Category Archives: La Brehalaise

Sunday 11th November 2018 – I REMEMBER …

… last night saying something about going to bed early meaning waking up early and how I wasn’t hoping for another 04:45 start or whatever time it was.

And I was right too.

03:35 is certainly different. I can see that there’s nothing really to be gained by having an early night. It simply means that I have an early start.

Not so early though that I didn’t have time to go on a nocturnal ramble though. I was visiting a big city and was staying in a hotel well outside – so much so that we had to take a bus to the railway terminus. We piled on board and more and more people joined us as we made the tour around the hotels. And then a long drive to the railway station. We all alighted and people then went to change their money – one girl changed an enormous wad of €20 notes. I then got back onto the bus, which now had just half a dozen people on it, and we headed off elsewhere. It suddenly occurred to me that I shouldn’t be on the bus but on the train, so I dashed down to the front of the bus. The driver pulled up at another railway station and explained to me that there were two routes that I could take from here into the city, and how I had actually stolen a march on my comrades. It was then that I realised that I was actually on the south-western edge of London, and that was where I was headed.

But there was no danger whatever of my leaving the bed at that kind of silly hour of the morning. I did manage to go back to sleep where I stayed until all of about 07:30.

But that was my lot. By 07:45 I was actually out of bed and working.

I was pushing on with dealing with all of the photos that have built up over the week, but I couldn’t keep it up.

Never mind having a crash out in the chair – by 10:15 I was flat out on the bed underneath the bedclothes and there I remained until 12:15. Now THAT’s a Sunday lie-in!

Once I was back in the Land of the Living I had another hour or so on the photos and then stopped for lunch.

football bréhal la bréhalaise as folligny district manche normandy franceAfter lunch, I headed off the Bréhal for the match between La Bréhalaise (in blue) and AS Folligny.

Manche District 3rd Division so I wasn’t expecting much in the way of skill, but I was pleasantly surprised.

It’s not Premier League but at least there was plenty of effort and the players did what they could.

And I do have to say that the standard of football seems to be higher than in the Auvergne, that’s for sure.

football bréhal la bréhalaise as folligny district manche normandy franceFolligny are up at the top of the table and La Bréhalaise near the bottom, and it’s certainly true that the home keeper was by far the busiest of the two.

But the match hinged on a moment of magic from the La Bréhalaise n°10 who beat three men down the right wing with apparent ease, crossed into the centre where a beautiful shot from one of the attackers beat the Folligny goalkeeper, who had up to that point been a spectator.

The n°10 played a strange game. Much of the time he was invisible – drifting in and out of the gale – but occasionally he could certainly pull something special out of the hat.

We had a couple of bad-tempered moments out there and the referee, who looked as if he might be new, wasn’t quite sure of himself. But it all passed on quite well to the end of the game. And Folligny can feel disappointed about going home with nothing.

Back here I added some photos to a few of the pages from last week. You can see them by going here and working forward.

Tea was a vegan pizza and then a walk around the Pointe du Roc in the wind. But it’s not as windy as it has been for the last few days.

And now I’ll try once again for an early night and a decent sleep.

0

Sunday 23rd April 2017 – THERE MUSTN’T BE …

… a single pie hut in the whole of Normandy, from what I can see. This afternoon I was down at the Stade de la Plage in Donville les Bains for their second team’s match against La Brehalaise’s first team, and there wasn’t one there either.

Unbelievable!

So falling asleep in the middle of yet another film last night, I was awake at 06:00, even though it was a Sunday. I’ve not had a Sunday lie-in for quite a while, have I?

But I did take it quite easy this morning and didn’t do all that much – just mooched about on the laptop and eventually I had a shower.

You’ll remember that I’d bought some bread yesterday, and so I made some butties, and then I headed off.

plage donville les bains manche normandy franceNear one of the camp sites that I looked at a while ago, there’s another pile of dunes with a beach beyond it.

Negotiating the vipers (because there are signs warning us that they are about) I climbed over the dunes and found myself a cosy little niche in between a couple of dunes, relatively-well protected out of the wind.

