Around the corner to Abersoch

It was just as well we weren’t in a rush to leave on Sunday morning. Farmer Robert was on fine form with lots of chat. We quickly covered off some sheep and lamb updates and moved on to the job he’s doing on the cottage next to the field. His farm is a little further away and this place came on the market twice. First time he missed out to a ‘developer’ who seems not to know one side of a stud wall from another. Robert had found radiators built behind them!

I asked about cottages bought for holiday use and he said that some of the locals moan but then “they are happy to do the building work, first in the queue”. We didn’t mention the old sketch, Come home to a real fire; buy a cottage in Wales. That one is best left alone 😀

So we said goodbye and vowed to be back and we drove through Aberdaron and over the headland to see Hells Mouth. This is a huge beach with its jaws open to the southwest and today the breakers were rolling in on the back of the recent gales. A few motorhomes were corralled together in one unofficial camping spot but we’d had enough of camping in a gale.

Parking on the road with everyone else, we joined the surfing crowd and watched them trying to get to grips with very unpredictable waves. This was most definitely wetsuit weather and after 10 minutes watching we left them to it.

An inconsiderate driver had parked within 10cm of my front end. Why do that? Anyway I had just enough room at the back and off we went to Abersoch. As we drove around the corner the wind dropped and we were in another world. This is the land of F-Pace and Range Rovers. Everyone was shopping at Fat Face, Jack Wills and Joules.

The beach here is beautiful and very accessible to all kinds of craft. We watched young kids launch a dingy and sail across the bay and then walked around the headland into town. Peering through a pallisade fence I spotted the sad sight of a Land Rover graveyard.

We had a lovely ice cream from Two Islands and sat overlooking the boatyard and a Heron and Egrit.

We stayed overnight on a terraced site for ‘static tourers’. There’s no way that these would be towed very far as they are too big. The view here is amazing and one that I would never have thought about. The whole of Snowdonia is there with the sweep of the Cardigan bay coast stretching south as far as you can see.

We saw stars for the first time too as the clouds disappeared. In this dark sky area and with the moon rising late, we had an instant view of the Milky Way that really lived up to its name. Also one shooting star lingered as it moved across the sky but without a tail. It lasted for a second or so. Certainly long enough for a good gaze.

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On y va

Hooray. We are off. The ferry was booked a few weeks ago and the pressure was then on to get all sorts of jobs finished on the house and Landy. Major cosmetic work was to cover the grey front doors with paint that matches the rest of the vehicle. On the engine a coolant leak had developed behind the water pump and so the P gasket and adjacent core plug were renewed. Also a cheapy head unit from those Chinese people replaced the old Sony fm radio. Now we have opened up the wonders of Car Play and all that comes with it. Finally the 9th gen iPad with WiFi became a 9th gen iPad with WiFi and ‘cellular’. This means we can use OsmAnd Maps which need no data and get their gps position off the ‘cellular’ chip in the iPad. More on this useful map in subsequent posts. We headed towards Portsmouth for a mid morning ferry via our old neighbours in S-I-V. There we had a great few hours updating each about our families and then proceeded to save the NHS, the country and the world too. I mean why no...

Burgundy

We thought that after the descent from Col du Galibier, we would be done with cols. They are brilliant to drive but hard work. The narrower the road the harder it is, especially at hairpins. These are almost always steep and so the vehicle speed and engine revs need to be correct before the turn. If it’s a right hand bend then the driving line is obviously on the right part of the corner which is always the steepest. It’s all about teamwork, especially as those bikers love the roads and like to be close to the middle. A Land Rover 110 needs a wide turning circle and so we have to look out sideways and either up above or down below to see what’s coming. After Galibier the road finally descends to the ski area of Valloire and on to Col du Telègraphe, which from the south isn’t much but those ascending from the north will feel the height gain. Then down to the Maurienne valley and we think we are done with hills. However there’s one last surprise as we turn right off the motorway route to...

Onwards

You can’t visit a classic car enthusiast without admiring their car and we got our timing right, as it was the monthly club meet on Sunday. This was held at the Hippodrome in Maisons Laffitte, so it was just up the road. The definition of ‘classic’ here is 30 years and so many of the vehicles there looked very familiar to us 😳. TR5 and TR6, MGB, RR, BMW, Maserati, of course the Jensen Interceptor that our host drives, 2CV, Caterham 7, a beautiful Austin Healy 3 litre and then this… This is identical to mine, a Fiat 850 Sport Coupé, that I owned from 1978-81. Seeing it, brought back memories of welding, brazing, stripped driveshaft splines, clutch on the M1 and many miles of amazing touring. We drove around France on a camping road trip for all of September 1978 and the following year did the Ardennes for a month too. Here’s Nige’s Jensen… Maisons Laffitte is a very nice area to the west of Paris centre. The mansion is now owned by a trust I think and is a beautiful building. All we ne...

Peelies travels

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