Which I inadvertently added to by having a chocolate croissant dipped in my coffee while writing yesterday’s blog in bed. Coffee and croissant all over me and the bed. If the blog was a paper diary yesterdays page would be the colour of old parchment and the ink would be indistinct. In yesterdays blog I said I shared a birthday with the first use of a lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks. 14th November 1698. If that were really true I would be writing on old parchment.
Anyway back to the holiday plus washing. Thankfully Stonehouse did not get the memo that the heatwave was over. The yard was still capable of drying washing yesterday long after the sun had set.
There has been only one major yardening crisis whilst we were away. Our lavender tree has curled up his fragrant toes and died, draping himself dramatically over a stoic Olive tree. Jobs for next week I think.
Quite the unplanned day today. Up early to use a beachside outdoor laundrette. Staggeringly high tech. We loaded our washing and were instructed that a text message would tell us when our washing was done. With a little over an hour to wait we walked to an empty beach, found a bench and read our books.
Not a bad way to get the laundry done and make a plan for the day, hundreds of tourists descended on Quiberon while the washing was doing its thing, we decided to find some calm. We chose the Mediaeval town of Auray for our first destination. High tech to Mediaeval in just over an hour. Auray was virtually empty. Unplanned Auray for tomorrow. Not one but two Saints, one freshly minted in 2025.
Writing this from a road trip seems the ideal location to ponder perfection.
In many respects this will be an anti-perfection ponder. A road trip needs just enough planning to provide a scaffold of ideas that serendipity can build upon. I realise that many people need certainty but we are not those people.
This was the sunset last night at a location we had not expected to visit this year. The Ice Saints brought inclement weather so we headed further south a little earlier than anticipated.
Before this road trip I was unaware of Ice Saints. More on them below.
What’s a simple pleasure in life that brings you joy?
We are on a two week camper van adventure. All the pleasures are simple. All are bringing joy. Except, perhaps, the weather. The sun hats are getting no use.
But the wet weather gear and our winter thermals are having a seasonal extension to duties. There is no such thing as bad weather for a holiday just the wrong clothes and we have the right clothes.
Books, Scrabble and my travelling art stuff are having more moments than anticipated. But things could change any minute.
Bright shafts of sunlight are fighting their way through the left over storm clouds of last night. So anything could happen today. Simple Pleasures in Sunshine perhaps.
A day of textures, travels with LeClerc and consolidation.
Brittany is fish, I love everything about fish. But fish does not love me and that breaks my heart because even fish in a supermarket here screams eat me, cook me simply and enjoy. So rather than eat fish I must devour with my eyes.
The weather was not with us today and the towns we visited were quiet. Fortunately we could reprovision using a Hypermarket.
Sleepy towns and inclement weather could be a recipe for disaster but slow walks in unknown places are one of the great pleasures of life.
A cottage garden in Loctudy
A bit of street art and the real thing.
Phare La Perdrix at Loctudy
We wandered in old graveyards and found moss like a world map and barely there inscriptions.
And the sadness of a World War 1 military graveyard where young men gave their lives for France. Not something we ever read on British War graves as we are not a Republic. In Britain lives were given for King and Country. I prefer the directness of the French wording.
Young men who would have done useful jobs like transporting wine if they had not been fighting in a pointless war
Women were represented on our little texture hunt by cast iron fixings for shutters.
A Breton flag and Breton jumpers.
And just look at this, freshly caught crabs at our destination of three days time.
Gauthier’s Haul
Life is full of texture today. Especially lovely when we found a tea shop open.
We arrived almost in the dark at Saint Pol De Leon. Over night we were woken up by a strange and mournful sound. Not to be too dramatic it was like large barrels of fluid being rolled into the sea. We had inadvertently parked over the point where a large outflow pipe discharged out of the sea wall. As high tide arrived the sea entered the pipe forcing air in rolling booms every time a wave flowed in, as the wave ebbed there were siren -like wails and laments. Under our van and behind it were large air vents amplifying the sound , making us feel surrounded by modern day smugglers up to no good. Visually there was no sign of any miscreants of any sort but I could see that the tide was very high and assumed correctly that the noise was being caused in some way by the incoming tide. I comforted myself back to sleep with the thought of good humoured sea creatures booming and wailing together in a lamguage not too far from Whalesong. An early morning trip to the bathroom and a low tide showed me the cause of the nights disturbance, all was well.
