Woke this morning to a misty day. Still warm, although Janice would disagree. I think she's got use to Longreach temperatures.
We originally had the idea of heading up into the top western corner of Brittany to do another day of biking. Janice had seen, from one of the maps, that there were a few bike hire companies up there, so we thought it worth exploring, however, we also have some other towns we want to visit before we leave at the end of the week. So, the cycling idea was forsaken and we took a more direct route up towards the coast above Lesneven.
We didn't see much of note today. Towns seem to take a while to wake up. I think everyone must be at church Sunday morning. The church bell in the middle of the town of Crozon rang for what seemed forever at lunch time. I don't know if it was the signal for the end of a service or what, but cars came pouring out of the town past where we were sitting. And when we looked around the town seemed to have emptied of people too?
What we did manage to do was get a flat tyre. Fortunately it was while we were still negotiating our way through Lesneven, so we weren't faced with having to try and pull off on one of the country roads where there's very little, if any, verge. In fact we ended up parked next to a very big but closed supermarket. So plenty of parking and we were very obvious. My mobile phone worked, fortunately, as it doesn't always get a signal when Janices, whose battery was flat, does! That's a Woolworths sim for you. The woman at Europcar spoke good English but the man in the tow truck couldn't understand a word of it but, fortunately, he knew all about flat tyres:-) So because our car didn't have the 'optional' extra of a spare tyre he had to load our car on the truck and take us back to his Renault depot at Ploudaniel where he fixed the tyre while we waited:-)
We're struggling to find cheap accommodation in France. We know it's out there it's just a case of finding it. We've followed signs leading off the main roads advertising beds in french. Sometimes we go round in circles never finding anything, in other instances like today we followed the sign to a gite, found the gite, knocked on the door of the attached house and got a man looking at us blankly wondering what we were on about. We even did hand signals for sleep to no avail?
So tonight, again, we're in another hotel paying a bit more than we'd like to. The lesson from this. Learn some French before coming to France, although I have heard many tales of people doing just that (Hub, for example, 5 years of french lessons at school) and still not understanding what's being said. Being able to read it would, at least, be helpful.
