Crossing the channel

After two days of hectic travel, we have arrived in the UK. It's nice to be back in a country that speaks English again! It means I can purge all the foreign languages out of my system - for the time being at least.

For the last two days, I've added quite a few photos to the Flickr driving set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/

First up on the first morning was a quick whiparound of Avranches, the small town where we're staying. It's a fairly small town, but it's got a decently-sized tourism office because it's so close to the Normandy-Brittany coast. In the town there's an obligatory enormous cathedral, a ruined medieval castle and a memorial to General Patton, who broke through a German frontline in the Great War, which ultimately resulted in the liberation of France in just two days!

A whiparound of Avranches

From there it was a loooong drive to Le Havre. Mum had previously wanted to stop by some D-Day related stuff, like Omaha Beach, but we ended up just driving through a couple of towns near Le Havre. They are collectively known as Deauville-Trouville, and are well-known for their seaside location and old buildings. But 'The Parisian Riviera'? Get a grip! They're not that impressive.

Deauville-Trouville

We eventually made it to the Port of Le Havre, and queued up to check in. Just like boarding a plane, you have to check in with your car at least 45 minutes before the scheduled departure time. We were ushered onto the car deck just over an hour before a scheduled 5:00pm departure on our ship, which was called the Seven Sisters.

For those that haven't used a car ferry before, you basically have to get what you need from your car - you can't access the car decks while you're sailing. Once you've done that, you head upstairs and try and snare a seat. I found some seats that were quite comfortable, but they were right near the playground area. Run away! We went up a deck and found some identical seats with no kids. Great!

We actually left Le Havre about 15 minutes early - probably because the decks were less than half full - not before I got some good shots of the waterfront of Le Havre. Good thing about a nice camera - the shutter is too fast to worry about the ship's list:

Le Havre waterfront

We settled into a five-and-a-half-hour journey. Mum's a poor sailor, yet she managed relatively well - she said afterwards another hour might have been pushing it though. We actually found a cabin of sorts fore of where we were - it was very dark and quiet, with next to no people in it. It seemed to be a 'quiet zone' - nobody was talking at all. It was marvellous.

We hadn't had lunch, so I headed down to the restaurant at about 8. I decided to try a British fish and chips - the prices were quite reasonable for ferry and ship standards, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. The fish and chips was typically British - the fish was lots of batter and not a lot of fish, the chips were almost crispy.

About an hour before arrival in Bournemouth, the sun started to spectacularly set behind some clouds. There were a lot of people out on the decks, but I managed to find myself a quiet spot and started snapping:

Sunset from the Seven Sisters

Our overnight tonight was a hotel just off the main East-West motorway, surprisingly quiet so close to the motorway. Free WiFi, free parking, less than $100 a night. Sold! We found out the next morning that there was a mill museum next to it. Not that we could go, because it was closed for the entire month. Slackers!

Our initial plan for day two was to make quick stops in Torquay and Plymouth. I hadn't read much about them personally, but mum wanted to go to Torquay and dad wanted to go to Plymouth. It became inherent after about an hour on the road that that wasn't going to happen.

OH MY GOD THE TRAFFIC IN THIS COUNTRY! Evidently we got the worst end of a bad Saturday afternoon, but all the A Roads, as they're known here, were stupidly busy. We made multiple detours on back roads to beat the traffic.

We cruised along near the coast for quite a while. We quickly drove through a couple of towns, including Dawlish, but decided there wasn't enough there to warrant a stop. Frankly, I thought the countryside looked much better than the towns:

The Devonshire coastline

We crossed through a couple of nice towns and made a lightning-fast stop on the beach in Torquay. Enough to get a few photos:

Cornish coastal towns

Eventually we made it to Plymouth, where we looked at a railway bridge named after Isambard Brunel, an English rail baron and one of Britain's most influential entrepreneurs. To put it in perspective, he was named second in the '100 Greatest Britons' survey, behind only some insignificant guy named Winston Churchill. The bridge wasn't that amazing, but it was a fantastic legacy to a great man's work.

