Ile be seeing you..a little Re' of sunshine... (1 Viewer)

[Mousy]

I'll give you all some time to guess the bill...meanwhile we awoke to a lovely sunny day and after spending half an hour deciding where to go next we actually moved 10 feet to better pitches at le crotoy!

A leisurely cooked breakfast of roasted peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms supplemented with grilled halloumi bacon and eggs and we were ready for a strenuous bike ride.

Mr Mousy set off and after following behind him and watching him take at least 2 wrong turns I realised that yet again he'd left his glasses behind.

Time spent on the beach..
View attachment 121605

We are struggling with t'internet so this is now Ger typing......

We decided to try the steam train around the bay, The outside of the carriages looked very sleek and vintage, but the style and grace of the outside was unfortunately not replicated on the inside. The seats were REALLY uncomfortable. Slatted wooden seats and no cushions! The trip took an hour from Le Crotoy to St Valerie Sur Somme, which is a lovely little town on the opposite side of the Baie de Somme.

On arrival we headed straight for the nearest bar, to un numb bums, and people watch, before going for a lovely stroll along the promenade. There were various market stalls selling jus de raisins, concrete tortoises, honey and saucissons - all of which we resisted - the boys 'Kevin and Perry' faces telling us they were in no mood for shopping!

The return trip was a little better, with padded (ish) seats. However when we stopped at Le Noyelles Sur Mer, Dawn saw a lot of passsngers on our train transferring to the train on the other side of the tracks, and she was convinced we were on our way back to St Valery, She was not 'appy! As lovely as St Valery was, she didn't want to see its leafy promenade again anytime soon! We assured her that we were on the right track, and an hour later saw us cycling back to the vans and a welcome G and T followed by a lovely barby.

Early night tonight - heading south tomorrow! Bon nuit mes petite amis! (If @yodeli is reading - je suis desolate pour mon francais)!

 

[Zoppydog]

I can wait for the "guess the bill" answer but would love to know the name of the Restaurant before we reach Le Crotoy
Please please please......
Chris

 

[Steve101uk]

I think the bill was around 135 euro at bonne franquette II. I love stopping at Le Crotoy, have a long weekend planned there in a few weeks.

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[Jandek]

€110

 

[big map]

€155

 

[Mousy]

@Robert Clark was the closest it was €121 not Inc tip. @laser101uk was spot on with the place thanks. @Zoppydog hope you enjoy it as much as we do. It's always very busy and service is hit and miss but the food makes up for it.

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[Zoppydog]

@Robert Clark was the closest it was €121 not Inc tip. @laser101uk was spot on with the place thanks. @Zoppydog hope you enjoy it as much as we do. It's always very busy and service is hit and miss but the food makes up for it.

Thanks @Mousy and @laser101uk I can cope with hit and miss service if the food is as good as it looks. We have a seafood platter everywhere we go in the world so I will give my opinion when we have tried it...Oysters in Cancal is still high on my list
Thanks again
Chris

 

[Mousy]

Hoping for oysters at Ile be rey

 

[Mousy]

We do too. Best for us was with sundowners in Cape Town overlooking the sea. It's the only time other diners have clapped when the platter came out. .we realised why when we got the bill.

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[Steve101uk]

I think bonne franquette II is also the cheapest in le crotoy.

We went to Il de Re last year and stumbled across this place on a bike ride from St Martin, had the best sea bass ever with fresh oysters and local wine, great service sat by the sea and lovely weather. Only accessible on a bike or walking.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Resta...e_Re_Ile_de_Re_Charente_Maritime_Poitou_.html

We also had a meal at Le Tout du Cru in St Martin, again a very nice if your looking for seafood https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Resta...de_Re_Charente_Maritime_Poitou_Charentes.html

 

[Zoppydog]

Hoping for oysters at Ile be rey

@Mousy We are going onto Il de re too, let us know where the best Oysters are!
Chris

 

[Zoppydog]

I think bonne franquette II is also the cheapest in le crotoy.

