Brittany in July '96

Mom came over to Holland in July for the main  holiday. As I said before, this was to Brittany, as usual in the caravan (taking in some Normandy on the way). We had to arrange the date of our holiday around a Dutch friend's marriage, but it all worked out very nicely.

 The weather on the trip was not the greatest, and it never felt warm enough to go in the sea, but it was a good holiday nevertheless. Going down we did the 1000 odd kilometres in four days.

Vitré

On the second and third nights we stopped in Normandy going to visit Vitré, which is a wonderful old city.The picture shows the old castle, later used as a prison.

In Brittany we stopped at Ste Anne d'Auray. The camp site was very nice indeed, and not expensive. Ste Anne is one of the important Breton pilgrimage sites, and the pope went there in September (we were just checking it out for him)! Ste Anne is 6km inland from Auray that is a port (up a channel) and about half-way between Vannes and Lorient (which you should be able to find on a map). We arrived at the right time: Auray was having a folk music festival.

Vannes

Vannes is a magical, medieval, walled town with the most beautiful gardens below the walls (above). There's another such we went to: Hennebont "old bridge". We went there on the way back from Concarneau, another fascinating medieval city, on an island in the port, and completely walled. It's quite a tourist trap, but that has its advantages, since there were some rather good musicians playing in a courtyard there. I bought a CD from one group: Micamac, called "Froggy dew" which is Celtic music arranged for Andean panpipes.

Nearby is one of the richest areas of stone age sites in France, at Carnac and Locmariaquer.

The route back I decided would be much more leisurely. We took five days over it, never going too far and getting some sightseeing done each day. First we got to the medieval city of Anger in Anjou. Actually we camped at the most wonderful, cheap site at Pruillé (pictured) on the River Mayenne.

The next day took us to Nogent-le-Rotroi, with a nice castle, and the following day to Beauvais. This is a great cathedral city, with a lot of interesting old buildings (mostly later than 17th century, they had a big fire then). One of the quaint things about it was the tourist route round the old town is marked by little brass lizards set in the pavements! If ever you plan to go camping there though, be warned that there's a hell of steep road up to the campsite!