Saint-Simeon As part of our ongoing mission to visit HPB properties, we popped over to France for a long weekend visit to the site at Saint-Simeon, about 40 miles east of Paris (and quite close to EuroDisney as it happens).
Eurotunnel Friday - Drove to Folkestone (Judith's looking a little chilly and windswept outside the FlexiPlus Lounge), Eurotunnel to Calais, 232 mile drive down the largely deserted peage to Saint-Simeon. Can you imagine driving 232 miles on UK motorways on a Friday afternoon and encountering hardly any traffic for the entire journey, never mind any actual traffic queues? Although there was one small section of roadworks where I had to slow down to 70mph.
HPB Saint-Simeon Saint-Simeon is the smallest HPB property we've stayed at so far, with only 39 cottages and apartments on the site. It's also the first one we've stayed at that doesn't have its own restaurant and bar (because it's too small to bother). So we stopped at a neaby supermarket on the way in to stock up on supplies.
Cottage Our cottage was spacious and comfortable, with lovely views from the lounge and patio.
Bedroom View Nice view from the bedroom. The village of Saint-Simeon is visible in the distance, on the left, about a mile away.
Fields A view over the nearby fields.
Saint-Simeon It's about a mile to Saint-Simeon.
Clubhouse They've built a bit of a beach type area outside of the Clubhouse.
Clubhouse Inside the Clubhouse there was the usual array of entertainments (including a table tennis table, which is off to the left). The indoor pool is just visible through the windows.They don't have the space for a full sized snooker table, so they've got a half sized one instead, which was soooooo much easier to play on (for people with limited skills). We managed to finish a game in about twenty minutes, instead of the two hours or so it takes us to complete a game on a full sized table.
Breakfast Saturday - It was a lovely sunny day so we had breakfast on our patio.
Le Parc des Felins Le Parc des Felins is a neaby zoo that's dedicated to breeding and conserving, well, cats. Which makes the presence of all of these goats seem a little unexpected. Until you think about it for a bit.Cunningly they encourage visitors to buy food to fatten up their goats. (Do you see where this is going now?) The goats are adept at mugging visitors. Judith had been in the goat feeding area for about two seconds before one jumped up at her and tore the paper bag her food stash was in so that most of it immediately fell out onto the floor.
Cheetah Still, all of these cats would provide amply opportunities to try out my new camera. Here's a cheetah.
Cheetah Got any goats?
Cheetah Two cheetahs.
African Lion Lions seem to be mainly sleeping or stretching between sleeps.
African Lion What is not immediately obvious from these photos is that they're mainly taken through the mesh fences that stop the cats from eating the tourists. If you look closely at the pictures you can see dark vertical and horizontal lines on the photo. That's very out of focus fence. So there was lots of opportunity to practice with my camera's manual focus as the auto focus often locked on to the fence instead of the animal behind the fence.
Serval Lots of the cats were really hard to spot in their enclosures due to their excellent camouflage.
White Tiger I reckon it must be very stressful for this tiger to have all that food walking overhead, just out of reach, all day.
Asiatic Golden Cat This asiatic Golden Cat does not look happy at all.
Siberian Tiger This tiger was sitting quite close to the fence so the fence is fairly obvious in this photo.
Pallas' Cat (Manul) This Pallas' Cat has a very expressive face.
Snow Leopard Because the light was so poor under the dense foliage I was only really able to get decent photos of cats sitting still. Everything that was moving about came out blurry. I really wanted a photo of the Canadian Lynx, but it just wouldn't stop walking about.
Snow Leopard
Tree I just thought this was interesting. I can't really tell if it's several trees that have grown together, or just one big tree.
Cougar/Mountain Lion We've regularly seen cougar/mountain lion paw prints in the snow when we've been out walking in Canada. I saw the "baby" one first and thought "I could take that" if I came across one while out walking. Then I saw the full size one and had to re-assess my opinion as it's quite a lot bigger.
Cougar/Mountain Lion Still, they seemed in quite a good mood, so probably nothing to worry about there then so long as I've got some sort of soft toy to throw to them to distract their attention while I run away.
Jaguar I always thought these were black. Or am I thinking of a panther? There are so many different types of cat it's amazing.
Lemur Apparently lemurs like to hang out in piles. A pile of lemurs.
Lemur This is what they look like if you manage to see one on its own.
Coulommiers Having observed and photographed all of the cats at "Cat World" (as I like to think if it), we headed to the nearby town of Coulommiers for some lunch.
Coulommiers Bits of Coulommiers were quite picturesque, although much of it was quite standard town type scenery.
Coypu We went into the very pretty Parc des Capucins, in Coulommiers where we saw what I think was a coypu, which is basically a massive South American swimming rat. At some point they appear to have escaped into the wild in France and they're doing really quite well for themselves, despite the fact that the French would rather obliterate them all. I mean, would you like to have swimming rats the size of a medium sized dog living in your neck of the woods? Me neither.
Parc des Capucins Apparently, ages ago someone built a chateau/palace on this island, but they used really rubbish materials so after a disappointing short time, it fell down. At which point the land was turned into a public park. Nice.
Parc des Capucins Judith walking the the Parc des Capucins.
