A rest break is necessary…

After four days of writing break, we continue.

In a different place, in a different environment and with amazingly changed vegetation!

Four days break, one simple reason: there was nothing to tell. And before we write (even more) nonsense and bore all readers (even more), we sensibly remain silent! ;-)

Ida played for two days with her new friend Isabelle from Düren, so that we parents were able to leave the course alone for 2-3 hours to visit a laundromat, drink coffee in a betting shop (it looked like a café, but turned out to be a betting shop with a coffee machine) and read our books!

Then on Friday the planned move from Cap Frehel “over” to the Crozon peninsula with Ida and Isabelle exchanging addresses, tears and the “promise” to meet again at Cap Frehel next year during the summer holidays!

The place as a whole was a hit (despite only having two toilet brushes). The rough and varied landscape, small hidden bays and purple pastures as far as the eye can see! So the two youngsters' agreement to meet again next year is perhaps not so much of a pipe dream after all...

We wrote to the next campsite to request a reservation and were pleased to receive positive feedback on the day of departure! However, similar to the current campsite, we had two alternatives in mind, which turned out to be extremely helpful in retrospect.

After a three-hour drive, the young employee on site was unfortunately unable to offer us the space with electricity that her boss had promised us in an email, but only an area on an unmown and extremely bumpy field (Blau Rot Billmerich...). Thanks to forward-thinking planning with an additional extension cord, the electricity supply would have worked somehow, but the space itself did not allow for the construction of a tent, even with a lot of imagination.

The employee also began to exhibit a phenomenon that was probably a form of self-protection...her English skills suddenly shrank to a minimum and our request to contact her boss again was simply no longer understood!

Less annoyed than we expected, we turned our vehicle around, left a Hessian insult behind us (“Dabbes”) and drove to alternative number 1!

Here we were much luckier, as the owners made every effort to secure a spot for us for at least six nights. Luckily, it was the last free spot for the entire week.

And here too we seem to have hit the mark (even if via the detour of the clumsy competition). The pitches are separated by trees, bushes and hedges, so there is plenty of privacy. The sanitary facilities are clean, reasonably spacious, but above all with permanently warm water and even hot water for flushing. Due to the walk time of a full 3:20 minutes to the semi-quiet place, the partially missing toilet seats on the outside toilets and an absurdly exposed urinal in the hallway in front of the toilets, the Le Kergorz et Finistiere campsite receives 6 1/2 toilet brushes in the "Le Klosett de Camp" and is therefore in the upper middle range of the wet room guide!

After a first fascinating sunset on the two-kilometer-wide sandy beach just 100 meters away, we climb into our beds satisfied and grateful for the coincidence of the failed reservation.

The next day (now Saturday, July 27th), we spontaneously decide to go for a hike around the cliffs and bays near Camaret-sur-Mer because of the nice weather and the still pleasant 21 degrees. Thanks to a hiking guide for or with children, we don't have to search for long, let ourselves be convinced by the pictures and text in the book and start the hike after a short drive. At the beginning, we are lured by an ancient stone circle made up of 72 menoliths. Originally, up to 400 "menhirs", some of them three meters high, were said to have stood here in a very specific sequence for ritual purposes. We have been into these mythical/mystical locations since "Outlander" at the latest, and this one also leaves us amazed and speculating.

We continue to the coast and along the sometimes breakneck steep cliffs, as at Cap Frehel, over narrow paths lined left and right by wild pastures in all shades of purple!

As in the whole of northern Brittany and Normandy, the beautiful nature is mixed with memories of much darker times. The region around Camaret-sur-Mer was also abused more than 80 years ago as part of the almost 2700 km wide Atlantic Wall, which the Nazis built into the cliffs and dunes over the course of three years to defend themselves against the Western Allies.

Some of them are so concreted and “sustainable” that bunkers, tunnels, gun turrets and control centers are almost completely recognizable and, hardly cynically, could be made usable again quite quickly…

In contrast to our visit to Normandy six years ago, here Ida also perceives the truth of the war and the palpable oppression that these witnesses of the times made of steel and concrete radiate. In a world in which armed conflicts and "special operations" are omnipresent globally and ever closer to our perception, we ask ourselves when looking at these silent servants of war: have we still learned nothing?!

We continue walking through the dunes, thoughtfully discussing the war and the meaning of these positions, past further ruins, such as a property that once had eight turrets, which of course also fell victim to the war between 1942 and 1944. But also, and this outweighs everything else, wonderfully picturesque views of wide sandy beaches paired with steep and jagged cliffs and small houses in which we would imagine life to be wonderfully relaxed!

After returning and fortifying ourselves with crepes in the port of Camaret-sur-Mer, we drive back to the campsite, where we want to take advantage of the evening waves of the sea and are grateful that the water temperature here seems to be much more pleasant than in the north near Saint Malo.

But we can't manage more than 15 minutes of splashing around in the Atlantic, so we shiver and head for the warm showers and then end the evening with whisky and a non-alcoholic beer mix!