Brian Holden: Living high life with historical interest

We are delighted to report that we have had no more holiday horror stories since last week when our mobile phone rendered itself no more use to us than a can of sardines.

No more inadvertent data download rip-offs for us now, with packet data, data roaming and keyboard now well and truly locked.

Ah, indeed it's great to have our phone working and to know we can once again be in touch our friends at a moment's notice. Great to know too that our first call was from the other side of the world - NZ, where a cheery caller asked if we would care to make a donation to a worthy cause. My reply was "Ah, not right now thanks". Two o'clock in the morning is not a good time to receive such requests.

One close call worth mentioning occurred when in a rush to get out of the house to do sightseeing. I mistakenly applied the wrong cream - namely toothpaste - to a delicate area of my body. Heed my warning and read the label! Toothpaste is for teeth - nothing else.

Rue du Petit Fort in Dinan was a perfect spot to spend our first two weeks, being so close to everything, in spite of the street being so incredibly steep. Seriously, when we looked out our living room at the people walking past, we could see their whole bodies in one set of windows and only their heads in the other. My Smart Tools cellphone app reckons the gradient is 1:4, which sounds pretty near the mark.

Exiting our front door was certainly a case of stepping up if we turned left and stepping down if we turned right. Of course, with all this mountain goat activity, much energy is expended, which in turn, over a short amount of time threatened to lead to considerable weight loss.

But not in my case. It is becoming evident that the excessive consumption of delicious French food, is tipping the scales for the worse overall.

In Brittany there is a famous old oak tree named Chêne à Guillotin. It is 1000 years old and looks every bit of it, with its knobbly bark and jagged branches making the old beast hardly a thing of beauty - but fascinating nevertheless.

I have to say though that our own Tane Mahuta in Northland would leave it for dead both not only in age but in beauty.

The And Another Thing team has uprooted itself from its Dinan villa in France and is now settled into another village, Honfleur in neighbouring Normandy.

It was on the beaches of Normandy where the British, Canadians and the Americans launched their campaign to liberate Western Europe, on 6 June 1944.

Over three million service personnel were involved and it all hinged on the success of the Normandy Landings on D-Day. Having been born a year after the end of World War II, I have a keen interest as to what went on during that assault, so I can't wait to do our tour of the memorials and museums in the area.