We went to Il de Re last year and stumbled across this place on a bike ride from St Martin, had the best sea bass ever with fresh oysters and local wine, great service sat by the sea and lovely weather. Only accessible on a bike or walking.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Resta...e_Re_Ile_de_Re_Charente_Maritime_Poitou_.html

We also had a meal at Le Tout du Cru in St Martin, again a very nice if your looking for seafood https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Resta...de_Re_Charente_Maritime_Poitou_Charentes.html

Thanks @laser101uk for the tips and links, we live on seafood especially when we are travelling. Love going to the markets and getting it fresh, doesn't take much cooking on the BBQ either helps to balance the budget
Chris

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[cliffanger]

Well, we both had stressful motoring days yesterday. I'll let @Mousy tell you about theirs, but ours began when I switched Co Pilot on and the lovely James lead us out of the Aires and on our way. I may have upset him by spotting a sign for Carrefour and diverting to fill the diesel tank up at the start of our long day of driving (@Mousy take note......). James must have let that one go, because he steered us, albeit on a picturesque tour of sleepy villages, back onto the fast, toll free Road to Rouen.

Rouen was uneventful (one of these days we will stop and look around the cathedral where I've been told there are some interesting relics), but yesterday we drove straight through it, following the signs for Le Mans.

How can one little error turn into a motoring nightmare? You tell me my Funster Friends because I don't know - what I do know is that the French Road system planners could learn a thing or two from their counterparts in the UK.

We were following the signs (with no road numbers on it) for Le Mans, when we thought we had turned off correctly, but we should have stayed on the road - the signage was so unclear - no problem says I, we can just go down and around and come back up on the same road. No such luck - the signs were now JUST Road numbers with no destinations and we ended up on a completely different road and Le Mans was never mentioned again!

The situation was made worse by James getting the right 'ump and refusing to speak to us any more!

We travelled down the N154 instead of the A28 for miles, which was fine, but James kept wanting to send us off on D roads and refused to let us try and find the A28 for ourselves. I realised later in the day that he wasn't behaving like a recalcitrant adolescent by not speaking and trying to send us down one track roads - I had accidentally knocked the mute button, and the default position on Co-Pilot was to avoid toll roads!

We both arrived at Le Suze sur Sarthe at around the same time and caught up on each other's trip..... Those who followed our trip last year will note that we didn't learn by previous mistakes - and when you read Dawn's post you will all be shouting 'YOU SHOULD HAVE TRAVELLED TOGETHER!!'

Anyway, we had a lovely swim in the outdoor municipal pool in beautiful sunshine, listening to a live band that played all afternoon, finishing the day off with a nice meal in town where we met @Les who was there with his daughter!

On to the Ile de are now - the sun is out - diesel tanks are full and life is good!

 

[Scout]

you should have got some walkie talkies they help a lot, rely on a maps and throw the sat nag put the window.....

Have fun

 

[Popeye]

should have got some walkie talkies

You obviously haven't been reading @DavidG58 's Scotland tour, he almost hid a Walkie-Talkie inside his Father in Law.

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[Les]

Hope weather good on Ill de Re,warm at La Suze but comfortable happy travels

 

[Mousy]

Well as Ger said earlier we both set off OK with high hopes and expectations of reaching the aire by the river.
Lovely sunny day, co pilot working, what could go wrong?.....

After a few hours of driving we were making good time, we had had a text from Ger full of their sat nav woes but were feeling smug as we were on the right motorway and fairly bombing along.

Mr Mousy asks how many kilometres til we arrive. 121km I shoot back. "mmmmn" "display says we've only got enough fuel for 80km".
Even my rudimentary maths tells me that we need fuel.

Shall we stop at the service station? I ask.
We start looking and don't find any. Fuel gauge continues to tick down... Now we have 26km left. I start to fidget in my seat. Mr Mousy seems unconcerned. We breeze past a town. He turns off, but now we are on a different motorway heading away from Le Mans.

We now have 9km worth of fuel left. We stop at a picnic aire, put 5 litres in from our spare container and use the co pilot to find the nearest petrol station... 46 kms away

We use the last few kilometres left to get off the motorway. We are both quietly panicking now. I realise that cliff and ger couldn't even find us so no help there.

I envision Mr Mousy cycling with a petrol can strapped to the back of his bike. Whist I sit stranded on the hard shoulder in the baking heat. I vaguely wonder if using the shower and blow drying my hair in those circumstances is legal.

