The first stop was the picturesque village of Escalle, where we spent our first night camping in the rain. I had been worried about my extremely limited French, but although the manager of the campsite didn't speak any English we managed to understand each other well enough. It was a little bit harder at the next campsite at Villers Sur Mer, where I ended up drawing pictures when all else failed...
The highlight of the first week was our visit to Mont Saint Michel, a fortified church and village on a tidal island in Normandy. We ended up visiting at 11.00pm, which turned out to be the best possible time. There were hardly any people about, the lighting was very atmospheric, and there were lots of bats. We spent a couple of hours strolling round the fortifications and exploring the old buildings and hortus conclusus.
From Mont Saint Michel we travelled to the Quiberon Peninsula and stayed at a really nice camping ground right by the sea. The next day we stopped to have a look at the prehistoric stone arrangements of Carnac, then on to Brightonelle Sur Mer. Owen decided to go surfing while the rest of us got comfortable at our new camping ground. It was also a nice spot, but the next morning I had the disturbing experience of a couple getting intimate in the shower stall next to mine! I'm known for having really long showers, but that certainly wasn't one of them, I left very quickly!
Being by the sea again was nice, especially knowing that we had a lot of travel inland still to come.
If you would like to see some extra photos (including more taken by Troy & Owen), check out my flickr page.