Back in France at Saint-Aubin - 30 April 2022

Saint Aubin

We were due to travel to Cherbourg last Monday, 25 April - however our passports didn’t arrive the previous Friday as promised. Tintin’s arrived last Saturday, and then mine on Monday - took eight weeks!

So, it’s 12.30pm - and we’re waiting for our departure on Condor Voyager to St Malo. Check in now asks passengers to allow 90 minutes to check in.

We departed 10 minutes late at 14.05. Really smooth, easy crossing. You don’t get allocated a seat, which works well - there weren’t that many passengers - so lots of seats available. Two hours went by really quickly.

The large cruise ship, MSC Virtuoso didn’t look that large, until we saw it with Brehon Tower for comparison.

Lovely friendly man at passport control in St Malo. Guess what? No customs.

For those of you who read our blog, you may remember that we cut short our previous travels to France last September, as my lovely Mum had had a fall. Well, long story cut short - very sadly, my Mum passed away on 24 November, and doubly sad, her sister, my aunt, unexpectedly passed away four days later after a short illness. I only write this, as we used to follow a blog by Our Bumble, who suddenly had to go back home and stopped writing - and never gave an explanation as to why after years and years of brilliant blogs.

It’s been a busy few months. Tintin finally had a hip replacement at the end of January after having been postponed from end of December - he’s mostly doing really well - back to cycling and walking, but still gets pain.

We’ve adopted my aunt’s beautiful little cat called Millie - and are very thankful for our current cat sitters!

It does feel quite strange to be away again.  I guess it will take a while for us to get used to living in a small space again.

The roads from St Malo towards Rennes were about the busiest we’ve seen them, but it didn’t seem to hold up the traffic. Dave is loving the good road surfaces so far!

Back to being on the lookout for quirky stuff in the middle of roundabouts!

Tintin drove for 2 hours, and we’re at a place called Saint Aubin, further south east, past Rennes in a very peaceful carpark, overlooking a huge lake.

Along with waiting for his second hip to be replaced (not needed just yet, but does have arthritis!) - Tintin is also waiting for surgery to shave off some bone on his left shoulder. Driving Dave aggravates it, so we’ll have to wait and see how it fares.

So, parked up - and the frustrations of technology have already hit! First the Mifi unit said there was no service - there is, and now I can’t airdrop my photos to Tintin, but he can to me - our settings are all the same, ie allowing all contacts to receive, and now problems with the website - and a quick ‘help’ message to our son Jamie…