Day: August 2, 2017

Day 1 – Caen to Saumur

Posted by

0

What a short night sleep! We woke up in our little cabin to the melodic Brittany ferries musical alarm…. anyone who has ever been on a Brittany ferry (except Stew who loves it, and has tried to download it for his home alarm more than once) will have detected the slight hint of sarcasm! 5:30am!!!! Do they not know we are on holiday?

For our first stop we are headed to Saumur…. I'm a little anxious because, firstly it's away from the sea and I like to hug the coast in France, and secondly literally all of the campsites in the area were booked except this one, and it has dubious reviews! Still how bad can it be?! We have our own beds, and we will have a good explore!

We have borrowed a gizmo… I'm going to call if the beep beep gizmo which means that the tolls are going to be very simple… just beep beep and then mum and dad pay the tolls!! Highly recommended (though I'm not sure my mum and dad have realised that it's so much fun we will be zooming through France exclusively on toll roads now, slowing down all the cars who thought they could zoom about on the fast roads). Thought it was worth a mention as it makes it simpler if anyone's planning a long journey! https://www.saneftolling.co.uk/

Friends off to France…. don't forget a French adaptor plug for your cabin if you want to charge devices too!

We arrived in Saumur around lunch time and headed to the shops for cheese, meat, bread and wine… that's the menu for the next few weeks.

We decided to give the mushroom museum a swerve en route. We got everything set up whilst the kids went for an explore, then headed to the pool.

Meanwhile I read an unwelcome email from one of the campsite we booked threatened to overshadow the afternoon…. one of the sites we booked for 5 nights had over booked and cancelled… it was the second time we had experienced this and this left us with a weeks hole in the middle of our plans.
My pigeon French and some desperate phone calls have resolved our issues and I can't recommend "camping huttopia" highly enough. We now have ended up with the perfect itinerary and we are all sorted!

We are all exhausted! A busy couple of weeks and a long drive has accumulated in an early night, after a lovely BBQ and a game of crazy gold down the side of the beautiful Loire Valley.

The campsite is spot on…. chilled, simple and clean, with a stunning panoramic view of the the Loire valley…. tomorrow we will cycle the 9km into town for a good look and maybe a wine tasting! There are some dancing horses here so who knows what the day will bring!

2017…. We’re off…. or are we?

Posted by

0

So…. after uncertainty hung over family adamson's get away this year we finally booked a ferry, and managed to find a couple of campsites that weren't full… more difficult than you think!

We set off…. and broke down! We weren't even a mile from home! Freckle had had hiccups on our return from Cornwall a few weeks ago so our lovely mechanic kindly took her for a spin and had a fiddle with her insides…. but as we pulled away from our house the black smoke bellowing was a sign of impending doom!

When we couldn't get in touch with camper fixer Matt, we called the super Spencer family for advice…. after following a suggestion of wiggling some cables we were in the carpark on the phone to the RAC when family spencer arrived. In no time Spenny got on the floor under the van, whilst katie and I had a supportive glass of cider!…. the Spencer's then took the children out for tea, whilst camper Matt, who had also arrived (along with my dad to join the party) and fixed a leaking pipe with some cable ties and gaffa tape. A few minutes later then a lovely RAC man rocked up to the party and fixed something else. Something about air and pipes – I think I've concluded that air in freckle pipes = bad…. fuel in pipes is what we want!!

We loaded the bikes back up, tried to steal the spencer children and then made our way down the road, hopeful that we might meet again with slightly warm wine out of a box by a sausage BBQ somewhere in France next week!

How marvellous that we had so many friends sending us messages and rocking up to see us and make sure we got on our way….

We boarded the boat and whilst we waited for our cabin to be ready we had to make a last minute alteration of our route as one of the campsites cancelled our booking.

Once the children slithered into their bunks Stew and I had a very short corridor party (just one gin and tonic) because…. well…. it's what we do, before getting a few hours sleep, and starting the Freckle Adventure 2017 proper very early the next morning!