Eventually we made it to dad's friends' place. They live in a tiny suburb in the town of St. Austell. It's pretty central in Cornwall, making it easy to explore in any direction - except for south, it's almost right on the sea. We'll be staying here for four whole days. We'll probably go down to St. Michael's Mount, but the rest is up in the air. Catch you next time!

Backing up the bus

Today our plan was to go back to one of the towns we missed out on yesterday. Dinan was supposed to be quite nice, so we decided to go back there for today. If there was time we would have a bit of a walk around Avranches.

Dinan photos are up on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646496241266/

It seemed like a trend so far in France, with mum with us - barely able to find a park anywhere. We navigated to the centre of town, which took us near but not exactly inside the town's ramparts - we seem to have found every rampart-surrounded town in France. And we couldn't find a park. We ended up parking in a backstreet and walking to the old town. I mean, we'd walked 4 klicks from Luxembourg, but mum wasn't going to do that. At all. So a 20-minute walk had to be our limit.

The weather was rather worrying - the rain had been hanging around in fits and starts most of the morning. Luckily it cleared up enough to take photos, but it was still producing white backgrounds. Fortunately after a while the cloud dissipated a bit and there was a little bit of blue sky.

We came across a section of the ramparts that housed a museum. I wanted to go in, mum and dad didn't. Probably something to do with the fact that I got about 80% off as a student. It was less than 2 Euros for me to go in. It was actually quite nice - but not something I might've paid full price for:

Dinan ramparts museum

The highlight for me was the spectacular views of the town, almost 360 degrees, from the very top of the highest tower:

The view of Dinan

After that I headed around the outskirts of the old town, which for medium-sized towns was actually quite small. I came across what translated literally as 'The English Garden', bordering on the obligatory enormous local church. It was quite nice, and there were a couple of parts of the ramparts that extended out, giving spectacular views of the valley down below:

English Garden

I got a message from mum, telling me that they were changing the meeting location. I couldn't understand where they were waiting, so I went to the tourist office to get my bearings. Cue another phone call, and eventually we met halfway, where we had gone into the old town. By then it had started pouring with rain, so we scurried back to the car and headed back to Avranches. The weather didn't improve at all, so we sat in the house for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow we'll be starting the long two-day haul from Normandy to Cornwall. Back to the English language! See you over there.

Driving and skipping

Today, mum wanted to visit five towns - in one day! I told her it was a little unrealistic, but we went ahead with the plan. There was an  outrageous amount of driving to do - in addition to visiting five places it was simply going to be too much. The main destination for today was Saint-Malo, which was a little over twice as far from Avranches as Le Mont Saint Michel.

You can see the Saint-Malo and Combourg collections on Flickr:

Combourg: https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646136465150/
Saint-Malo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646502752201/

After driving for nearly an hour, parking at Saint-Malo turned out to be a bitch. We drove and drove looking for a parking spot, and eventually found one right on the bay. It was right across from one of three of Saint-Malo's forts. The whole walk down to the old town was a view across the beaches and the fort:

The view of the fort and the beach

Eventually mum went toys out of the pram with my photography, so we arranged to meet after two hours. I went off up to the ramparts, and saw that the tide had gone out. When the tide goes out, all three forts (which are out on the sea) become walkable from the beaches. I headed for the nearest one, Le Fort National, and paid my entry fee. I'm loving still technically being a student, I've scored discounts to many different places so far. There was a fair bit of history to the fort, I followed a little of it and took some photos - the contrasts in the colour of the water and the colours of the fort were amazing:

Le Fort National

Eventually I headed back across the beach and towards the ramparts and old town of Saint-Malo. The old town area was a bit grungy for my liking, compared to other towns it was all concrete and granite, not much colour thrown in. The main shopping street was interesting, all sorts of local delicacies available. I ended up trying a pastry that was like rolled-up crepe mixture deep-fried and drowned in sugar. Delicious.

The part of the ramparts I walked was the western part, which looks out over some of Saint-Malo's picturesque beaches. Think Fiji or the Caribbean, but with granite instead of palm trees:

Looking out over the west of Saint-Malo

By that stage it was high time to move on to the next town. We agreed to skip town number 2 and move on to Dinan. We did stop quickly for a photo stop at a bridge before heading off. The traffic at Dinan was just awful - the weather had fouled up by this stage as well and we decided to make for Combourg, which had a castle to visit.

