The Tannery was a good place to stay, if a little run down. It certainly provided good facilities for last night's al fresco meal. Not all B&B rooms sport a kitchen and a dining table, albeit this kitchen was hidden in a wardrobe! Like most rooms we've stayed in, it had a TV. Quite unnecessary, as we haven't switched any of them on since watching the 'Adrian Chiles - Alcoholic' programme with Jill and James three weeks ago. Only three weeks? It feels longer!
Breakfast was in an outhouse in the garden. Then we paid our tourist tax (€1 each), topped the car up with coolant (aka water), and headed off to refuel for the last time. €1.46 a litre - about £1.30 - prices at home are £1.34, so not much difference.
The toll free drive to Calais, during which the white cliffs of Dover shone in the distance, took about an hour and we were placed on the 11.20 train that we'd booked. It was running 20 minutes late so we had time for coffee and we bought some cooking wine - €30 for 12 bottles of J P Cheney plonk. We'll need that when we receive the speeding fines!
Incidentally, I don't mention costs very often here as we don't work to a budget and they aren't of any great interest to me, but I do keep a track of them and anyone wanting more information regarding such sordid details is welcome to ask.
Back in the UK on a sunny day, I have noted that I omitted to record yesterday's incident with some police. We thought we were being stopped so that they could check that we had all the paraphernalia required in France - high visibility jackets, breathalyser, warning triangle, GB sticker, etc, but we were quickly waved on before a huge peleton of cyclists whizzed past just behind us.
The police could usefully have been deployed on the ramparts of Montreuil, where sadly many of the viewing benches have been vandalised.
The drive TO Calais was rather easier than the drive FROM Folkestone. We planned to travel on Saturday rather than Friday because we thought the traffic would be easier. We failed to factor in the closure of the M20 motorway this weekend. That cost us an hour and a half.
Never mind, we got home before dark. Just!
Today's pictures:
The Tannery B&B - our quarters are the first floor rooms with the four shuttered windows
Inside the B&B
View from the ramparts
Evening by the ramparts
The Tannery from our breakfast room in the garden
So that's it. 'Summer in the Alps' is at an end. Almost time to move on, but there are a few photos to process, etc.
Thanks to Mike for looking after the house, and thanks for the comments, those of you, my dear readers, who had not only the stamina to follow our journey, but also had the tenacity to interact... And to the silent majority:
"Hello, I hope you enjoyed it."
13 comments:
I think I've been one of the silent majority, at least on Part 2 of your Summer in the Alps, but yes, I did enjoy it.
Where's next?
Haha, I don't class you amongst the silent majority Gayle!
Sue is going to the Peak District tomorrow while I meet up with an old friend. Next foreign trip is a few days in Berlin in December.
And you....?
As Gayle. I’ve been struggling to get posts with photos to upload so pretty well gave up and read yours instead!
Gibson, I used to be able to post numerous images using mobile blogging with the phone. These days I can post five images at 10% resolution with no problem, but if I include more images the draft either disappears or sends multiple times hours later...
So postings on this trip were limited to five images. Nobody complained and I enjoyed selecting the 'Five a Day'!
Glad you enjoyed this trip. We are near you next weekend - in Callander.
Years ago in a French city I wanted to view the celebrated city walls. I asked a policeman for directions using my then sparse French using the word, les murs, usually used for internal walls. After much, I suppose, pretend misunderstanding the policeman came out quite volubly with "AH! Les ramparts!" When you learn French like that it sticks.
The ramparts at Montreuil are really quite impressive, especially as the path goes very close to an unprotected thirty metre drop. The vandals who destroyed some of the benches must have a good head for heights!
Your photos looked good Martin. The option of choosing small files at the point of upload is no longer appearing which is a pain. I’ll need an app to resize photos in future.
You won’t actually be very near us next weekend as we’re still in Braemar and not sure where next. Enjoy Callander and surrounding hills.
Have been loving the blog as always. Looks like an awesome trip. I need a Like button to click on when I have been reading! Helen XO
Thanks Helen. There's no 'like' button here. No advertisements either, and everything appears in order (even if it is reverse order).
Gibson - the email app on the Samsung S5 brings up a sizing screen if you use the paperclip to attach photos. That's how I upload the pictures. I've tried embedding them in the text but can't work out how to resize the images for that. I think the 'bloggeroid' app does that for you, and Gayle uses it effectively. Its requests for information invaded my privacy when I tried it, so it was soon deleted.
Unfortunately, the Bloggeroid App doesn't do the resizing (or, if it does, I've not found that feature). My method is rather more painful: I choose the photos I want from the Samsung standard 'Gallery' App, then I edit them, one by one, in the 'Studio' element of that App, to reduce the size to 50% of the original* (or, if I've got a dodgy data connection, 25%). The one advantage of the laborious resizing exercise is that it then saves the photos in the 'Studio' folder in the 'Gallery' App, which makes it much easier to locate the photos I intend to use when I come to put the blog post together.
(*I have my camera settings with a picture quality of 6 megapixels, so the photos are already smaller than they would be if I was using full quality.)
That all sounds very reasonable, Gayle. As you know, my typing skills are very basic so after all the one-fingered typing I don't want to spend ages editing pictures any more than a bit of cropping. So I don't use 'Studio' - I just select five pictures and attach them at 10%, giving a description, if necessary, within the blog postings. Nobody complains, and I think some readers just look at the pictures, so for them having them all together is a benefit.
My 'desktop blogging' is in a different style, using Photoshop Elements to edit and re-size the images within the 'Open Live Writer' application that usually works well for me.
I think we all have our own styles, though it's interesting to try out new ways of doing things. Curiously my 'mobile postings' technique hasn't changed significantly in eleven years of blogging!
Alas, Open Live Writer and my laptop are no longer friends. It was quite a while ago that it auto-installed an update and stopped working. In trying to resurrect it, I deleted the software in order to reinstall, since when it has resolutely refused to complete the installation process (undoubtedly a fault with my very old laptop). Thus, on the rare occasions that I blog from home, I still find myself using Bloggeroid on my phone (although when on wifi, I don't mind sending full-sized photos).
Martin- I’ve downloaded Image Size from the App Store so hopefully my problems are over...
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