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We are back home from our autumn trip. We started thursday 3rd November with nice, warm, sunny weather as we are used to. First planned stop was Calais. We had heard rumours that you could stay at Bleriot Plage near the ferry terminal free of charge. Which happened to be true. We stayed at a large parking lot reserved for campers, with service.

Quite a new experience to see the big ferries come in and leaving in 15 minute intervals. The only drawback was the noise of the big diesel engines when they turned around in harbour. There was no possibility for shopping within walking range.

We started to our favourite spot at the french coast, Honfleur, on friday. Last year we had taken the scenic route along the coast, but we have learned in the mean time that taking the autoroute saves time and (fuel) cost, even if you take the payed routes. The numerous village passages and roundabouts take an enormous amount of time and nerves. The mobile home parking in Honfleur was still open and we managed to get a power socket.

First thing to do was put up the new short wave antenna, which now also operates on 80 meters. I tried to get my email from PI4TUE in Eindhoven, but I could not hear the server. Also the beacon of SM0RWO on 30 meters could not be heard.

I tried my own server on 80 meters but also here complete silence! I gave up. Fighting hardware is like fighting windmills. They always win.

Honfleur was pleasant as usual, and we decided to stay over the weekend. The weather was quite nice. 16 degrees Celcius and no rain. Actually, the sun was shining until 15:00 hrs.

On saturday I managed to get my son to look at the server at home. It turned out that it was 1 kHz off frequency. After that was corrected I managed to get my email... with the execption of some mails containing attachments (one of them 3.5 MB, wo9uld have taken a day to get that in..). The ~KEEP function really showed its value here, I was able to shift those mails into webmail territory.

On saturday afternoon we went to the Cyber bar in Honfleur which has meanwhile changed its owner. I mailed Per, SM0RWO that I could not reach the server. On sunday the problem was solved, it had QSY'ed tom 3595 kHz... From sunday onwards I could use the server with S3 to S8 signals, and PSKmail worked flawlessly.

On thursday we went south, the final target being Carnac at the coast of south Brittany. We wanted to take a look at the famous megalith alignments there.

We did not quite make it, and spent the night in Redon, near the 'Port de Playsance'. It was a noisy place, near a major traffic route, but we were tired enough to get a good night of sleep.

From Redon it took us only 1 hour to reach the megalith site at Carnac. There a part of the parking lot is now reserved for mobile homes... We had a look at one of the oldest public domain hardware displays of Europe. 30.000 stones nicely aligned for some unknown purpose.

We decided to go back north on the same day. The goal was to spend the night in Cancale, on the north coast of Brittany. When we got there it turned out that the parking for mobile homes was closed and the city was full of signs stating "forbidden for campers". Nice welcome. As it was near to getting dark we decided to find another place for the night. We found it in Sains near the N175. This small village has a small park devoted to campers (6 places, free of charge, with service (4 euros for 1 hour of electrical power)). We have not heard silence so deep for 30 years. And at 23:00 local all the lights went out, spending darkness unseen by modern humans.

At 8 o'clock the next morning one of the campers started a generator, tearing the silence apart. Which I though was a strange behaviour with respect to the local population. We really felt like guests in this village with unmatched hospitality. Some people obviously don't feel like that.

When we returned to Honfleur friday afternoon we were astonished to find the camper parking (capacity 140 mobile homes) completely filled. Good thing we had visited a supermarket in the morning, as it turned out to be 11.11, a french national holiday.

As the weather forecast was quite bad for the coming week we decided to drive home on saturday. We did the trip from Honfleur to Eersel in 7 hours, and are now again ready for continued chaos.