David Currie

938After much indecision we eventually settled on a summer holiday in Brittany. After extensive research and use of satellite imagery by Christine, we settled on Le Chatelet Camping on the outskirts Saint-Cast le Guildo. I think Christine was sold when she read that it was somewhere the French middle class went on holiday – that and the seven beaches. The holiday didn’t get off to a great start with both Christine and Emma succumbing to sea sickness on the Fast-Cat from Portsmouth to Cherbourg (trying to avoid the overnight crossing to St Malo). Things looked up when we arrived at our pitch with a nice view over the bay and, more importantly, the sandy playground.

Although the Tour de France departed from nearby Dinan the day after we arrived, we concluded it would all be lost on the kids and we headed for the nearest beach instead. We weren’t blessed with the best weather whilst we were there but the proximity of the sand meant we generally didn’t wander far from our tent. The only trip out was to the impressive Fort la Latte and windswept Cap Fréhel on the other side of the bay. Sadly the rain was back with us in force when it came to packing up the tent but, after a night in Roscoff, we did at least have an uneventful crossing back over to Plymouth.

From there, we headed down to Falmouth to see Christine’s brother and family, camping once again, this time at Tregedna Farm. There followed a fantastic day on the adjacent Maenporth beach. Unfortunately, the weather obviously knew we were due to pack the tent again the following morning as the rain was back. Fortunately it eased off sufficiently that it didn’t spoil our fun canoeing on the Helford Passage (thumbs up for the food at the Ferry Boat Inn too). The huge queue on the A30 the  following day as we headed for home was a bit of a downer though! All in all though, it was a good couple of weeks away from the grindstone.

836We came down to Devon last weekend for my Uncle’s 70 birthday party. We have since been staying in a holiday cottage on the outskirts of Sidmouth with my family. The cottage is nice and large which is lucky as the weather has been pretty miserable so we’ve spent a lot of time inside. Sidmouth itself isn’t all that inspiring, particularly in the rain. We had a trip out to Otterton Mill for a walk. I ended up sat in the car with a sleeping Emma who woke just as everyone else was forced to return by an ever increasing downpour.  The photo is from Branscombe Beach (infamous for the grounding of the MSC Napoli) where we managed to get some sunshine (in between the showers). The sun came out again just as my parents left for home but sadly we were touring Sidmouth looking for a replacement tyre having run over a nail. The following day we went in to Exeter to pick up my brother who, having driven my parents home, had returned via train.

739We headed down to Cornwall over the Easter period to visit my brother-in-law and his wife at Falmouth. In a very cosy arrangement their landlord let us stay in one of the other barn conversions where they live. These were previously holiday lets and are still fully fitted out. This meant we had our own space but were still nice and handy. We started our journey down on Thursday, stopping at the Tumbling Weir Hotel for the night. This was nice enough all mealtimes were a bit child unfriendly: dinner service starts at 7pm and breakfast isn’t until 8:30am. Trying to find somewhere else in Ottery St Mary to have dinner didn’t prove too easy either. The suspicion is that the hotel makes most of its money from weddings.

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724From Ludlow we move to the Peak District for a short break. The location was mainly chosen so that we could make a day trip to visit Christine’s cousin Cath’s new baby. We’d made a last minute booking at a cottage in Tideswell. The cottage was homely enough but could do with a bit of touching up here and there. It did have an excellent collection of children’s books which kept Emma happy for the week. She might have enjoyed the videos as well but I could only get the DVD player to work!

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