Honfleur

Honfleur Honfleur Honfleur Honfleur Mal cleaning the van in Honfleur - our first 1,000 mile clean!

6th Sept 08 – Sat We arose to a lovely sunny day & listened to the crescendo of waves on the harbour wall, whilst lying in bed – it was pure indulgence! Mal fed us porridge for breakfast. A lady arrived in a van selling freshly baked croissant, bread & pan au chocolat we bought some bread for lunch & Mal treated himself to a croissant, which was absolutely divine! I spent the whole morning getting the on-line blog up to date. Mal relaxed outside on his reclining chair reading. Mal made lunch & then I joined him outside. The weather is so good I changed into some shorts! Another disaster today….the habitation door has started to stick again, so we are struggling to get it open – Mal has tried to fix it twice before. So, yet again Mal attempted to sort it out to no avail – he thinks it may be the handle, so we need to find a Hymer dealership to get it fixed (let’s hope the guys in France do a better job than the UK). We did not let this put us off & set about sunbathing again. We took a stroll into town where Mal showed me some beautiful buildings he had discovered on the hillside – one of them was a convent. We did some shopping to cover the next 2 days, & then sat out reading for a while with a nice beer. I cooked tea which was great timing as we had a rain shower. We had a knock on our door at about 7.30pm, Mal opened it to a little old man who was selling eggs, wine & marmalade – Mal kindly told him we didn’t need anything. When I saw him out of the window I felt sorry for him (he was so cute), so I asked Mal if he would go & buy some eggs, but by the time Mal got to him he had sold out – which made us feel better. We didn’t really need any eggs; guess I am just a softie! Later on in the evening we had an alarm going off from the inverter which was to say we were running out of battery, so……it was ‘lights out’ we thought we may scrape through with the electric until tomorrow am – guess that’s another learning curve! Anyway we watched a movie on the laptop which was perfectly acceptable – then off to bed. Mal of course found all this very frustrating & incessantly talked about voltage, amps etc etc......nothing profess to know much about! 7th Sept 08 - Sun The rain through the night was immense & it was still raining when we got up. We had run out of electric completely now......no big hassle as it would charge once we were on the road. But Mal as most preturbed & said it may have damaged the battery - no point crying over spilt milk! So, we packed up & headed off for Honfleur. We drove through some quaint villages which were drenched in flowers. The countryside is a veritable feast for the eyes with a smorgasbord of colour. The other day whilst travelling to St Valery en Caux we saw a deer at the side of the road, it was awesome! We decided to travel along the coast/country roads to our next destination which took us to Duclair, Jane (the sat nav lady) then said get the ferry! Mal said to me “what did she say….get the ferry?” my reply was yes & sure enough straight ahead was a small car ferry over the Seine! How exciting we thought, it was only a couple of minutes long & was a great experience which neither of us had done before. We carried on to Honfleur & found our next aire which had a lot of happy campers complete with travelling circus. Throughout our journey Mal asked me to check & re-check what voltage was now in the battery as it 'should be chargeing' on our journey! AArrggghhh I made a lovely lunch, then we settled back to watch the Belgium Grand Prix, Lewis won in a nail biting finale. Then we unloaded the bikes & set off to explore the town. WOW the town is stunning, it was also very busy with both pedestrians & traffic so much so that we decided to head back drop the bikes off, change into something cooler as it was very warm & pick up Mr Snappy (my camera). Then we took off again, stopping off at the fish market at the side of the harbour to peruse their wares; we decided we may buy some fresh fish in the morning as we had dinner planned for tonight. The town was gobsmackingly beautiful, we took a pew on the marina wall & watched the world go buy. Then meandered around the various shops gazing admiringly at the wonderful buildings. This is definitely a place everyone should visit & I can’t recommend it enough. We walked back slowly to the MH after a while to hook with my sister P, for a video call – which was great; it was fab to see my big Sis. We sank a couple of beers; the temperature in the MH on our return was 33 degrees! Later as we were discucssing yes you guessed it 'THE voltage' & battery issue Mal said he was disappointed it didn't last that long - I then reminded him we had not been on hook up since Tuesday & it was now Sunday so we had managed 5 nights on battery. Mal had forgotten about this & concluded it was rather good after all. As I type this Mal is checking the voltage input.....see what I mean when I say Arrgghhh! Happy Days.

8th Sept 08 - Honfleur

A glorious day – the sun shone throughout. Mal took himself off for a bike ride at 8am, whilst I cleaned the ‘house’, yep you still get household chores – it’s not all a breeze! Upon Mal’s return we cleaned the outside of the MH for the very first time (she has done 1,000 miles now), she came up gleaming! We had a leisurely lunch, then did a bit of had washing, then sat out for the afternoon oscillating between snoozing & reading – we are spoilt. We decided upon a bike ride prior to dinner. Mal cooked a mouth-watering risotto, whilst I caught up on a bit of essential admin. A very relaxing, re-energising day indeed! We called Holly this evening to open our mail, some pleasant mail & not so pleasant – we had got a speeding fine for doing 37 in a 30 (we had thought it was a 40) – so a £60 fine & 3 points……can stomach the fine but the points are unreasonable! Thank goodness we are no longer in the UK!