Hello again everyone,
I'd like to start this post with our first real streetart experience of this journey. It went like that: As already told in the post before, we were lucky to reach that marvelous coastal town called Dieppe in Normandie, on the northern French coast. It was on the eve of the summersolstice on the 20th of June that we met a very friendly little family who allowed us to put up our tent in their garden for one night.
Kosma just started having a very nice time playing with Paul, the little boy of the family - wich made not only us as parents happy but also our hostfamily - and we just wondererd how quick the coastal weather can turn a sunny blue sky into thick white fogg within seconds, when our hosts told us that on the 21 of June traditionally there's "La Fête de la Musique" everywhere in France. It meant, that there would be open music and party everywhere in France and therefore also in Dieppe the next day, especially on the port. All this simply boosted our decision to dive into our first street art experience on this trip with a big smile :-)))
"VIVE LA MUSIQUE"
The next moment I saw Daniela heading into a local products shop in the very front of us and coming back some minutes later with the biggest smile, telling me, that we had by chance just played in front of the shop of one of the couchsurfers she had tried to contact the evening before. It turned out that he hadn't seen our message but that we were very welcome to couchsurf his flat right above his store, of which he luckily had posted a picture on his couchsurfing account. Daniela remembered the picture and so it took her just a few questions to make it all clear, because Antoine our amazing new host in Dieppe had indeed a very comfortable couch for us to surf in his lovely flat above his shop "Les 3 conserveries". :-)))
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| Jonathan, Kosma, Daniela and Antoine couchsurfing at Antoines lovely shop "Les 3 conserveries" in Dieppe |
This is one of the countles magical moments you can have, when you travel with someone as skilled as Daniela for couchsurfing, workaway, woofing, etc. What a solstice, what a start for our streetartperformances, what a town, what a day, what a everything, in short a very beautiful moment of our journey. :-)))))
After spending some beautiful days with Kosmas 2nd birthday on the 23rd of June in Dieppe we faced an uneasy choice: either we continue an amazing hike that would take us along the coast of Normandie towards the amazing country of Britanny or we cut short to Nantes towards the Atlantique coast called "la côte d'argent". We finally decided for the second option for various reasons. This way we were more confident to have enough time for the first meeting between Kosma and her french Grandmother and also for the camino hike later on which would hopefully take us to Andalusia in October.
So here we were starting on the camino in Dieppe. In Offranville we found after a rather disappointing Camino experience (paths were not taken care of, ticks, foot unfriendly streets, almost no shell signs or yellow arrows for giving directions) a Camping, where we decided to make an exception from our wildstyle-camping, which turned out to be pretty nice. Not far from it we went dumpster diving in a bakery and a Carrefour Market. We had to decide for this option because the shops where closed, so we couldn't do our usual foodsharing like described in one of our older post from a previous journey in 2015. But to our suprise, halleluja what a good decision...
...more food than we actually needed.
On the next day we walked up to Longueville where we met again lovely people and were allowed to put up our tent: in the lovely garden of Ingrid & Jordan not far away from the lovely river "La Scie", where we met Kenya the donkey as well as other lovely animals. Unfortunately Ingrid and Jordan's little daughter was at her Grandma's on this day. Her presence would have made Kosmas playing with various toys and a lovely bath in the family's Outdoor whirlpool even more amazing than it already was.
Ingrid and Jordan are such a lovely family that gave us such a warm welcome. So much that Daniela and me, usually almost never drinking alcohol, accepted when they offered us a good local "Cidre de Normandie" with its usual 2%alc.
We had a great time drinking fresh applecidre, talking about our respective lifestyles and enjoying Ingrid and Jordan's nice animals together with Kosma.
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| Jordan, Kosma, Jonathan, Daniela & Ingrid in Longueville-sur-Scie |
...Pauline, mother of three children, here with her lovely youngest son Oskar. She saw us, all our equipment and Kosma on Danielas back in the babycarrier and asked us just like that if we needed a lift, a place to sleep, food, whatever. Amaaaazing! Pauline, are you an angel from heaven on a very mission to help changehikers on their run? She took us home, showed us her house, gave us her oldest daugther's chamber to sleep in and took us to an organic farm on the very same day for collecting strawberries for everybody. She took us right to paradise for a little while, didn't she?
