La Belle Vie: 2 week holiday in suprisingly sunny Brittany!

So it's taken me a little longer to get around to writing this post than I had intended, but here I am.

At 5.30am on 13th August I got on a train to Dover to meet my family, but not before I met a relation of Mo Farah's in Charing Cross station, we had a good chat about life and being awake in London in the middle of the night. I love meeting unexpected people at unexpected times. Having not slept at all that night, I was pretty grumpy when I met my family and Sam in Dover at about 8.30am and I proceeded to sleep the whole way to Brittany. If you're geography is a bit rusty, that's a pretty impressive amount of time spent sleeping in car.

We've been to Brittany once before and we went back to the same place this year, Arradon. It's a pretty little town with a small harbour into the Gulf of the Morbihan, great for sailing! The first couple of nights were pretty stormy but for about a week in the middle of our holiday we had beautiful sunny weather!

Sam reading on our favourite little island.

I went out for a sail on the Elle K, our little Laser, with Mum and Dad - I didn't manage to persuade Sam into any sailing, because he is boring. In theory, I learnt the basics of sailing when I was a kid, but I haven't practiced much(/at all) since I did my course, but still, Dad thought it would be a good idea to give me the tiller and the mainsheet and let me do a bit of, uh, steering. I even managed to tack (to tack, verb: turning the bow of a sailing vessel through the wind to change its course) the boat without causing too much chaos, which I was pretty chuffed about. I did, however, give control back to Dad when we entered the ferry lanes; I enjoyed the power, but I know my limits! When we weren't sailing we spent some time on our favourite little island, not far out from the harbour. Sam and I went exploring round the island; climbing on rocks and such, because clearly we walked straight out of a Famous Five book.

We - Joey, Peter, Sam, Kat and I - also rented some kayaks for a day, that was pretty sweet. Although, the geniuses that we are, we set off paddling against the tide... hard work. We did, eventually, manage to reach an island and had a little picnic. I decided then and there that I now want to join the canoeing and kayaking society at Uni, because clearly I have time for that!

In the past, our family holidays have been about mentally fitting in as much tourism, as many museums and as many city visits as possible. As a nice contrast, this year we spent a lot of the holiday in and around the campsite; Sam read about 987,905,398 books. We were staying in a municipal campsite, which meant we could use some of the municipal sports facilities; we played tennis, basketball, went snorkelling and Joey and Peter had a 200m race - I was in charge of timing since I don't consider running an enjoyable pastime...

LAND TRAIN!

We did fit in one day of visiting though; we went to Auray, a historic riverside town. We wandered, had crepes, went on a land train... yes, a LAND TRAIN, which excited us all, since between the five of us we have a combined mental age of about 23. In the evening we dropped in at Carnac, where there was an evening artisan market, it was amazing, but also it was the kind of place you should take a decently stocked purse to; there were stalls selling handmade bags, jewellery, clothes, paintings, sculptures and all sorts of pretty things! In between the stalls were fire dancers and beautiful folk music groups. It was fun to just wander round at twilight in such a good atmosphere!

pretty earrings from Carnac artisan market

All in all, it was a nice and relaxing holiday. The Morbihan is definitely a place I would recommend visiting!

Since coming back from France life has been pretty uneventful, apart from yesterday. Yesterday we went to Joey's graduation in FALMOUTH, let me tell you, Falmouth is not close to Kent at all. As we were driving back we listened to the final of the US Tennis Open on the radio... oh it was nothing special, only the monumental day when Andy Murray won his first Grand Slam…!!!! So, 10th September, we'll call that a good day?

I hope you've enjoyed catching up with my summer and I hope you've enjoyed your own; we've a little bit of decent weather, haven’t we? x