It'[s me again

Hello again

Well, last night – Tuesday - was a great night for the “visitors” – for nearly 2 hours off & on they were running along the roof, or inside it.  It took me ages to get to sleep.

In the morning, (Wednesday) such as was left of it, after a leisurely start we made our way to the supermarket for shopping, & to look at emails & update blog.  On the way into Quincamp where the supermarket is we stopped & made a reservation for our Friday evening meal at the restaurant by the river – called L’O (the restaurant that is not the river).  Once the shopping was done we drove to the lake with the frogs (Etang Neuf) to see if the Resistance Museum by the side of the lake was open & to also call in at the restaurant to reserve a table for our meal tomorrow night.  The restaurant booked & the museum was open for the rest of the day we decided to go back to the gite with the shopping, as we had frozen items in the bag, & go back to the museum after that.  The gite & the museum are only about 5 or 6 minutes apart.

The museum is called “Musée de la Résistance en Argoat”.  It was extremely well laid out & all the displays had English description plaques alongside – which helped me a great deal.  The film at the end was only in French – but having read all the information in the remainder of the Museum it wasn’t difficult to follow.

The day was rounded off with a very pleasant meal in the gite.

It’s Thursday & hooray – no “visitors” last night.  The undisturbed sleep was evident by the lateness of the hour that we both woke up.

The weather is appalling – it is absolutely pouring with rain.  Nevertheless we did our final run to the supermarket for supplies to get us through to Saturday morning. It had been our intention to go for a picnic but the weather definitely was not conducive to that.

We decided to find a different way back to the gite & saw some really lovely countryside that we hadn’t actually seen before.  Mind you much of it was through absolute downpours. But every so often it would stop raining & the sun would come out – for about 5 minutes only.  There was no point in driving aimlessly & there wasn’t anywhere indoors we wanted to visit so we returned to the gite.  It was a good decision as we had an even heavier downpour just after getting indoors & a little while later a thunderstorm.  So we settled down with books & Wimbledon for the afternoon until it was time to go for our dinner.

It is Friday & the last day of this holiday – well at least at the gite.

A quick trip to the SuperU supermarket for diesel for our journey tomorrow – although Bob will buy more tomorrow as well so that he goes home with a full tank.  Diesel is cheaper here than in UK.

We took a drive to find another lake – Etang de Bosmeleac.  Finding it – like all the others (except Etang Neuf) – was fun.  The signs pointed to it but we couldn’t find it. This was mainly due to the fact that at some point the signs stopped & nothing at the junction said which way to go.  But – as usual – with our perseverance & the GPS in the car we found it.  On the GPS screen you can keep an eye on the roads that go around & eventually down to the lac & just follow those.

We are still puzzled by the fact that there are not many water birds on these lakes. Really strange.

The weather today is also off & on – rain & shine.

During our drive we found a memorial to 55 people who had been tortured by the Nazis – including a woman & her 2 daughters.  Their graves were a little further away & the people in the area kept them preserved.

This has been a holiday of 2 halves.  The visits to all the lakes & the visits to Resistance museums & memorials.  A very beautiful country with a very sad history but a very brave people.

As you drive around this beautiful & quiet countryside it is too hard to imagine all that conflict taking place.

After our drive we returned to the gite to do a little sorting out of our belongings ready for our journey tomorrow. We have to leave the gite by 10:30am which for us is early morning start to be ready to do that.

Now we have reached Saturday & we have left the gite & made our way to St. Malo where we will be catching the ferry back to Portsmouth tomorrow morning.  Our hotel is right on the Promenade & we have a room with a view over the sea.  We took a walk along the prom towards the old city.  The harbour is full of sailing boats as it is the start of the Tall Ships race.  So St Malo is busy.  It has been raining here most of the day so we got a little damp.  But looking out of our room with the french windows open it is very pleasant.

If I can write again once back in the UK before getting home I will.  We are staying in Portsmouth the night & driving back Monday making a detour to go to Chichester where my parents ashes are & to lay down some flowers.

  

That is it for now.  Please forgive any typing errors.

‘Bye for now.  Take care.