We're back from our travels and it's good to stay put for a bit now! To say it was a bit of a rush in between trips is putting it mildly. As we had housesitters for both trips there's not only sorting out our own things but we have also to think of the housesitters - clean the house before they arrive, have a meal prepared for them that evening, and then washing their bedding and towels afterwards. With my brother here too the laundry pile is astronomical, but there's no rush to get it all done now.
As it's so hot outside right now* what better to do than sort through my photos indoors! I still have piles of weeds to attack but can only go slowly at the moment and the garden requires watering most evenings now which takes priority.
Despite us all catching the cold that my brother caught off someone on the ferry over, pouring rain on our first day and a lot of really annoying wind, we still had a great time! Brittany's coastline is just amazing and it's no wonder that it is so popular with tourists. This place that we visited was on our last day and it was a shame we had to leave about 4pm for the journey home, as it was the most glorious spot with fab views and a beach to die for... and we had nice weather that day. I doubt I will be posting everything from our travels but this was one place I wanted to share.
The hamlet of Meneham is one of those places which fell into disrepair after the inhabitants moved out and so it has been restored, with some of the buildings now housing a gite, an auberge, artisan workshops and a museum. The houses are dotted about here and there and aren't the most photogenic but the history of the hamlet is interesting. If you look carefully at the photo below you will see that the thatch has been capped with stone. This was done as back in the day wood was used, but people used to nick the wood to use as firewood as there are no trees about on this windswept coastal site. Meneham once housed customs people before it was taken over by paysans, both fishermen and farmers who worked the land. An important 'crop' for them was seaweed, which they would collect with the help of horses, dry out then burn to cinders. These cinders were sent to various factories to extract soda from them. This info I got from the info boards on site, however the website for Meneham says that they extracted iodine and algin/alginate.
These cottages have been turned into a gite - a great spot to holiday but you'd have to get used to tourists gawking at you when you sat outside!
The whole area is rocky and so many of the rocks have 'faces' in them - once you start thinking like that you see creatures in them everywhere. I see an elephant below. :-)
This is the little house that is built in a gap between the rocks and the other side looks out to sea. There are only two little windows and it's a one room house.
This is it from the coastal side.
And these are the kinds of views it enjoys!
At low tide the beach and surrounds are just stunning.
And the sand is pure white! Not golden but the whitest sand I've seen in Brittany, perhaps in all of France. There are dunes all along the edge of the beach and at the top of the dunes where the sand is more solid there are sand martins nesting. It was a real pleasure wandering around with these little birds flying around us.
OK so this photo has had a vintage filter so the sand looks golden!
Sand Martin at its nest hole.
There were also quite a number of Rock Pipits, a bird we have been seeing regularly around coastal Brittany.
I spotted this little critter in the sand so got down close for a better look. It is a Sand Hopper (Talitrus saltator), but it didn't hop for us and just played dead. They eat rotting seaweed and in turn provide food for shore birds.
A rock pool!
Keith looking in a rock pool, but I was interested in the rock to the right of him. Can you see the lady's face and hair?
He took some photos of me but only my back view this time (I have plenty of me facing the camera in other places!). I bought the cropped trousers and backpack in a touristy shop on our previous trip. I'm covered up here because we all got a bit pink a few days before spending several hours on a beach.
There was tons of seaweed making paddling (or swimming) at low tide not so enticing; however the variety of seaweed was amazing, with all sorts of sizes and colours. I was most enamoured by a pinky purple one, which I ought to have taken a photo of. I'm not sure what my brother and I are looking at here.
All in all a place well worth a visit.
The website for Meneham makes interesting reading, although it is in French. http://www.meneham.bzh/le-village-de-meneham/histoire
and briefer infomation is given in English here.
* It was 36C when I wrote this several days ago; it now feels gloriously cool at 24C!
Happy New Year to all my friends and family! Thanks for following and supporting my blog, despite the lack of posts of late. How was your Christmas? Ours was just us two as usual but this year, after all these years in France, we went 'French' and had a shellfish blowout on Christmas Eve just like the French do. No oysters or yucky whelks for us; we ordered only the things we like - prawns, langoustines and crab claws. I've thought about doing this many times before but always imagined the supermarket on Xmas Eve would be a nightmare, but in fact going at lunchtime to collect our order it was just as empty as it usually is! So we'll be eating a la francaise again in the future.
