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Swimming pools, that's what we were after. Lazy afternoons in the sunshine and warm swimming pools...

Vendée, France

Gaby
2004-01-25 13:05:48

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Swimming pools, that's what we were after. Lazy afternoons in the sunshine and warm swimming pools.

Pré Saint Martin, Eure-et-Loire

It would be a long drive. If we did it in one stretch, we would be bored and exhausted when we arrived at our destination; so we decided to stop for the night in Pré Saint Martin, near Chartres.

"Le Carcotage Beauceron" was a farmhouse run by Mr and Mrs Violette with their dogs and cats. The rooms had been recently redecorated. The garden was magnificent with its flowers, fruit trees and vegetables.

We had our evening meal in the small but excellent "hôtel de France" in Bonneval. "On y mange et dort depuis bien avant la Révolution", as it said on the napkins.

In the morning, after a breakfast of bread and homemade jams, we left for what we thought would be our final destination. We had booked 8 days in a B&B in La Turballe on the Atlantic coast.

Mrs Violette had expressed her doubts about the weather in that part of the country, something along the lines of it being a "windy hole".

La Turballe, Loire Atlantique

The house in La Turballe looked gloomy and the swimming pool was covered with a plastic sheet. There were dark clouds gathering above and we were beginning to think our t-shirts might not be sufficiently warm for this part of the country.

The house smelt of fried eggs and dust. It was a huge place and had not been redecorated since the seventies. Our room was dark, the bathroom poky, the swimming pool a bad idea in this weather.

We had our first evening meal in "Le Chaudron", run by the daughter of our B&B owners.

We spent the next day walking around the village and the port, which was full of sardine fishing boats. We stayed in the port for supper in the most amazing restaurant panoramique "Le ...