I am Sailing...

On Friday 14th of March I was stepping onto the deck of the good ship Armorique ready to sail to Plymouth from Roscoff in Finisterre. But there were considerable stages to accomplish before this agreeable situation.
   As regular readers of the Ark must know, Kim ( Mrs Noah ) is currently located in Plymouth looking after our daughter Alyson, who had suffered an aneurism. We had decided that it would be pleasant for us both, for me to have a brief stay in Plymouth to keep her company and see how Al is recovering. Now it`s not easy to arrange to leave the Ark`s other passengers, even though Ian, our so patient neighbour agrees to feed the stay-on-board contingent. Storm, the grey kitten, is too young to leave, so is lodged at another kind friend`s house to be made a fuss of by Agnès and her daughter Eléa. Toffee usually stays with Jacqui and Adrian in Loubillé but they had to go to a funeral in the UK, so Toffee made his first trans-Manche trip, with Jilly and Laika.

  Normally, I leave home early enough to catch a 3pm sailing but Britanny Ferries had amended the sialing to 1pm, just too early to be feasible. We decided I should leave the day before and stay at the Formule 1 at St Brieuc.. As I made good time and checked in early after a five hour drive, , I decided to explore, and chose the Port of Le Légué, associated with St Brieuc. This proved to be further down a deep gorge that we traverse on our route north. The valley leads down towards the sea, which, however is out of sight. However, the little port has both commercial and pleasure boating facilities and a charming little town, too.
  After a brief stroll along the dockside I returned to the Formule 1 for an early night.
  Next morning, after eating as much as I could ingest of the unlimited breakfast, I headed off again for the two hour drive to Roscoff and the ferry port of Le Bloscon. I had arrived nice and early and found the terminal almost deserted, so took the opportunity of booking in the dogs in peace. They have to be taken into the terminal and scanned for their micro-chips, not easy with three dogs. I split them into two lots,  Jilly and Toffee first, then Laika, the more flighty, afterwards. No problems, I heaved a sigh of relief, and left the Brittany Ferries desk with my ticket duly authorised.
After a brief stroll with the dogs, I joined the queue of vehicles waiting to board and was checked in by the staff and customs and passed on to another queue. Brittany Ferries would never survive at Calais with a sailing every hour! Finally at last I could move off and dive down into the cavernous stern doors of the Armorique!
  The car is marshalled into a tight position with the other vehicle on the car deck, and I can then take my travel bag, give the dogs a biscuit and leave them to bark at the other motorists while we are whisked across the hundred miles or so of sea between Finisterre and Plymouth. Travel is so relaxing!
  Having left France in sunshine as you can see from my photos, it was lashing down in Plymouth, what a climate! Never mind I was able to spend a happy week with Kim and Alyson.

  Bye for now, going to continue to acclimatise to being back home again.