Saturday 5 October

Well breakfast was one of the best we have had in France in a smaller auberge – hotel or B&B. Lovely crispy warmed sourdough and sweet croissant, a full charcuterie and cheese platter with the key local cheeses. Preserves of high quality including an apricot jam that had so much flavour it tasted like sweet summer in a jar. Boiled eggs, a cake, yoghurts and nice fresh fruit and local organic apple juice.

The ambience in the old building is everything you could wish for in this style of auberge. The owner has a real flair for design, perhaps a little too much over done, and the dark timber beams and uneven stairs twisting upwards to our room provide a juxtaposition to the modern shabby chic adornments.

We both felt the need to stay local and have a meandering day, so we set off to view the basin and check out the reflections. Each time we view it, it looks different and so picture perfect charming. We watched boats leave the basin via a lifting bridge to the outer basin, and then saw two huge river boats come into the outer basins, reverse and disappear further around the corner to yet another inner harbour.

Not wanting to jostle with the influx of tourists we headed upon the promenade to the Personalities garden. This honours key people that have contributed to Honfleur – such as Boudin, Monet and others. There are great views of the Pont de Normandie bridge, the channel and Le Havre across the bay. We saw more lochs and noted that they control the level of water in the basins at low tide. Clever.

The gardens were lovely, and especially the little ponds that were mirror reflection’s of the surrounding landscaping. Butterflies, dragon flies and frogs all happy in the open spaces and warm autumn day.

On the edge of the park is a butterfly and bird park called Naturezone. We love butterflies so paid our fee and had a wonderful sauna for an hour and a half going around the tropical hot house where nature was so close my long lens became redundant. The most impressive was a large blue butterfly that was bigger than a sparrow. When it flapped its wings, is almost looked like a bird.

At one point a couple of them danced around me teasingly- but did not land. Vern got a good video of that, and then a cheeky parrot decided to land on him and got rather too amorous and had to be gently flicked off.

We sweated buckets in the warm and humid atmosphere however, we bought a couple of drinks and lasted quite a long time because it was so relaxing and fun. Butterflies just make you happy we think. The tropical birds were also gorgeous and had no fear of humans. We would be walking right past them and not see them they were that close, as too the butterflies.

Our legs were feeling it again but we slowly made our way back towards home, stopping for a cup of tea and pastry at around 3pm. The cinnamon roll and Paris breast we ate were excellent. His filling was with hazelnuts and a light crème patisserie making it taste like an elegant Ferraro Roche with custard. The cinnamon bun dough was a lovely soft rich egg yeast base.

When we got home there was time to have a soothing deep bath before heading out for dinner. Again it was a 3 course for 32.90euro each, which was nice, but not Paris quality. I had an impressive scallop, prawn and mussel tartare, Vern had Camembert ice cream, on grains for entree, and he had a pot roast with purple potatoes and Camembert sauce for main, and I had a seafood pot, mainly mussels with a bit of cream-Cider base. Dessert was caramelised apples on soft meringue and a pear ice cream with chocolate sauce.

Another 6.9km under our belt we slept well in our historic bedroom under uneven and gnarled black timbers. The sloping and uneven floor creating a roll together mattress of our four poster bed.