And here I had my lunch – the usual vegan cheese, tomato and lettuce sandwiches with that salad dressing that I bought the other day

granville plage donville les bains manche normandy franceThere’s a beautiful view from here right down the beach, past that miserable building that I visited a few weeks ago, and down to Granville and the head of the promontory.

That’s a walled city by the way, up there on the promontory. The old town of Granville. And there are some barracks over there dating from the 16th or 17th Century, long-abandoned and now being converted into apartments.

That’s another place where I’ve tried to contact an estate agent but, as you might expect, no-one ever called me back.

ile de chausey plage donville les bains manche normandy franceThere’s an even better view from here across the bay to the Iles de Chausey. And what I’ve done is to mess about with the colours and the contrast to enhance the differences in the topography, and you can see everything so much more clearly.

The islands are inhabited, as you can probably tell from the buildings that you can see out there. A couple of hundred, if that, in the winter, but several thousand in the summer when all of the grockles arrive.

A couple of sailings each day out there in the summer, but in the winter you are lucky if there are a couple each week.

ship of the day plage donville les bains manche normandy franceNow when was the last time that we featured a “ship of the day” on here?

It’s quite a regular occurrence when we are in Canada or near a main shipping lane, but this is the first time that I’ve ever seen anything worth recording in the Bay of Mont St Michel.

No idea what it is, of course, but it’s an impressive sight all the same. I only hope that there are more of them as time goes by.

oyster beds domville les bains manche normandy franceAnyway, that’s enough of the excitememnt for just now. It’s the time of the year when the tide is going out further and further, and this is the first time that I’ve been able to see the oyster beds as they emerge from the sea.

And people down there working on them too.

But don’t believe anything that anyone tells you about oysters. It’s a myth. I had 12 on my wedding night, but only 9 of them worked!

modern building plage donville les bains manche normandy franceThere’s a weird building here at the foot of the cliffs. It’s a block of apartments that dates probably from the 1980s or thereabouts and it looks as if they ran out of money before they had quite finished it.

There’s an apartment for sale in there, and I had a look at the photos in the estate agent’s window a couple of days ago. It’s quite cheap for what it is, and that’s what is worrying. I’ve heard about buildings like this all over the holiday resorts of France.

stade de la plage donville les bains manche normandy franceOne advantage of the apartments though is that they overlook the Stade de la Plage, the home ground of the Union Sportive des Mouettes de Donville.

Today’s match is their Second XI against the First XI of La Brehalaise, whose Third XI we saw yesterday evening. It’s in the Second Division of the Manche District League so I’m rather hoping that it’s going to be better than what was served up last night

And indeed it was. La Brehalaise were much better than the Union Sportive des Mouettes de Donville – in fact it took the latter about 20 minutes to get out of their own half after the kick-off.

La Brehalaise won at a canter, 3-0, with a beautiful header from a corner that would have graced the televisions of the Premier League, a hopeful lob into the penalty area with the bounce and the wind deceiving the the Union Sportive des Mouettes de Donville goalkeeper, and a speculative shot from about 25 yards out that swerved into the corner of the net on a gust of wind.

There was a penalty awarded when the the Union Sportive des Mouettes de Donville goalkeeper tripped a la Brehalaise attacker who was clean through on goal. A red-card offence certainly, but the referee didn’t even brandish a yellow card, much to the astonishment of everyone in the crowd. And to run salt into the would, the keeper saved the penalty.

And, as I said, no pie-hut either!

After the game I headed back to the beach for an hour to sunbathe as it really was quite warm. And then back here for coffee and tea.

Now it’s an early night. I wonder what film I’ll fall asleep in the middle of tonight.

0

Saturday 22nd April 2017 – WORDS DON’T EXIST …

football La Brehalaise A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti ligue 4 district du manche Brehal normandy france… in the dictionary to describe the football that was on offer this evening down the road in Brehal.

I had the choice to go and watch US Granville in action against Lorient II but decided to come here to arural football match as it’s bound to be more intimate.