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| Daniela and Kosma with the most delicious sweet strawberries |
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| Paul-Arthur, Pauline, Oskar, Eleanor, Kosma & Jonathan after harvesting organic berries on the Rouen countryside |
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| Oskar and Paul-Arthur having fun with Eleanor and Kosma, Jonathan wondering if he's in paradise...;-) |
...but whilst in heaven you have to face reality again and dive back into the matrix: we had to move on and decided to take the train from Rouen to Nantes. It was a cheap price but the trip would take us via moloch Paris because there was no direct train and also no busses from Rouen to Nantes. So we had to face what we had really wanted to avoid. A trip via Paris. In the end it turned out less bad than we expected.
After the successful train ride we were sitting on the floor in the Wifiarea at the mainstation of Nantes at the end of a day on the french railways, checking our beloved Hikingapp Komoot on our Smartphones to find out how we could get out of town quickly to find a nice wildcamp for the night. But can you imagine? Again paradise opend and the next angel called Valérie asked us if we needed a place to sleep for the night. This amazing mother of three almost grown up children took us 20km outside of Nantes to her wonderful house that she and her housband had amazingly renovated during the last twenty somewhat years with great space inside and even a swimmingpool outside, where Daniela, Kosma and I could enjoy the fresh water under the hot summer sun. We decided to stay some more days in paradise. ;-)
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| Jonathan helping Xavier and his carpenterfriend covering a roof at their lovely house near Nantes |
Daniela and Kosma decided to help clean the garden's terrasse and I helped Xavier with some roofcovering. After that everybody could dive into the pool. And Kosma pronounced her first german word with 4 syllabes: "Badehose".
Unfortunately we don't have a foto with the lovely family of Valérie. Xavier, Valéries husband took us to Nantes some days later where we did some more streetart, enjoyed the "mirroir d'eau"...
...on the very day of the quaterfinal of the soccer worldcup where France played. You can imagine the crowd's exitements everywhere in town and we in the middle of it doing our modest little performances...this was very funny...:-)
But Nantes, better said Britanny had a much better surprise for us than the soccer worldcup:
GWENVAEL
He was our next couchsurferhost in Nantes and you cannot imagine a better host than him. On the first days in his nice house in Indre, Kosma got her first real child disease, the chickenpocks. These being highly contagious for everyone who either isn't vaccinated or didn't have the illness, we were thinking about taking the train quickly one more time to Jonathan's mum for waiting out the disease. But Gwen invited us with such a naturalness to let us stay on "quarantine" at his house as long as we wanted, that we were happy to stay in Nantes with him instead without having to expose Kosma to numerous people at the stations and in the trains. We stayed for two wonderful yet also exhausting weeks, being at Kosma's side and helping her through the disease which she took with ease most of the time. Gwen would on top of his hospitality take care of us by not only giving us insights into the history of Britanny, which he is so lovingly passionate about, by cityguidance and storytelling, but also by making us taste traditional Britannian dishes like the famous "Galettes Bretonnes". He even accepted to cook some vegetarian versions of them for us. ;-))) But this was not enough. He shared some amazing political conversations with us not only about the political party UDB (Union Démocratique Bretonne) he is part of but also about his interesting local political activities.
He took us to the local markets in Indre and Nantes where we were abel to save a lot of food (fruits like melons, peaches, vegetables, bread, etc...) for almost all of the two weeks for all to share at the end of the markets at midday.
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| The last Queen and King of Britanny |
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| Daniela amazed by the lovely Anne de Bretagne |
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| The Elephant of "Les Machines de Nantes" |
As Kosma recovered nicely from her chickenpocks we all were looking forward to see our lovely "Wahlfamilie" from Wuppertal in Germany very soon again since they had decided to spent a part of their summer vacations with us. We had lived together with Chris, Kai & David in Wuppertal for the previous 2 years in their beautiful red house until the beginning of our journey on the 17th of may. Now two months later we would meet again at Gwenvael's in Indre for having a great time together discovering and enjoying the South of Bretagne a little bit...and they would even bring David's best friend, our beloved Lilly, with them...
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| David, Chris, Lilly, Kosma, Daniela, Kai & Jonathan on "Place Royale in Nant es" |
....together with them after two days of experiencing Nantes we headed on south...
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| Lilly on the ferry from Royan to Soulac... |
...and there we are on the beautiful côte d'argent!!!! :-)))
We will write about our trip south from Nantes in the next post.
Until then we wish you all the best and enjoy your time, projects, holidays and adventures as well!
Big hugs from the Changehikers Jonathan, Daniela & Kosma
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