Next morning – paying more heed to the stroppy lass imprisoned in our dashboard – we headed from Calais for Etretat. Why pray tell, I hear you both cry…

After meandering enjoyably through some wee villages – Mlle Sat Nav seems to like that sort of route as we do – we arrived and after some Google Maps prep the night before parked at the sea front. Etretat is very nice but be warned the parking meters are clearly designed for proper geniuses. We waited patiently unconcerned while married Americans were shown how it worked by a very understanding French couple. He wanted her “to give them a dollar” for helping! How hard can it be we thought? Only for the next person to have similar difficulties before being helped by a different patient French person. I’ve 5 years of further education and much more significantly S has put up with me for 17 years and it took us a while! Not only does it ask for your registration but I’m pretty sure we needed to input our favourite colour, height and Joan of Arcs date of birth squared to the nearest prime number… It wasn’t however pricey obviously as some form of reward for the Nobel Laureates who manage to get a wee ticket out the very testing machine. There is free parking out of town for people with the intellectual capacities of Stephens Fry and Hawking…

Etretat is however iconically beautiful and as it was sunny well worth a visit for those who like Monet and his Impressionist ilk. I fear it is busier peak season but we were able to wander the streets unhindered by coach parties and paused to soak up the ambience eating frites and mayo – as you do.

Onwards we went leaving behind the queues of people wailing and gnashing their teeth at the parking meters. Seriously the other parking is the better option unless you feel particularly clever or have kidnapped a PhD. Pootling along towards Honfleur another painter’s haunt we had few cares in the world going over the Pont de Normande which is one then another whopping feat of engineering…

We arrived without problems at the Ibis Hotel hosting us for the night. After unloading our most valuables, which required two trips each stop, we fitted after a fashion our headlight adapter thingys. This would have taken less time if we were not still recovering from the gargantuan test of our intellectual capacities that was parking for two to three hours in Etretat.

S was given a cool poster advertising an art exhibition on in Honfleur around her date of birth by a very good friend of hers. We wandered the short distance into town and having found the place that hosted said exhibition dawdled around the harbour which is still lined with higgledy piggledy old buildings many of which are now bars and eateries. Pleasingly Honfleur retains the charm of the Impressionists daubings of the past even if the properties are now not as brightly coloured.

 

Having found a place for our tea S checked her phone and discovered a missed call, said device rang at that moment and it was the animal couriers who were transporting our cat Mitzy. The woman told S that they were dropping off our wee poppet on the 16th not the 17th – which was not what we’d asked for nor paid them to do as we were not going to arrive ourselves until the 17th! We said we’d not be there to have her delivered foolishly thinking the date arranged was how their system would work. Sat as we were mid main course this was a very unpleasant surprise. I then spoke to the woman who lied about things clearly previously stated in e-mails and among other things threatened to not bother collecting Mitzy at all OR refund the significant amount of money we’d already paid the f@cktards. Despite her saying with no hint of irony whatsoever, “Just because you put the 17th on the Booking Form”! This being something which we’d it appeared very stupidly done before they confirmed the details and took our money. The woman was hilariously inept and accused me of being “rude and aggressive”, bless her. In that we were in a busy restaurant and I was surprisingly being both calm and measured in my comments, attracting no attention from the other diners. I fear the poor woman has had a very, very sheltered life. She wouldn’t like me at all if I had been being either of these things. I won’t name the company of Animal Couriers…

Our evening very much over shadowed we called the people we were booked to stay with from the 17th and they rather brilliantly came up with a few options to save the day and stop Mitzy being abandoned at the road side or left stuck in Polmont with a happy Debra and less so Gordon…

When we returned to the Hotel S needed a drink – something that despite being married to me is surprisingly a very rare occurrence. The next morning it had dawned on us that we could cut short our established and paid for travel plans to fit the whims and idiosyncrasies of the Animal Couriers dullards who no doubt consider themselves to operate in the service sector. This was agreed with our hosts and we – having no indication as to any arrival time – became resigned to our holiday plans being screwed up (to our cost) and an early morning start then high tailed drive to 87500 hoping to get there before our charming and blissfully ignorant of the shenanigans wee grey feline.

Having addressed this further the next morning and gone back to the customer service ignoring Animal Couriers we set off towards Nantes…