After a very wet winter and spring and a couple of false starts we hadn’t been anywhere since our last adventure to France in Sept/Oct 23 and as DFDS were offering a free return trip for the caravan we decided to spend 3 weeks touring Brittany.  We wanted to try one or two new places but return to one or two “old places” for comfort.  This was met with mixed results and a lesson learnt.

Having a caravan instead of a motorhome meant we couldn’t use the Aires, particularly around Dieppe which is one of our favourites.  We were helped by the change in sailing times at Newhaven.  By catching the early morning ferry we arrived at Dieppe by lunch time giving us a better opportunity of finding a campsite before it got too late.  We have stayed on the Aire at Honfleur many times and had noticed that there is a municipal site quite near to the town centre and while they don’t take bookings outside July and August we took a chance that in April we should be ok.  So the lesson learnt bit is never accept the Sat Nav route as gospel.  We were routed down a narrow road and had to un-connect and turn around and find another way to the site.

The Honfleur site had suffered from poor weather and with no hard standings the pitches were very soft and rutted.  Fortunately with our four wheel drive it didn’t prove a problem however like many others we left a trail of rutts in the pitch.  The site itself is below the standard of a typical French municipal site.  The plus side is that it is within a few yds of the beach and a few yds to the town centre.

From Honfleur we headed directly to Concarneau and the ACSI site of La Sable Blanc.  This turned out to be an excellent find and we can highly recommend it.  Excellent facilities, large uniform level pitches with water points on most pitches.  Restaurant with superb views (though a tad expensive) and the beach and coastal walks within 150 mtrs  The town centre is one and a half kilometres along a dedicated path from the site.  The walled town is worth visiting and the walks around the coast are very good.

From Concarneau we moved on to a frequently visited site at Conleau where we spent an excellent week visiting old haunts and took the opportunity to visit old friends from years ago.

Leaving Conleau we headed for Mont St Michel.  Unfortunately we hadn’t realised it we the French VE day holiday.  This year it coincided with Ascension day and the whole of France had a 5 day weekend holiday with the result that not only were the roads choca block but all sites were fully booked.  Mont St Michel must have sunk a few feet given the number of visitors and all 19 car parks were full with cars queueing for hundreds of meters just trying to get in.  We ended up finding a site we stayed at last year in Ceaux.  That too was fully booked but the owners took pity on us and found us a lovely pitch.  While wuite a basic site everything was spotless and tidy.  It was great to see so many tents and people cooking on primus stoves.

From Ceaux it was a fairly short hop to Dieppe where we spent the night at the Flower Camping site just outside Dieppe – Deux Rivieres ready for our ferry trip home.

Just a point to note – now where could we buy moules frites around the golf de Morbihan and were informed “sorry sir its out of season” yet on the north coast of Normandy moules frites were sold at every restaurant.