The start of Tour 13…
All our Van tours begin and end in France but most everything in between is determined by the weather – we chase the sun. This time it will be different because in three weeks time we are meeting our children and their partners in Portugal. They will be collecting rented motorhomes from a company in Porto, in the north of Portugal, and for a week or so we hope to introduce them to the delights of Portugal’s Norte Region and Spain’s Galicia. So we are on our way to Portugal via France and Spain.
Having said all that, we have a good three weeks before Porto and, currently, the weather in Bretagne is promising. We were last there during Tours 2, 4 and 5 and visited many interesting and beautiful places across all four departments – Ille Et Vilaine, Cotes D’Armor, Finistere and Morbihan. We decided to start this tour with a return to Bretagne.
Wanting to maximise our time in Bretagne we crossed the Channel using the Newhaven/Dieppe ferry instead of the one from Dover to Calais. Dieppe is considerably closer to Bretagne than Calais. Neither Vanya nor I have used this prticular ferry since the i980’s and it’s not a crossing I would want to repeat in a hurry (they are simply not as slick in terms of embarking and disembarking as at Dover) but, hey, it worked not least because our motorhome is stored in Newhaven and we had secured a pet friendly cabin on the boat and could keep our two dogs with us.
As we set off from our home in Brighton, the weather was foul (cold, wet and foggy) but, by the time all formalities had been completed in Newhaven and we were invited to board the ferry (the Seven Sisters), things had improved and all four of us enjoyed a smooth crossing. They served a pretty good breakfast too.
One other advantage of the Newhaven/Dieppe ferry: Dieppe is not very far from Yport which allowed us to visit our favourite restaurant in Normandy (Le Nautique) before continuing to Bretagne…