Saturday 24th October

Beep, beep, beep, first thing this morning, it was just the baker coming round at 9am. A couple of dozen more vans had turned up in the dark last night, one even squeezed in next to us without realising we were English!

We’ve got a book called Back Roads of France and there is a little route from Honfleur taking us first to Trouville and Deauville. Nice coastal road to start with, past lots of 3.5t weight limit signs and lots of very nice half timbered houses, it’s easy to see why Normandy is popular with the British.

The harbour at Deauville, or is it Trouville? It’s hard to see where one town finishes and the other starts. Deuville is the upmarket half so knowing our place in the world order we made our way towards Trouville

This must be Trouville, 100 yards from the other photo but the boats are noticeably fewer and smaller.

And it was a bit fishy. There were lots of stalls selling fresh fish straight off the boats.

These contraptions are towed along the seabed and we think they are used for picking up scallops. There are small nets trailing behind.

Gustave Flaubert, a very famous French author, wrote Madame Bovary amongst other books. I’d like to tell you all about him but I’m on French Google and French Wikipedia and I know you aren’t as fluent as what I is. I couldn’t even tell you if Gustave visited Trouville.

Behind the Casino in Trouville was another large beach and as it was Saturday it was pretty busy. We spent ages watching formation kite flying.

All very clever. In the far distance you can see the docks at Le Havre.

Our little ebook then took us off into he heart of the Normandy cider region and we ended up in a town called Beuvron en Auge, one of the Best in France towns and home to a small aire at €6 per night. Trouble is you had to pay at the Tabac and we couldn’t find it. Above is another one of those lovely houses that I could see myself living in.

Or this one, spoilt for choice!

Somehow we had missed the cider festival, this was all that was left, surprisingly small apples.

We decided not to stay at this aire, it was early afternoon and we thought we could get a bit closer to our next must see destination so set a course for Falaise. Our Camper Contact App said there was a free aire and the town has some history, your history lesson will have to wait until we’ve seen it. Anyway, we turned up in exactly the right spot and there is nothing here. It’s a car park up against a castle walls but there are no signs, no markings and no other motorhomes.

I checked and double checked that we were in the right place and then just told Lucy, “Yes, this is the right place, there’s no problem at all” and then crossed my fingers hoping that we wouldn’t get moved on! Then it gat dark and at 8pm another motorhome turns up, followed closely by a third – break out the cider, we can stay the night. And then someone switches their broadband on and we can blast off a couple of blogs for free – hussah!