Day 42 - Le chœur de l'aube 🐓 ?

The dawn chorus 🐓 ?

  You get used to the dawn chorus when your camping. Its usually either birds tweeting, the sound of tent poles thrown together in a heap or motorbikes starting up. With campervans its usually Germans starting up their engines. On a  campsite full of Dutch caravans its the gently 'plop plop' of flip flops shuffling to the toilet block at 7 o'clock on the tarmac path, six feet away from your pillow. Everybody was adhering to the rules and campsite etiquette, no talking, no jogging, no dogs barking, no kids screaming. Just 'plop, plop, plop'. It was amusing. 

    The sun came out but not too strong. It was monday morning, time to go hug the coast and look for lighthouses. Things were going good till we reached Louannec. Monday is market day and the roads were grid locked. We got in but couldn't get out. Round and round we went, 'discussions' getting more and more heated untill we managed to escape down some sort of farmers road.

    We were now bobbing along 'proper' Brittany coastline. Little harbour towns, coves and inlets with the odd sandy beach here and there.

Along we went. The lighthouses are marked on Google maps, mostly, but not easy to get to with a van or no parking anywhere near by. It got to the stage of just enjoying the view and the coast line.

As usual by late afternoon thoughts turned to parking for the night. Jill had a few places marked on her maps as possibilities and we were heading in the right direction but zooming in, and in, and in, on my phone threw up something interesting a little way off the route "turn in down here...."

Camping Car Diben is a motorhome stop over pitch on the municipal car park of the little harbour port of Diben. With a service point, public toilets and a ships chandlers cum local produce store its a beautiful little hide away place to stop for up to 48hrs. Its €5 a night, no electric and the local policeman comes around in the morning about 9am for the money.

This was a new type of place for us to stay over, on a marina, and at first we couldnt work our what the arrangement was or which of the pitchs would be best.  Two of the seven pitches at the front were free but I thought they were disable parking as there was something painted on the floor. We parked up along side the left hand side, at least we would have some view. Then we realised you could park in the middle so we could have gone there and had the back doors looking out, ok one van in front but maybe look thru the gap between vans. It was only when Jill got out and looked she realised the writing on the floor wasnt disabled parking so we quickly shifted to a prime spot on the front, third from the left hand corner. Typical, you get all set up and settled and the van right in the corner giving the best views, moves and straight away a little German woman from a van further down the line is out like a whippet and marking her spot😅.

It was still early in the day and the sun was out although  big black clouds had started to appear behind us in land. If it was exploring time now was it. Off for a walk to the harbour wall to look at all the little boats.

There was even a geocache, tiny little metal box hanging on fishing line at the back of the bench at the end of the wall.

(spot the van 🔭)

We had timed it  right as it started 'spitting' just as we got back. The rain fell and so did the temperature; it actually felt cold !. The high tide 7.7m came in and the newly completed 'socks' came out having now been designated, 'Le Van Socks'.