1st August, home to Saint Malo via Guernsey and Jersey.

Left the badger with mum at 6, actually felt a little sad as she watched me leave. Made good time to Weymouth. Cattle class on the ferry was fun, the service was good as was the speed of the crossing however being stuck on a table of four with three generations of the same Essex family was not calm inducing, they spent the whole time repeating everything for Gran, pronouncing Arabica as Aruba beans.....must be a new Caribbean coffee that Costa make and trying to figure out why Guernsey is the same time as England but France is an hour ahead, I briefly tried to explain CET once but gave up, quickly. Thankfully they got off at Guernsey. Onwards to Jersey and to be fair those fast cat things can shift, the clue is in the name I guess. I had the day to waste in St Helier, the place immediately bought a wave of varied emotions, it was warm and felt like a holiday already but that was half of the problem, the last family holiday we had before my parents split up was on Jersey, I was only about 10 so nothing reminded me of it as such, just knowing was enough. I did remember that the gun towers scattered around the island are called Martello towers, so for a week in my childhood my sister's name got lengthen from Martel to Martello. It is a little known fact that the aforementioned Martello once buried her new shoes on a beach in Jersey and couldn't find them again, I was going to look but it was hot and the beach was big.

Cycling on Jersey is brilliant, dedicated cycle lanes take you pretty much anywhere on the island including along the massive beach at St Helier, they are also flat, which is nice.

So after a cycle and a peruse of the shops it was time to get back on the ferry, next stop Saint Malo, an hour and a bit and I was in France, a 5 minute drive saw me at the Aire de camping car in Alet, which is the other side of the bay from the walled town of Saint Malo, the beauty being you can see the whole thing, Alet has some pretty impressive sights of its own. The camp-site was nice, clean and quiet with good facilities, highly recommend if you spent the last 17 hours travelling ! Head into the village for breakfast, many nice little cafes not least the cafe du theatre, which is not only pleasant and reasonably priced but is opposite the library, which is a remarkable building. The need to leave the camp-site by 12 is the only thing that takes me from Alet so soon.