For Christmas Day lunch, we again forewent the traditional turkey and had roast beef and yorkshire pud, followed by mincemeat bakewell tart. I made this tart three years ago and it was a hit - sorry about my rubbish food photography skills but here's the recipe and a better picture. If you like mincemeat it's really yummy and worth the hassle of making the sweet pastry - but there is no blind baking involved so not as hard as you'd think.
I did make mince pies but this year was a first - I made Mary Berry's pastry which is slightly sweet and has orange zest in it. It made a nice change.
What do you buy the woman who has everything? Some books about butterflies and moths of course, and a butterfly tea light holder. :-)
Right, onto the subject matter of the title. We actually took Mary Moho out three times in December! to the same place on the coast each time, although the photos here are from the first and most recent trips because the second time it decided to cloud over and rain. Yes rain, how very dare it! We set out in sunshine! So no walking that day.
We 'discovered' a new place; well we knew it existed from having looked at google earth, but hadn't explored around there yet. Not everywhere is easy to access or park in a moho, but luck was on our side as we stumbled upon a real moho car park at Pointe du Meinga, which is halfway between St Malo and Cancale. There is a coastal footpath all the way around the headland (it's the GR34) and a farm track up the middle, as some of the land is used to grow vegetables. For us seeing fields of cauliflowers and leeks is quite a change! Each walk (coastal track one way then back via the farm track) took about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, so is a good work out, as the coastal track is very up and down and has some difficult rocky places here and there. I needed Keith's help in some places and the second time took an alpine stick, which was useful in the difficult places.
Here are pics from the first day we went there, and the beach is the one on the west of the headland. Either side of the headland has fabulous golden sandy beaches - wonderfully empty in winter of course!
Selfie time - who needs special effects - those rays are for real from the sun (pure luck rather than photography skills!).
This rock caught my eye - what kind of face do you see? I see a sleeping koala, or a squirrel with its hand stuck out.... people on facebook and instagram saw all sorts of things, parrot being quite popular.
The most recent trip was the Friday before New Year, when it was even more cold and frosty than the first time. Inland was rather foggy and frozen but it was a glorious day at the coast. This time we were able to park in a car only car park with sea view, as the height barrier had been lifted. The following photo is our view from the moho whilst having lunch. Not bad, especially when you are sitting in comfort in the warmth, eating a hot picnic (Nigel Slater's chorizo soup/stew with crusty bread).
A view from the farm track...
...and the beach taken a bit closer from the coastal footpath. That white line is frost!
Steps leading down to the beach and a view back over the headland.
Back home the frost had not melted at all and the next day was even more frosty! I haven't seen frost quite like it here before, and to linger all day long is very unusual. This is chicken wire and that's Blondie the hen in the background.
We had to take Mary Moho back to where she lives, and K had heard that there was snow along the way and cars had gone off the road into the ditch. Thankfully by the time we got there the snow had melted on the road but the whiteness of the harsh frost was even more magical as it was covered in a smattering of snow. It's very weird how you can have such microclimates as this patch had freezing fog which we drove through the day before on the way to the lockup. Here at the lockup it was back to just the normal white frost - still incredibly magical. This is the only photo I have of any kind of view, through the moho window of the barrier gate at the lockup!
Icy weather means a frozen lake, and our ducks managed to get iced into a small patch of water beside the fallen tree, which was out in the middle of the (thankfully) narrower end of the lake. Of course I had a bit of a wade into the water and bashed at the ice with my wellies, but that was fairly pointless and all I got was wet jeans as my wellies are not waterproof anymore. So poor K had to get his waders on and get out in the water with a long pole to break the ice, so that the ducks could come and get some food on the bank.
Can you guess what happened the next day? Yes the silly ducks were iced in again, cue K getting his waders on again. I'm glad to say some of the water melted a few days ago and even though it is icy again, this time the ducks are up the far end under the overhanging trees by the bank, in a sensible place where I can take them food!
We also had our tree guy in to fell some trees but I have quite a lot of photos so that'll be another post. All these photos are taken on my phone - I've barely used a camera since coming back from holiday!
After our trip to England in May, we felt the urge to get away in our MoHo again. We were desperate to get back down to the Gulf of Morbihan around the Sarzeau area in search of the elusive Bluethroat once more. We also fancied just revisiting some places we'd been to in April, wanting to see what they would be like now a couple of months later. So off we trotted back to the same campsite, just for an overnighter, on June 7th.
At the Duer Marshes, not surprisingly, there were avocets all over the place.....
.... and Shelducks too, but it was the first time we'd seen any baby ones, which were mega cute.
