We made it! Our very first trip to France in our new moho (affectionately named Flossie – don’t ask me why)! There was a lot of pre-planning, route planning, logistics planning and adaptations made to Flossie to cater for our 4 weeks away.

Huge thanks must go to (in no particular order):

My sisters who gave me books and maps about France

The Motorhoming in France group who were brilliant at giving advice based on real-time experience

The Elddis owners group

The Michel Thomas French course which got us up and running with some basic French

Wilder Trips who made planning and adapting the whole trip really easy. Can’t recommend the app highly enough. Here’s a link to our route mapped out on Wilder Trips, if you’d like to have a look at where we went.

https://www.wildertrips.com/share/OGbfI9kyUOaCI6jdtD65N

As you can imagine, we have lots (and I do mean lots) of photos and memories to share so I’m going to dedicate a page to each area we visited. But let’s start with the channel crossing. We chose to do Newhaven to Dieppe as we thought it would bring us further south and nearer to the places we wanted to visit. Would I do it again? NO. We went into Seaford mid-afternoon after a leisurely journey down from Coventry. Hopeless, nowhere to park the motorhome, we ended up parked in a residential side street and then a long walk into town to find a restaurant for dinner. We then drove over to Newhaven and waited for hours before we boarded the ferry. 5 hour crossing and we arrived at around 6am in France feeling somewhat bleary. We planned our return a bit better, but it’s definitely Le Shuttle for us next time!

Anyway, our early arrival in France meant we got to Honfleur and into the aire by 8.15am. Thankfully, we were able to find a space jammed in between 2 other motorhomes and took time to have a leisurely breakfast before setting off to explore Honfleur. Honfleur is pretty with the main “tourist” area centred around an inland harbour with lots of cafes. Move into the side streets and you find timbered houses, an artists quarter and the oldest wooden church in France. We had a pleasant day and after a good night’s sleep we were ready to move on to Bayeux.

We stopped at LeClerc on the way into Bayeux. Fab supermarket and we were well stocked up with food and drinks to last the next few days. (I should explain that I have a severe shellfish allergy and so we opted to eat in, to keep me safe.)

Following advice from the group, we didn’t book a pitch, only to find when we turned up at the municipal site that they were full, having had a large group booking. We sat in the van wondering where to go when the receptionist came over and said she’d just had a cancellation and could give us 2 nights. Happy days! The site was infinitely more pleasant than the aire at Honfleur with good facilities and free entry to the municipal swimming pool next door. After a long day walking into Bayeux and viewing the tapestry (which is amazing) a dip in the pool was very welcome.

’twas time to practice our French! The site at Mont St Michel had to be pre-booked, so Lois emailed with a request for 2 nights stay. We got an email back ( in French) and then had to phone with card details to hold the booking. It was worth doing as the site is in walking distance of the Mont – more on that later.

Bayeux is lovely, we went to the WW2 museum which was very interesting and the abbey is well worth visiting. Got in lots of practice with our French, especially learning how to ask for one scoop of ice cream in a cone!