We both try and be stoic. That doesn't work well. The air conditioning is turned off. So it's now 30 degrees inside the van and 38 outside.

We drive on. Coasting down any hills and cletchin our collective butt cheeks at every upwards slope.

Display now says 0km of fuel left. It helpful advises us to visit a fuel station.

We enter a small village, as usual nobody in sight but parked cars lining the narrow sreets. If we run out now we would be in real trouble, blocking the main village street. We are now both frantically looking for any where safe to pull over.

We turn a sharpe left at a Carrefour sign to spot a petrol station down the hill. With tremulously huge grins of relief we coast to a stop under the canopy...after checking it won't remove our sat dish.

Phew this was by far the closest we had ever come to running out. We put 70.5 litres of diesel into our 70 litre capacity tank.

We realise once again that France is huge, it doesn't have petrol stations everywhere and turning off the motorway is no guarantee of success.

We are both stressed out to arrive at the busy aire to find only one space left so we use the campsite next door. €7. Per night plus
€3.50 extra for ehu. A result.

Our meal, four starters, four mains, four puds, 3 coffees and 2 litres of wine.

Guess the price.

 

[Popeye]

Who ate this and what is it?

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[Mousy]

Prune tart for Mr Mousy.

 

[Popeye]

Mr Mousy

Martin you are what you eat thou-noze............ yes; a Tart!

155 Euro....... inc dwinkies........... Steak looks good, save some Red Rum for me!

 

[rb62]

I wouldn't have thought he needed any prunes after that journey!

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[wizzer59]

As per usual a great read so much so I'm sure most of us would love to be with you sharing the laughs keep it coming

will be following you on the 3rd

 

[wizzer59]

Can we also guess how much weight each of you will put on over your hols???

 

[Jandek]

Can so relate to that butt clenching situation of not finding a petrol station!
Happened to us in Zaragosa. Cannot believe you can be in a city and unable to find a garage despite sat nav ! Such a relief when you get there. Always try and stay half full now .

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[Scout]

Prune tart for Mr Mousy.

Id have he would not have needed that.....

 

[Scout]

80euros

 

[jockaneezer]

Mr Mousy asks how many kilometres til we arrive. 121km I shoot back. "mmmmn" "display says we've only got enough fuel for 80km".

We ran out of fuel on a French motorway when Val was driving, I wasn't paying attention to the gauge but when I asked her why she hadn't slowed down to conserve fuel, she replied " I wanted to get to the services quickly before the fuel ran out" she is blonde by the way !

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[Mousy]

Well we put some miles under the wheels and arrived in the Ile de Rey to glorious sunshine. We had chosen an acsi site on the middle of the island but sadly there were no vacancies. So we decided to head to the very end of the island and wait out the mass exodus after the bank holiday weekend.
We were lucky to be offered 2 pitches next to each other but when Ger and I walked them we found them not to our liking, bit too near to the loos, low branches from the trees and quite exposed.
We spotted 2 much bigger empty pitches nearer the beach and after checking in reception set off to camp. The men had been left a tad too long in the heat and Mr Mousy was hot tired and irritable.

So when 10 minutes later he drove onto the pitch and the van sunk into the sand he was less than amused.
We ladies stood by helplessly while Cliff and Martin sprang into action with track matts and the god sent E &P leveling jacks. It was still a good hours work for them to lift the van, place the mats, lower the van drive back half a foot, get stuck and repeat.

Thank god we had the jacks as there was no space outside the pitch to be towed off.

Cliff reckoned if he'd had tried to go up on his leveling ramps he too would of got stuck. The pitch looked firm but it was only a crust over soft sand. We high tailed it down to the lower terrace where we finally pitched up.

It was a stressful afternoon but luckily after a few gin and tonics we could see the funny side.

It's so lovely here though and the weather is really helping.

Our beach next to the light house.

 

[Chris]

I love a good running out of fuel story

When I was a student I took a girl round Longleat Safari Park in a bit of a hurry because I was out of fuel.

 

[Mousy]

I love a good running out of fuel story

When I was a student I took a girl round Longleat Safari Park in a bit of a hurry because I was out of fuel.

Is that a euphemism?

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