Trains to Newcastle

trains to Newcastle - i wrote this on the train: so we're on our way to Newcastle upon tyme now and its taking us two days because we went to a hotel in Plymouth and the train car we were in has no power therefore no air conditioning so is 1900 degrees in there so we moved to this car (and I quickly moved my viola and luckily its ok) and now because we have no reserved seats we are using three seats for our whole family , but it's better to be crammed into a air conditioned car then to be spread out in a boiling car. Update over
Update back: we're in Newcastle train station awaiting Lise and Jeff to come back with our car rental and a lady from a baguette place nearby walks up to us holding two baguettes with ham and cheese (worth fourteen pounds each- I know because we bought some from the same baguette place earlier) and gives them to us for free because they're closing. So I'm happy.
Update over

Fort de berthume

Near our France house swap was fort de berthume. We had walked past it before when it was closed but we went to it again and visited it and it was open. The fort had been continuously occupied all through ww1 and 2 and before that, so it had a bunker with a secret passage to the shore. You could also do zip lining across ocean rocks and a large gap, but we saw some other people do that so we didn't do it because it looked scary.

Sand cars

In france remember I said we wanted to do sand surf cars (sail cars) but they were all booked up? Well a few days later we phoned in and booked a time slot so we could go. They were so fun to ride. It all depended on how strong the wind was and which direction it was blowing, but sometimes it was a lot faster than running. Most of the time the wind wasn't very strong though, and you went really slow or had to walk it along with your feet. Still it was fun. You pulled on the rope on some turns and let go on other turns and if you didn't get it right you stopped. Sometimes there were huge traffic jams at one turn or another so that the staff had to push start everyone.

Camping trip

In france there was crozon peninsula about an hours drive from our house swap there. We decided to do a camping trip there and use "these darn tents we've been hauling around for months that we got specifically for this trip". Also we heard that there were sand sail cars that you could do there, and cave boating, and a labyrinth. The way we choose our camp site was Tobin looked at a list of possible places and choose the one with the picture of a swimming pool and water slide. So on our first day (we stayed for 2 nights) we looked at when the cave boating was, and when the sand cars were and when we could do the labyrinth. The labyrinth was closed, and the sand cars were booked up for the time we were there, and we couldn't find the times for the cave boating so we went explore-driving, and found a cliff with a lot of wind called point de dinon. It was so windy you could lean on the wind blowing the opposite direction. Then when we got back my brothers and I went swimming, and it was just us there so we got the water slide to ourselves.
The next day we went to the labyrinth agin and it was open, but on the way there we passed a sign that said the times of cave boating. So we debated whether or not to do the labyrinth now, and eventually we decided we should do the maze now in case it's shut next time we got there. So we all did the labyrinth. It was owned by one guy who lived there and changed the maze and wrote the maze story every year, and he made a living off of the maze. Obviously there would be tons more people there in the summer (not when we were there) because we were the only ones there. Tobin and I were a team (Jeff said it looked like Tobin was really tall when he was on my shoulders because the maze blocked the middle only, so you could see legs walking on the bottom and Tobin's head at the top) , Lise and Jeff teamed up, and Julias went alone. There was a story that you read all of by getting to different colored flags in the maze. You had to find your way to every flag in order to finish the maze and the story. Tobin and I got all of the flags except the second to last one, Julias found most of them I think and Lise and Jeff found one flag because Lise went to the fist flag and waited for Jeff to come but he didn't know she was waiting for him so they wasted a lot of time. The funny thing was that all of us thought the maze would be pretty easy but none of us completed it. It was still really fun though.
But the time we all went back to the campsite it was bed time so we didn't get to to the cave boating but that's ok. The next day we packed up and went back home. On the way home we stocked up on a lot of cookies from Le biscuiterie

PS
I have no pictures from this camping trip, but I will get some of Jeff's on here soon hopefully.

Crab walk

Awhile ago in France we went to an old medieval town called Le Conquet and followed a tour around the town marked by stainless steel engraved crabs on the side walk. We did the whole thing and we thought it would be just streets and stuff, but t went in a park and on the beach even, and it was really fun trying to find random crabs on the ground to follow.

PS
No wonder the French eat snails. There's about a million of them everywhere you go.

PPS
They had our names on name bowls! They would almost never have them in Canada.

Menhir

We went looking for a very old menhir a week or so ago (Diana Martin and Phillipa were visiting then) and we were driving by and saw it in the middle of a farmers field full of barley. So then we parked our cars and searched back along our path for any kind of path marked or unmarked, because everyone said there were paths to stuff like this in Sweden that were just tracks of dirt on some field, and they were completely unmarked or signposted. So we kept on searching and looking till eventually we decided we were in the wrong place or you couldn't get to it at all. So we all piled back in the cars and drove up the road more and talked about maybe going to spend the day at the beach or something. About 200m up the road we came to a pullout parking lot with some cars in it, a sign with a picture of the menhir and a description and history of it, and the entrance to a small foot path leading to it. So then we thought we couldn't miss seeing the menhir after all that, so we all got out and walked down the footpath and the menhir was very impressive, even though it wasn't as tall as it was made because the top was stuck by lightning and fell off, and it was still much taller then the tallest standing stone at Stonehenge.

Beach and fort abbey plugonvelin

From Paris we came here to the small village of Plougonvelin, and it's very picturesque and has a lot of history. It's right on the coastline, and the beaches here are very nice, and I know because we've already been to one. E went to see a ruined castle abbey and the first thing I thought was that you could shoot a movie here for sure. It was like a huge fancy cathedral with no roof and right by the sea, but right next to modern buildings and lighthouses as well.