Club Motorhome Bloggers

We had a visit to Pontivy which is located in Morbihan, more or less in the middle of Brittany.  The town is situated on the River Blavet.  Parking was easy with plenty of free spaces along the roadside and even though it was market day (which is a Monday 9am-2pm) there was parking in the market place where the market is held.

The Market at Pontivy has stalls offering fresh fruit and veg, meats a few cloths stalls, probably about 30 stalls.

After wandering around the town we eventually found the Chataeu des Rohan, which you would have thought would have been easy to find as it is such a large building.  The signs are not great and you can't see the Chataeu from the town centre.  If you walk along the river with the market place on your right you will then come across the Chateau just past where the river joins the Nantes Brest Canal.

The Chateau is currently ungoing some stone works as part of the wallk collapsed in 2014, so you can't walk all the way round it at the moment.

Although impressive, it does not look as good as shown on the websites and leaflets.

We decided to try out the Camping Aire in Dinan on Friday night, which is situated under the viaduct.  We arrived around 6.30pm.  We thought that we would be the only one's there as it is April and out of season, but to our surprise it was nearly full, with only two spaces left.  It is Free to stay from 7pm until 9am.  The parking metre is a little difficult to understand and I had the help of about 20 french fellow campers assisting me.  The meter asks you to input 4 numeric digits of your number plate which of course in the UK we do not have.  In the end on the advise of my helpers we just added a few zeros.  It also stated it was 2.30 euros for 2 hours, but on putting in just 2 euros  we obtained a ticket for 4 hours.  

This is a superb little Aire, that is situated on the river at Dinan Port, there are no facilities here, but there are toilets a 5 minute walk on the way into town on the left hand side.

Dinan is a walled town and it is quite a steep walk up from the port along a cobbled street, where you walk through an archway into the walled town.  Lots of gallery shops, gift shops and restaurants within the cobbled street.  Some lovely old buildings.

At the very top it becomes quite a big town, with a variety of shops, patisseries, banks, gift shops, basically everything you would expect from a town.  

After a relatively smooth ferry crossing from Poole, we arrived in Cherbourg about 1pm.  We negotiated from the port and took D650 down to Surtainville, where we stopped for a spot of lunch (plenty of parking here and a designated area for camper vans/motorhomes. A small village with a shop, bar/restuarant and toilets.

We are now beginning our Midlife Crisis Tour - On Thursday night we used the pub stopover list and stayed at the Bakers Arms in Lytchett Minster, Poole.  What a great pub, lovely atmosphere and lovely food, it was quite busy for a Thursday evening.  We checked with the landlord that it was ok to stay in the car park overnight who was happy for us to do so.

This pub is literally 7 minutes drive from the ferry port.

I am having a Midlife Crisis and my husband and I have made the decision to quit our jobs, buy a camper van, rent/sell the house and to go off on a trip to France. Yikes.... As I keep telling him "You can't buy memories" .We are now entering our count down for our trip to France i.e panic mode. We're renting out our home as a holiday let and our first booking is 31st March... I will be seeking advice in preparation and updating on how things are going.

Following the interest in my previous blog about overnighting in Car Parks and Laybys.

I thought I would make a short blog documenting the car parks I use during 2018. I will include a few basic details for you to read and update it as the year goes on.

February:

West Beach Hayling Island, Hampshire. 

We arrived at 6.30pm on a Thursday night, found a space with a sea view, obviously the areas with a sea view get filled up quickly, but the car park is very large, so lots of space in other areas and there a no marked bays to park in, so you can squeeze in 'aire' style.

Can we all make sure we don’t leave long tail backs of traffic behind us by pulling over regularly into passing places. Driving slowly on twisty roads is inevitable but we do cause frustration to other users , this will reduce any campervan induced accidents.