Saturday arrived and our week with the family at Saint Cast all too quickly came to an end.  Richard and family high-tailed it home via the Channel Tunnel in order to get Gretel back into school and resume normal life, Jennie and Nathan moved on to the Isle de Re for a few days of chilling, exploring and oyster eating whilst Tom Emily and Rory headed back into Normandy for some quiet family time prior to their return home.

Knowing that we probably wouldn’t get away from the house until around midday we decided that we wouldn’t travel very far on the Saturday and opted to drive the hundred or so miles down to Carnac to take a look at what the French so ambiguously call ‘The Alignments’.  In a way I suppose they’re right, because if you really don’t know what something is its rather difficult to give it a meaningful name.  Quite what the neolithic occupants of the region were thinking when they decided to place some thousands of massive boulders in more or less straight lines for up to 4km is anybody’s guess.  Personally, I rather like the idea of a monumental game of Tetris but other ideas such as ‘landing lights for alien spacecraft’ probably have just as much merit (though it would have made for a bumpy landing).  Whatever the reason, it must have taken ages – though as they hadn’t actually invented clocks or calendars in 5,000 B.C. they presumably didn’t give much thought to the European Working Time Directive.

After a night on a freebee camperstop and another brief morning look at the ‘alignments’ we started our journey down to Coulon, stopping after a very few miles to take in the small and very picturesque riverside port of Auray.  As it happens the day marked the start of some wonderful weather (more of which anon) and if you’re going to do some sightseeing in small, picturesque ports you really couldn’t have chosen a better day.  After running through all the usual superlatives we happily settled for ‘lovely’ – and it was.