Narrow! Driving back to Saint-Simeon, the car's navigation lady entertained herself by directing us down several miles of these hilariously narrow roads.Fortunately the roads were so quiet and deserted that it was possible to park in the middle of the road, get out and take a photo.
Moon Still testing the capabilities of my new camera. It seems to have done a pretty good job of zooming in on the moon. There even seem to be a few craters visible along the bottom edge. I'll have to try that again when it's only a half moon or so.
Musee de la Grande Guerre Sunday - The weather had turned a bit miserable, so we thought it might be a good idea so stay indoors as much as possible, So we drove to the Musee de la Grande Guerre (Museum of the Great War) at Meaux. Credit where credit is due, it's a pretty impressive building.
Musee de la Grande Guerre The entrance is underneath the raised structure.
Musee de la Grande Guerre Inside was fairly interesting, but most of the exhibits were only in French, as were the movie exhibits, which limited our involvement a but. But it was still quite an interesting way to stay out of the rain for the morning.
Musee de la Grande Guerre At the end of the museum tour you can go up onto their roof. This would be lovely on a sunny day, although it was a little bit grim on this particular day. Still, it was a nice view.
Pizza Hut We were driving around looking for somewhere to have lunch when we passed a big Pizza Hut wth a big car park. As neither of us had been in a Pizza Hut for, oh, literally decades, we decided to pop in and see what's what in the 21st century.Apparently what's what is cheesy fun crust pizza, which Judith is looking ever so slightly both daunted and impressed by.
Terre des Singes (Earth Monkeys) Having reduced our lifespans by a few weeks, we headed off to look for something to do for the rest of the still fairly grey afternoon. When we left the Parc des Felins yesterday we noticed there was another park just up the road - the Terre des Singes.We didn't get there until nearly 4pm and there were only about half a dozen cars in their car park so we weren't certain they were actually open (it was Sunday after all). But there was a lady in the ticket booth who took our cash and waved us in.
Geoffroy Monkey I quite liked this photo as you can see the colours in the monkey's fur...
Geoffroy Monkey ...but I also like the wide-angle shot because you can see the length of the monkey's tail.
Terre des Singes About a third of the park is in this forest. We were walking down the path looking at a rarely seen (in the UK) red squirrel...
Terre des Singes ...when we noticed, sitting on a branch about five feet away from us, this macaque! So we were walking about in monkey domain!!! That would explain the park ranger tailing us a discreet twenty yards or so away (we were the only people in there after all).
Terre des Singes A bit further on and the forest gave way to a large are of open grassland, where many of the macaques were picking through the grass.
Three Wise Macaques Three wise macaques having an afternoon snooze. Although they woke up sharpish when the keeper lady turned up with some food.
Safari Perroquets The final bit of the park is a large enclosed space where the parrots and that sort of thing live. Again, we had the whole place to ourselves.
Safari Perroquets No idea what these are.
Safari Perroquets I think these might be macaws, but I wouldn't swear to that.Time to head back to Saint-Simeon.
Walking When we got back to Saint-Simeon, as there was still 90 mins or so before sunset, I thought I'd head out for a short walk to try to walk off some of the "crispy fun crust" pizza we'd had earlier.My walk started well, passing this monument to a fellow called Alfred Besson, who died during World War 2. However, a short while later I was wading through thigh deep soaking wet grass and not really enjoying myself very much at all (although my waterproof Rohan trousers made the whole experience more manageable than it migh thave otherwise been).When I reached a road I just headed home along that, having covered barely a couple of miles. Doh!
Belgian Beer Warehouse Monday - We were heading home, but decided to detour into Belgium to stock up on beer. Judith found this beer warehouse place, which is in Belgium, literally yards from the border from France in a very strange town called Ploegsteert. There's obviously some tax shennanigans going on as Ploegsteert is full of "tabac" shops and beer warehouses.Still, we filled the remaining space in the boot so we were happy.
Ypres Burger Ploegsteert is only ten miles south of Ypres (Ieper), so as it was still broadly lunchtime we decided to pop in there for a quick bit to eat.We left Ypres (Ieper) and headed for Calais. The weather soon turned very bad with very heavy rain and very strong winds, then we got stuck on the motorway for an hour a mere 14 miles from Calais after a vehicle ahead of us caught fire.
Eurotunnel We arrived at the Eurotunnel in the pouring rain and popped in to the lovely new FlexiPlus lounge for some complimentary food and drinks. We were the only people there other than the staff. This is a photo of the entrance to the toilets. Nice, isn't it?Our travel traumas were still not over yet though as we got stuck for 80 minutes on a train's boarding ramp, before driving through the train, out the other side and back up the next boarding ramp to be directed to another train.At least once we arrived back in the UK we had a surprisingly stress-free drive home (apart from the usual motorway idiots obviously).
The End After the stressful drive from Ypres to Calais and Eurotunnel boarding issues, I thought I'd end with a nice photo of Judith standing on the lawn next to our patio in Saint-Simeon.Overall we had a nice weekend in Saint-Simeon. It will be nice to go back there for a longer break when we will have the time to properly relax and enjoy the peace and quiet and lovely scenery (hopefully also when it's not a Dutch school holiday).