Saint Pon de Leon takes its name from an improbable Welsh Saint. Saints seem to do the improbable far more often than the unsaintly. Can you imagine the notoriety of being a conflated Paul?
And we are off, taking the blog and the dog to Brittany on the ferry. Coincidentally, the Bobbers were having a bob as we left the port. They are under the red arrow waving.
Lola has taken to seafaring like a pro and is nestled down, deep in her bunk.
Another friend saw us leave from afar.
Funny that this busy port is a stones throw from the front of our house and yet all we look out on is trees and a tranquil school sports field. On a really high tide we can see the top floors of the ferries. Sometimes we feel the power of the engines through the foundations of the house and we hear the tannoy messages if the wind is in the right direction.
I love transport hubs so it was fascinating to see why and what causes the clunks and bangs we hear.
I also have a fascination with the rust that builds up on ports and harbours where the sea meets the structures.
Just imagine this beautiful rust is just 200 yards or so from our house and I have never seen it before.
83 days ago we were in Melbourne, Australia. Yesterday we were in Bristol Historic Docks, gazing at the S.S Great Britain.
This is a tiny snippet of a blog built on a coincidence. Had we travelled on the inaugural S.S Great Britain trip to Melbourne we would have only just arrived. The journey was scheduled to take 60 days which would not have worked for our coincidence. 60 days non-stop became 83 days because there had been a miscalculation in the amount of coal required for the steam engine. So an unplanned visit to Cape Town, South Africa, occurred and many of the passengers took the opportunity of climbing Table Mountain.
Our flight arrived about ten minutes ahead of schedule, no mountains involved and we were fragrant enough to hug our friends on arrival. I suspect the greeting would have been more at arms length, or further, if we had been travelling 83 days and thrown in a casual mountain climb in a hot climate.
Yesterday was a day of really bright sunlight and a temperature of about 2 degrees Centigrade.
It was a day of dog walking, admin and another painting of Coogee Beach, more sunshine.
Coogee Beach, 27 degrees.
Beyond my day’s domestic plans, there was also some Tennis Club admin that needed to be done with a friend.
Beyond Tennis chat, we talked about Christmas, Grief, an erotic novel, kitchen plans, and our holidays. Mine in the past and hers upcoming. She is heading to Bergen and beyond in Norway. She is expecting to experience sunshine and temperatures of about -30.
The whole conversation blew my mind a little bit. Mostly because travel blows my mind a lot. The ease with which we discuss such things as women in the 21st Century is a delight unknown to most women in the past.
The kitchen that we sat in, nattering away, was built about 175 years ago. A home suitable for professional men and their families . The men would have worked either in a nearby Military base or Dockyard or been involved in the Maritime or Fishing industries. Plymouth was linked to London by train in 1848, making Plymouth an International Travel hub. Travel would not have been an unfamiliar subject even when my kitchen was new.
Travel would have been much more complex. Timescales would be significantly different. Climate adjustment slower and riskier
Sailing to Australia would have taken three to four months, one way. Sailing to Bergen took about two weeks.
Luggage of only 23 kg is more than adequate for either of us to have the right clothing for hugely different climates.
I cannot imagine how much luggage we would have needed to make such journeys 150 years ago. English women of all classes were wearing Bustles.
Just one dress would weigh more than 23kg!
Very few women travelled for pleasure or exploration in 1850. For the most part British women were shipped around the world to service the sexual and dynastic needs of British men abroad who were busy doing British things like Colonisation.
British men being the powerful people. Taking political, economic, and cultural control over other territories and populations. Exploiting resources, labour, people and land for the benefit of Britain.
How lucky are we in 2026 to be able to travel quickly to anywhere in the world and to any temperature with just 23k of luggage. Know with almost 100% certainty that we will return, to natter, at the kitchen table after our travels. Safe in the knowledge that travel will expand our minds and not require us to search for a husband or create children.
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