We’ve been here near St. Gervais for three nights now and today seemed to be giving us a stunning blue sky. Neither of us is in any way a sailor but, given a daily shift of an hour or so…

One of our neighbours on the campsite told us where there is a stork nest in the vicinity. It could just be seen through binoculars from our pitch but there is a track passing close by it so, after breakfast…

This place had everything today: sun, countryside and in Challans about 10 miles away, a Leclerc supermarket and a McDonalds with McWiFi. First we went to McDonalds to publish a couple of blog postings (two espressos but no McTasteless McChicken…

It was definitely time to leave the land of nothing but beaches. There are good cycle paths here but all they really do is connect all the beaches. Clearly, what one is supposed to do cycle to one’s chosen beach,…

While we were investigating La Tranche-sur-Mer yesterday, Carol found a post card depicting a large cargo vessel parked on the beach at Les Sables d’Olonne, embarrassingly close to the promenade. It had apparently been driven ashore during a bad storm,…

Our plan, such as it was, was to pop in to see the town of Les Sables-d’Olonne, today. The sky above Billy was bright blue (my favourite colour) so we set off. Once we got beyond all the trees of…

It was finally time to get on the road again. The weather still isn’t very settled further south so you-know-who convinced us that we should explore the west coast some more. Carol had found a peaceful-sounding campsite near the coast…

Having discovered a broken spoke in my bike’s rear wheel, I was reticent to use it in case further spokes, now under increased stress, failed. Cycling 25 miles is fine but I really didn’t want to be 12 miles from…

Once again, we thought we might move on tomorrow so we pedalled into Arçais to say au revoir to Linda and her folks (Mike having returned to England already). We had only just left the campsite when Carol spotted a…

21st June: for those of us in the northern hemisphere, the day with the longest interval between sunrise and sunset. Following yesterday’s very cloudy sky, the weather chose to celebrate the longest day by beginning summer and actually supplying a…