The French are a nation of Hypocondriac's. In France i have never seen so many little green flashing signs indicating a chemist. There are Chemists everywhere.

Does this mean the French are really healthy because they worry about health and so take it seriously and look after themselves, or are they all falling over with illnesses from sore throats to broken legs.

sorry to any French person who reads this......... it's just my observations.

French villages can be very quiet in the early afternoons. You can walk around for half an hour and you would be lucky to see just one person.

Going To France

The ferry crossing was  a bit slow, a 12 hour crossing on a ferry filled with Irish tourists with their camper vans, crying kids eating junk food. Is this what people strive for?

Slept on a hard floor in a large dark hall filled with other ferry crossers.

I had a broken sleep but a little was better than none at all. I was up early for the ferry entering Roscoff. The weather was still fine.

Roscoff was a pretty place, very busy and wheeling my bike around town i stopped and sampled some French cuisine.

I stayed near Roscoff at a campsite which was swarming with tourists from all over Europe.

The next day i cycled to a nearby town Morlaix, the town was empty, were is everyone?

I put up camp on the outskirts of the town.

Got up  next day heading South east down through Brittany.

Brittany was beautiful, lots of trees and open fields. The heat was blistereing and i needed water on a frequent basis. I found that all towns i passed through had a local church and each church seemed to have an outside toilet where there was water taps i could top up with. If i had spent money on Spring water then i would have been 'Skint' way early on. The amount of water i drank each day was amazing, easily 4 to 5 litres each day.

I stayed at 'Carhaix-Plouguer' campsite this day. A pretty place to say the least.

The next day i was up early travelling east, i came across a wonderful little campsite owned by an English woman 30 or 40 kilometres East of 'Carhaix. It was set in a wooded area. I met a few other travellers. I set up camp and got talking to the owner and some local people. Very enjoyable first night drinking wine by campfire. It was a clear sky that night and i decided to stay at this campsite for a few days beacuse i was having such a good time and also because my knee was playing up again. The pain in my knee was not as bad as what it had been when i entered Dublin but it was still a cause for concern.

I got friendly with a Dutch woman who was friends with the campsite owner. She was in her fifties but had also like myself got on a bike and cycled from Holland to here in Brittany. This woman was a proffesional in my eyes, the way she planned her routes, the equipment she carried and the way she seemed to cram soo much onto here slender little bike. I was an apprentice compared to her, she was soo organised. She cycled 70km plus each day and was still bright as a button, were as i was managing around 50km plus each day and feeling beat when early afternoon came around.

i spent my time at this campsite relaxing.