And So To France.......

On Thursday 7 April 2011, at about 8.00pm my Mum, my friends Eve and Al and myself, set off from Saltash to the Ferry terminal at Milbay Docks, Plymouth and boarded the Ferry Armorique bound for Roscoff in Bittany (France) and we arrived next morning and disembarked at about 8.00am.

This link is the website for the ferry

http://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/fleet/armorique

We headed off towards for a little village called Saint Genies near a town called Sarlat in the Dordogne/Perigord region in Southern France.  It took us two days and we arrived at our destination at around 7.00pm on Saturday 9 April.

We didn't have much time for sightseeing but we stopped off at the following places on the way down

Quimper, Brittany

More Information via this link

http://france-for-visitors.com/brittany/quimper/index.html

We stopped at Pont Aven in Brittany for lunch

More information via this link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont-Aven



Later that day we visited St Nazaire at the mouth of the river Loire which was the site of a British raid during World War 2 during which an old British Destroyer HMS Campbelltown was sunk at the lock gates to lock up German U Boats sheltering in the huge Pens constructed to protect them from bombing raids.  Today there is a memorial to those who died and the U boat pens are a tourist office.

The U Boat Pens

The Lock Gates

The Memorial

A gun from HMS Campbelltown

Some Links

http://www.combinedops.com/St%20Nazaire.htm

http://www.stnazairesociety.org/Pages/index.html

and some more general info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Nazaire

We stayed the night in a rather strange hotel in Nantes and after breakfast we proceeded south

Breakfast in Nantes

We stopped for coffee in this little town called Chiche

It took us the rest of the day to get o our home for the next seven days.