Wednesday 18 May 2016

French Letter (7)

A Road Less Travelled
'A French Letter'


Plèhèdel.

18th May 2016

We spent the night on the 'Aires' at Plèhèdel. This costs €10 a night. But the 'Aires' has everything inclusive in the price. The facilities on site are excellent and spotlessly clean. There are 15 parking spots with plenty of room between places. There is a small lake where there is room for a few people to fish. The whole area is surrounded by a mixture of mature flowering and fruiting trees. This is one of those 'Aires' where its well worth going out of your way to visit. 

 

I was thinking about grandpa again, just before we set off on our trip we paid him a visit. He seems to be getting increasingly forgetful. It seems that as usual when we visit he gets half-way through a sentence, then forgets where he is. I have to reminded him 'you're in Wormwood Scrubs, Grandpa' Oh how we laugh.

The weather has dramatically improved and we were treated to one of the best sunsets of the trip so far. The 'Aires' is set in a very rural location and there was abundant wildlife for us to enjoy. The better woodland birds being a Nuthatch feeding chicks about twenty feet away from the van. Plus a Green Woodpecker gathering ants from a nest made mainly of a large pile of pine needles. We were even serenaded in the evening by a pair of competing Song Thrush. Best spot of the day was a lone Eagle flying west towards the coast.

The next morning the weather had improved even more and by 8am it was already 17c and getting warmer. There was a gentle breeze blowing, so we took the opportunity and did a launderette in the facilities block. It meant hand washing all our backlog of smalls in my case and the not-so-smalls in the case of the Memsahib!

Later we heard the distressing news on French TV, about the loss of the Egypt-Air aircraft flying from Paris to Cairo, with a number of French passengers onboard. We were reminded that the last time we were in France on our way back home from Spain. The terrorist shooting took place in Paris. The time before when we were on our way to Spain, was when the Charlie Hebdo shooting took place. 

 

Late in the day – we decided to go shopping. A check on the Garmin sat-nav said that there was an 'Intermarche' nearby. It seems that we had forgotten our previous experience of the Intermarche which seems to be the most expensive supermarket in France. It was 15 miles to the nearest Aldi. So after investing in just the French staple diet of beer, wine cheese and bread. If I was to describe Intermarche it would be like our Waitrose supermarkets but on financial steroids.

Rather than head back to the 'Aires' at Plèhèdel. We decided to move on a bit further along the coast to Paimpol and the Pierre Loti 'Aires'.

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