can move on. Next lifetime I'm going to be a man who doesn't have this urge to purge and grow!

You see ... even Alan and Bridie are ahead of me on this pathway .... ha ha ha

On the beach at St Gilda's

At the beginning of 2016 we discovered that we were too burned out, after nearly 10 years, to continue as responsible carers for my then 92 year old Mum and her rapidly progessing Altzheimers. I ended up in hospital in the UK with a rather life-threatening bout of pneumonia, and the pressure on Alan, looking after both of us (once I had driven a rather scary drive back home to France, by myself) for a couple of months, was huge.

I could see the strain on his usually laughing and affable face and every time I looked in a mirror all I could see was this puffy, tired, black-eyed ghost which I vaguely remembered was me. Both of us felt our nerves were at screaming pitch and we couldn't cope with my siblings who, quite rightly (one in South Africa and one in the UK) could not yet fully relate to what we were going through. Plus there was no possibility of any sort of break for us, from any quarter, for a few years.

To cut a long and traumatic story short, I took my Mum over to my sister in the UK, in October, to stay there temporarily whilst I try and find a suitable nursing home for her there. As it turns out, it's a really long process so Mum is still living with my sister for the duration. She turns 94 just after next Christmas ... Mum, that is, not my sister! ... and is unlikely to be coming back to France to live with us.

Back in France, I didn't realise how long it would take to get back on track with my own life. The Big Sellout of all our goods and chattels, followed by our move here to Pors Peron didn't help much either. That too was quite a draining experience even although it's exactly what we wanted to do.

The biggest hurdle in this challenge has been regaining my sense of identity. Altzheimers is a cruel monster and as much as my sensible brain told me not to take on board the unfamiliar and harsh words which came out of Mum's mouth on an almost daily basis, it certainly wears you down. I've needed to find the essense of myself again. As has Alan. It's not so easy!

Good long hours doing glass painting commissions these past few weeks, once all the unpacking had been done, has given me that inside space to balance out, so right now I'm probably the most whole I've been for a couple of decades. Watch out world!

From life's journey it's back to our road travels.

Here's a little reminder of Lanouee

After leaving Lanouee (see: https://roadtripswithmilly.blogspot.fr/2017/06/the-leaving-of-la-ville-oger.html) and before we could head south towards the coast of Vannes, I needed to have a carcinoma removed from just below my right eye, in the Pontivy Hospital, which meant staying in the area for a few more days. Thank you South African sun!

Our next overnight stop, hardly half an hour down the road, and heading towards Pontivy, was at Pleugriffet. This aire fast became my favourite for the area. Traffic-wise it's quiet, next to a lake and we were the only motorhomers there. The local community take care of the area, having erected sculptures from natural materials and plants. There's even a couple of boxes where simple vegetables are being grown and I noticed a family picking a handful to take home and use.

 

We were still experimenting with keeping Bridie on a lead next to the motorhome, attached to the seat belt connection inside, seeing how long we could allow it to be without her being able to scare the wits out of passersby or getting herself too tangled and knotted up.

Herself, not being used to restrictions when there were so many lovely sniffs to be had further than the length of her lead, got a little miffed and didn't want to look at me while I was taking pics. She's such a teenager!

My facial op went off well but my mind being elsewhere, I forgot to take pics of our stop at the Pontivy aire. Valvert. It's a popular spot for motorhomes as well as walkers and families, with a lunchtime restaurant there as well. Next time then, when I don't have a big plaster and dressing on my face!

Heading south ....