Ouistreham Ferry Port, France & Thorpe Mandeville & Home, England

Up early and away at 6:30am all organised for our 8:30am ferry. No cabin on our return as it’s a six hour daytime crossing. No biometric scanning at Caen this time either as it’s currently suspended. It takes two to three minutes for every individual first time they travel so caused massive delays when implemented. Not sure how they are going to fix it. However the scan of our passport is counting our Schengen days but no worries there for us this year even with our 41 day not quite six week trip.

Our ferry has a number of large school parties on it travelling back to the UK after a holiday, all very well behaved but excited and oh so noisy.

Arrive on time in Portsmouth and ferry exit doesn’t take very long. We are travelling to Thorp Mandeville to a motorhome friendly pub called The Three Conies to stay on a field for free as long as we use the pub. The traffic is very heavy all the way but we keep moving which is good.

The Hook Norton Brewery pub is in a small rural village and quite unique. Inside the rooms are decadently and quirkily decorated and outside huge blue conies aka rabbits are dotted around the garden. The staff are very friendly and the food is good. It’s another hot evening so we eat inside but enjoy a drink outside where it’s considerably cooler. A lovely spot to complete our trip.

This time we’ve travelled 2650 miles in England, France and Spain. T’s driven for 69 hours at an average speed of 38mph and Luci has drunk a lot of very expensive diesel at 29 miles to the gallon.

A highlight of our trip was a lovely fun week spent in Spain with our friends Mark and Jacky eating many many huge prawns, wizzing about on buses and trains, drinking far too much beer, the Corpus Christi celebrations in Candàs and loving our visits to Cudillero and Oviedo particularly.

In Spain we also visited many monumental mostly gothic cathedrals loving the amazing and ancient stained glass in Léon Cathedral.

Our drive to the Picos de Europa through the Desfiladera de Hermida gorge was spectacular, we loved the lovely cobbled streets and bridges of medieval Potes and the delicious pintxos in San Sebastián.

In France we especially loved our day on the beach at Ars-en-Ré, our time overlooking Lac de Biscarrosse, the soaring elliptical knave and stunning stained glass in Notre Dame de Royan, sharing the Festival de Musique on mid summer’s day with the locals of Vivonne, a dip in the pool on a 42°C day in Yvré-l’Evêque and of course the fabulous Juno Beach Centre museum in Courseulles-sur-Mer.