Various birds seen, from top left clockwise: Kestrel, Brent Geese, Kentish Plover, Chiffchaff, and Kestrel again.
Back at the marshes and dunes around the Chateau de Suscinio, we were really hoping to see a Bluethroat. We passed some birders with tripods and scopes who we chatted to, who then called out that there was a Bluethroat in the reeds. At home my not very good extremely zoomed in photos were hard to figure out; it certainly wasn't a male but didn't look much like a female either. Eventually I came to the conclusion that it was a juvenile or female Stonechat! Oh never mind! We will just have to go back and try again next year.
The dunes beside the marsh were looking pretty with bright splashes of yellow and blue from the Sedums and Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare) everywhere. Surprisingly there were very few butterflies here. Maybe it was too windy. Plenty of bees though enjoying the nectar.
I managed to capture this Skylark singing - there were a fair few of them around, as well as the by now usual Linnets and Stonechats, which we keep encountering on our coastal forays.
Below - the Skylark again top right, and I think a Yellowhammer bottom right. Left, there were snails like this all over the coastal plants!
The highlight though was this magnificent dragonfly which flew over the marshes and settled quite close to us. It's a Golden Ringed Dragonfly (Cordulegaster boltonii) and I've only seen one twice before (one time in my veg patch!).
On the path round the back of the marshes we were pleased to find that the ground had dried out - in April this path was practically underwater and although we managed to walk it, our trainers got extremely wet and muddy!
Suddenly we discovered an explosion of Meadow Browns - I think they had just recently eclosed. There were dozens of them and we walked amongst clouds of them. When we stopped walking they settled on plants, flying up again when we resumed walking. It was a great experience - I don't think I've ever seen so many butterflies in one place before!
They were already doing the business!
I saw a few Marbled Whites too, but the one at the bottom of the collage had just eclosed I think, which I hadn't realised at the time of taking the photo. I think there is something wrong with its underwings though as they haven't unfolded like the forewings, and if that was the case then it wouldn't have had a very long life, sadly.
A little way further along the track and ...... drum roll....... I saw a lifer butterfly! A Black-veined White (Aporia crataegi). I'm surprised I haven't seen one before as the larva feed on various common fruit trees, including Blackthorn and Hawthorn. It was the only one we saw but very exciting!
Moving on to a flat rocky headland, the Pointe de Penvins, which we hadn't managed to explore last time as it kept raining - this time the sun shone, it was warm and the birds and butterflies were out.
A Rock Pipit (Anthus petrosus) which was strutting its stuff with a grub in its beak.
Rock Pipit again, and a Painted Lady butterfly. There were more Ladies than any other butterfly in this place! I don't necessarily expect to see them beside the sea!
Our final point of call on day two was the end of the Rhuys Peninsular at the Port du Crouesty in Arzon. Thankfully we managed to find a parking space which is not always easy in a motorhome. The weather was just perfect and all that was needed was an ice cream.
This ice cream shop had the most amount of flavours that I've ever seen. Look closely at the ones in the image below. Do you see anything odd?
Yuk and double yuk!! Can you imagine goat's cheese (chèvre) ice cream? Or Reblochon? Ugh, that's a horrible cheese just as cheese, but as ice cream? Tomato, maybe. Pepper? I don't think so. But oh, cheese ice cream. Dear god. Interestingly enough, I don't see any scoops taken out of either of the cheesy ones. I wonder why not!
We were sensible and I had the most wonderful home made real fresh banana I've ever tasted, plus chocolate brownie which I've never had before and was just absolutely amazing. We'll have to come back here just for the ice cream!
Squeezed into a regular spot in a car park. When we came back to the parking there were several more MoHos - once you spot where a MoHo has parked, you tend to go there and congregate. I guess we have become part of the 'camping car' brigade now. We are not loved by all though - on our most recent trip out in Mary MoHo we came across the idiot van driver who swerved towards us on purpose. That's one of the reasons for having spent a few bucks on the white wing mirror protectors - we've heard some tales of people who have had their wing mirrors smashed by truck drivers who don't care for motorhomes.
By the way what is going on with the followers numbers? At one point I had 82, then Blogger said they would remove anyone who had followed using a Twitter account or other accounts I've never heard of, so my numbers dropped. Fair enough. But then it said I had 59 whereas when I counted the followers there were about 70! And now I'm suddenly down to 57 as the last two followers have disappeared. Soon I'll be Billy No Mates! :-)