Combourg's castle was refreshingly bustle-free, with quite a few parking spots. We paid for the entry fee (student prices again!) and were told the next tour would start in half an hour. Unfortunately we couldn't explore the massive grounds properly as it had just started to rain. By the time the tour started it had stopped raining, but only just.

Unfortunately there was no photography inside the castle during the tour, but we were allowed to (or we just didn't get caught) take photos outside up the top, with views over the town. Some pretty decent views, but nothing too spectacular. On the way out the grounds were closing, so even though the sun was now shining we didn't get to take many photos.

Chateau de Combourg

We had a little bit of a wander around town afterwards as well - nothing much to it, 'just another old town'. Probably didn't help that we were all tired and only walked a few blocks. We decided that tomorrow we would turf much of the original plan, in favour of going back to Dinan and doing it properly. Maybe we'll also get some time to tour Avranches properly. Until next time!

I survived Le Mont Saint Michel!

Holy crap, that was painful. Le Mont St. Michel was one of the things I really wanted to do on this trip, but I came so close to turning around and going back again, even after we were already there.

Here's the Flickr gallery:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646501789651/

We didn't get a really late start, but it was still just after 10 before we arrived at Mont St. Michel, having been dropped by dad to get the bus to the island. You used to have to run the gauntlet of parking on the island, but because of an enormous anti-erosion project, all the car parking is now done on the mainland and you have to get the free bus (or not-free chariot) there.

I walked back along the new boardwalk a little way to take some photos, and got back to what can only be described as a madhouse. OK, maybe I lie - you could use any synonym effectively to describe the situation. Because it was high tide, only one of the doors was above the tide line, and the door could only let one person in OR out at a time. So on either side of the door there was an enormous bottleneck. And in typical European style, it wasn't organised at all - it was simply a rugby scrum on either side of the door. There were people yelling obscenities at the security and the gendarmes, it was almost at riot-level. Then the bank-mobile had to get through the throngs, and people were trying to sneak around the outside to beat the queues.

It took us almost an hour and three-quarters just to get past the outer wall and up to the top of the main rampart, where I grabbed this snap looking down on the crowd:

Scruuuuum!

For a while, it was quite peaceful on the inside, as we steered well clear of the major paths on either side of the entrance. But then we reached the entrance area for the abbey, at the top of the Mont, where the estimated waiting time was 30 minutes. It blew out to 45 minutes before we left. By this time we were well and truly tired of queueing, so we gave it a miss.

The main shopping drag is packed as well. You are crammed in tight, and of course people stop and browse the trinkets at the souvenir shop, and don't go in, holding everyone else up. There are some locals that actually live here - even if you paid me full salary I wouldn't live there. The locals seem to think they have right of way to push the tourists out of the way to get past more quickly. I witnessed an Asian family, each one of the 6 had a suitcase as big as a house, walking two abreast. Someone who I assume was a local actually shoved one of the Asian gentlemen back into single file in order to get past. So much rudeness, so little time.

There are hotels on the island as well. Ridiculously expensive though, a single-person room for one night went for as much as 235 Euros! Crazy!

Here are some photos from the area:

Inside Mont St. Michel

Once we were ready to go out, we discovered that they had actually opened up the other two remaining doors, given that the tide had got substantially lower - there were people running around out on the mud flats - pass! Once we got out, the flow of people diminished rapidly, and we walked back along the boardwalk to the mainland. It was much more peaceful, and you could walk at your own pace and stop at your leisure:

The Mont from the boardwalk

We also stopped at the small hotel-oriented village between the parking lots and the island. Here the souvenirs were as expensive, if not more expensive, than on the island, but the surrounds were quite nice. There was a dam there as well, to regulate the water flow in and out of the mud flats around the island:

Hotel village

We just made it back to the parking lot, where dad was supposed to pick us up, before it started raining. We headed into the visitor centre, and saw a video about the anti-erosion project, which is supposed to be finished in a couple of years.

Tomorrow's plan is to go past Mont St. Michel, to some towns, like Dinan and St. Malo. Until then!