Observations on a trip to Brittany

[Don Madge]

I’ve just completed a 15 day working holiday trip to Brittany. This was my first solo trip abroad and was certainly an eye opener.

 

I went out Portsmouth – St Malo and returned Zeebrugge – Hull both overnight crossings.

 

I stayed on aires or free camped every night, I only paid one night and that was €6 at Damgan. This is a popular area and as the trip coincided with the February French school holidays some of the coastal aires were busy. The inland ones I usually had to myself overnight.

 

The weather was very kind to me with only two wet days and a bit of early morning mist on a couple of days on the coast.

 

BORNES.

For the uninitiated a borne is the popular name or what ever for the motorhome service points.

 

It appears some of the older Flot Bleu and Raclet bornes are being replaced by the all singing all dancing ones by Aire Services. The ones that I checked took either Euros or credit cards or both. Of the newer models I checked not one took tokens. For your two Euros you had a choice off 10 minutes water or 55 minutes electricity. The new bornes are of a more solid construction than the older plastic/GRP ones and I did not find a new one that had been vandalised unlike the older ones.

 

I also noticed that some of the large new Super U supermarkets have a service point and allow overnight parking.

 

Some aires just have a water tap and a drain for emptying grey and black waste.

 

I also noticed some municipal campsites had a borne outside the site; this seems to be a growing trend.

 

Its three years since I was in Brittany and there are now many more aires available.

 

DIESEL

I paid between €1.18 and €1.22 per litre at the supermarkets in Brittany. On the Autoroute it was advertised at €1.27 and €1.37 per litre. LPG was €0.85 per litre.

 

In Belgium (Zeebrugge) I paid €1.22 per litre for diesel and LPG was €0.55 per litre.

 

Safe travelling.

 

Don

[Guest Tracker]

Thanks for that Don.

 

We too have experienced these new bornes and as long as you don't rely on them for water etc you should be OK as, along with the older types, they did not always work - specially on free Aires.

 

We soon learnt to do the water etc the day before we absolutely had to - that way if the Aire you find that evening has an out of order borne you are not banjaxed!