However, we were a “crowd” – it that’s the correct term to use, of just four here in the stadium to watch La Brehalaise III tackle A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti in a match from the Manche League Division 4, and there is no Division lower than this.

football La Brehalaise A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti ligue 4 district du manche Brehal normandy franceI’d seen in the schedule of results that despite their mid-table position, La Brehalaise had demolished a couple of other teams, scoring 9 and 10 goals here and there.

But I wonder what on earth they must have been like, because I couldn’t find the words to describe the football here tonight.

Dreadful was something of an understatement. It was like watching kids in Junior school running around in the playground in some kind of aimless chase after the ball.

From the kickoff, Brehal had a shot on goal – quite a soft shot as it happened, but the A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti keeper failed to stop it going through his hands, failed to grab it as it rebounded (twice) off his body, missed it as he dived for the loose ball, and it was cleared away by his defenders.

That would have been the clue for the Brehal players to pepper the goal with shots from just about everywhere but for the next 85 minutes, they had just three shots, not one of which went anywhere near the goal.

They had a centre-forward who insisted on hanging onto the ball at every opportunity instead of passing, and I don’t know whether one of the wingers had stolen his wife or something, but whenever the winger worked his way into a good position to receive the ball, the centre-forward turned his back on him and looked in the opposite direction.

It was no surprise that at half-time, A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti went into the dressing room 2-0 up. I can’t remember the goals now but they were simple efforts that had come about by the defence of La Brehalaise falling asleep.

female linesman football La Brehalaise A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti ligue 4 district du manche Brehal normandy franceNow here’s a thing that you don’t see every day.

Each team has to supply its own linesman and A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti came with a female linesman, or lineswoman … "try “linesperson”" – ed.

But one thing that we didn’t have was a pie hut. How can you possibly have a French social occasion without a buvette? I shan’t be going there again!

The second half started off again and we were treated to a superb goal from A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti. A free kick right around the defensive wall and despite a magnificent dive from the keeper, there we were.

After that, A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti seemed to switch off and they almost came undone because in the dying minutes of the game we had two breakaways upfield from La Brehalaise and they scored two goals from one-on-ones with the A.S. Montaigu Les Bois La Blouti keeper.

How things could have been different if they had attacked the goal from the start.

As for my start, it was another early one. 06:00 in fact. And after breakfast I cracked on with more stuff that needed doing.

That took me up until midday or so when I headed to Granville and the LeClerc for a pile of shopping, and the boulangerie over the road for bread for the weekend.

plage coudeville sur mer manche normandy franceOnce I’d bought what I needed, I headed for the seaside. Today was Coudeville-Plage, just down the road at Coudeville-sur-Mer, which is another one of those “sur mer” towns stranded a couple of miles from the sea due to the silting up of the coast.

The weather had changed today too. It was rather cloudy and overcast – nothing like the beautiful week that we had just had since I’ve been back.

granville plage coudeville sur mer manche normandy franceI could sit and eat my butty on a bench situated on top of a dune and I was quite comfortable here. There wasn’t as much wind about as over the last couple of days.

There was a good view of Granville away over there in ste distance, and you can see that dismal building at Donville les Bains where I went to see that dreadful studio.

You might have forgotten about that one – after all, I have seen so many ruins – but I haven’t.

iles de chausey plage coudeville sur mer manche normandy franceRight in front of me, away in the distance were the Iles de Chausey – an archipelago of which there are more at low tide than at high tide. Closely related to the Channel Islands further up, they were kept out of English hands by having been given to the monks of Mont St Michel in 1022, prior to the Norman conquest of England.

While I was busy admiring the view, Liz and Terry turned up and we went for a walk and a coffee (or two) along the promenade and watched all the people. The weather cleared up a little too, which was nice.

When I returned to Caliburn I had quite a surprise.

Someone had left a note on the windscreen wanting to talk about wind turbines. So I now have an appointment for Monday. As I have said before … "and you will say again" – ed … this vehicle advertising really works.

But despite my carping about the standard of play at the football this evening, I am the first to be aware that I have had a free evening’s entertainment thanks to the players and officials who turned out for the match, and I am very grateful.

0