THE LAST OF THE BOOMERS... MOTORHOME ADVENTURES AND MORE

 Back in late may we took a trip to France with a busy summer I have been a bit slow to update the blog below is part 2 of this trip there will be a part 3 hopefully in the not to distant further . We don't want you to think that we are bad weather adverse some of our best trips have been in bad weather conditions but when you have traveled 18 hours on a ferry and you are from Ireland the least you can hope for is that it will be a wee bit warmer. After getting spoilt in may/jun 2023 with a long hot dry spell in Northern France this year the weather just wasn't playing ball with a cold wet forecast in the short term and in spite of planing a route based in Brittany we agreed to move south and in the time honoured scientific method of choosing the best place to go .... we checked the weather app and stuck a pin in the map !    So the satnav was set for the 5 hour drive to Bois Soleil camping in Saint Georges de Didonne near Royan we had visited this site before but we only notic

We are aboard the Irish ferry ship the WB Yates on route to Cherbourg, this is a trip we took many times over the past 20 years , for us it's actually a bit of a chore 18 hours of mah, as I type this Polly is asleep in our cabin and will only surface to get dinner I came to the bar to watch the Leinster match which we lost so it's going to be a long night, don't get me wrong the ferry is only a few years old and has all mod cons and is very comfortable but I find it a bit of a core it doesn't have the character that the Oscar wild had, it's a necessary core if you want to enjoy the delights of mainland Europe in a camping-car and in my opinion is well worth the effort.  I wrote the that opening paragraph a while back, my plan was to update the blog as I went along but I'm afraid this went out the window we have since landed back home after buzzing about France chasing the sun for the last 4 weeks so I will make a effort to log how things went over the next week

      While we never considered a permanent move we have often considered the merits of owning a holiday home in a warmer climate but to date we still enjoy van life or our version of it but we have not ruled it out sometime in the future .It would probably be a good topic for one of my blogs to explore the merits of both to help us decide one way or the other. Our latest trip was to visit our good friends who were brave enough to pack up and move to Spain permanently last October.     Nine years ago on a campsite in Andorra De Ville while planing to spectate at a stage of La Vuelta the Spanish cycling tour I mistakenly pulled onto the wrong pitch. This sparked a conversation with a very reserved Dutch man who I now know to be called Tom and his bubbly partner Con who had booked the very pitch we were standing on. We hit it off right away after a bit of banter it was agreed that we would stay where we were and they would find another  pitch  but I would by way of compensation buy them

 After our usual winter brake from the motorhome and with our winter sun trips out of the way it was time to get the van back on the road. I took the van from the yard back to the side of the house so we could give the van a good spring clean there were no winter mods this year so just the usual top to toe clean.With work and the cold wet spell to be honest I was lacking a bit of motivation to actually go anywhere.I did eventually bite the bullet loaded the mountain bike into the garage and spend a night in Carlingford on my own. Polly was working nights so was not available, it was as bleak as I thought it would be for a Wednesday night in march I was the only van on the marina that night ! I did however enjoy a pint and a chat with some locals in Juniors Bar up near the church at the top of the village. The following morning  I had a nice couple of hours in the hills on the bike I got caught in the rain and had to cut my spin short .... but as they say the worst day in the van in bet