June 16th - 30th, 2012 (France)
Progress so far (Click picture to zoom)
16th-29th
The next couple of days were quite windy but dry and we borrowed bikes from the marina office a few times for shopping at the local supermarket and general sight-seeing around the town. We spent another very enjoyable evening with Peter & Dianne on board Aeolus II, before they headed off south. Hopefully we will catch up with them at some stage. Mike spent quite a bit of time in the dinghy, cleaning the boat’s hull and also washing all the fenders, while I cleaned inside. The weather improved considerably the day before we were due to go home so we took a ferry trip across to Ile Tudy and spent a very enjoyable afternoon wandering around and listening to a choir practicing for a concert in a local church.
We left very early on 20th to catch a bus to Quimper, TGV train to Montparnasse, metro across Paris to CDG airport for flight to Edinburgh, arriving home about 12 hours later. We spent a lovely day at my godson’s wedding on 23rd in Luss, on the banks of Loch Lomond and although on previous days the rain had been very heavy, luckily it held off at all the important moments and the photographs were all taken outside. Our time at home seemed to fly by and was taken up with sorting out the mail and catching up with friends and family, before flying back to Paris on 26th.
As we didn’t arrive back in Quimper until after midnight, we stayed the night in a hotel and the next day headed off to the old quarter, where we hopped aboard ‘Le Petit Train Touristique’ which meandered around the picturesque narrow cobbled streets. There was a running commentary in French which we got the gist of and after being deposited back at the starting point, we visited the Cathedral and the Breton Museum before catching the evening bus back to Loctudy.
At lunch in Quimper we noticed a menu with some hilarious translation errors (BabelFish perhaps). Some words had dual meanings and the translator had a 100% success rate in picking the wrong one. "Salad, Avocado, Tomato Quarters, shrimps, Rice" becomes "Salad, Lawyer, Districts of Tomato, Shrimps, Rice". Plugs with goat heat on toast didn't sound too tasty either.
We were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived back at the boat, some 30 hours after leaving home, so had something to eat and retired to bed. We had intended leaving Loctudy the following day, but by the time we had cycled along to the local Carrefour to restock the fridge and freezer and sorted out the boat, it was mid-afternoon. Unfortunately the forecast for the next couple of days was force 4-6 with swell up to 3m, so we decided to stay here for another couple of days.
On our arrival back at the marina, there was a surprise package waiting for us from Peter & Dianne, which contained a really lovely painting of Mistroma, which Dianne had painted for us. This is the first time we have ever had a painting of any of our boats and we are delighted with it and will take it home in October to get it framed. This was a thank you for advice and software that Mike had given Peter.
On our final day in Loctudy we walked up to Manoir de Kerazan and spent a very enjoyable afternoon wandering around the house and gardens. There was a lovely field full of poppies and other wild flowers which were attracting a lot of butterflies.
