words by Williams

Thursday May 11

Showered and generally in good order, we head north west from Falaise to a rendezvous with Mont Saint Michel, taking the scenic route mainly on D roads, which actually get more scenic due to a diversion on the way.

Some interesting junctions, and the Maisie Wazey literally loses it a couple of times. When she doesn’t know, she just repeats the last thing she said until she’s back on track. By the way, we’re know working on kilometres, which is much more helpful.

In one town, we’re waiting at a junction trying to turn left, then sharp right, when a massive articulated bin lorry appears, cuts me off and nearly gives Betsy a bloody nose. I’m stuck with nowhere to go and the lady who is trying to use the crossing I’m sitting on is giving me that look.

Did I mention that everywhere in France is much further away than it looks, by the way? When we’re on the road, we’re covering around 250km a trip, which usually equates to three or more hours in the saddle and costs around 40-60 Euros in fuel.

Turns out, the Huttopia campsite at Baie du Mont Saint Michel, may be nearish the bay, but not very near the Mont. It’s closer to Dol de Bretagne, in fact, about all of which I can tell you is that it has a fab Lidl.

Here’s a thing about Huttopia. It’s obviously meant to sound like ‘utopia’, which means while it sounds like ‘utopia’, it clearly isn’t. Of course you don’t realise that until you get there and reception’s shut and the place looks generally unkempt.

Following the instructions to ring for help we’re met by two charming and helpful young people. He doesn’t speak much English although she does and we’re actually doing okay with the A-Level French I’m dragging up from somewhere. Maybe learning a language could be a help in later life, because while your world is shrinking through dementia, you can still converse brilliantly with the French guy next door.

He tells us that we can have our choice of pitches (it transpires nothing opens on the site until Pentecost, the significance of which escapes me) but we should go careful because the ground is very wet and there’s a danger we could be bogged down and stuck.

He points out one or two where the opportunity for disaster is less than more on a scale of one to 10. 

At this point we’re thinking seriously about leaving. Honestly, there’s not a lot to get excited about having come from the neat-and-tidyness of Falaise. Everything looks just a bit shabby and unprepared.

Having booked for two nights, we opt to stay for at least one and head for Lidl, as directed by the helpful young woman in reception.

On return, and after some to-ing and fro-ing and general jiggery-pokery we’re slotted in sideways on a dryish, but bare soil pitch under trees close by the road. I won’t say main road, because it was actually pretty quiet, but that’s us for the night…