… how anyone could sleep through that racket that we had at about 06:00 this morning.
If the noise didn’t wake you up, then the flashing lights certainly would have done so. Its a long time since I’ve seen a thunderstorm like it, and all the inhabitants of the cemetery of Port Joinville down the road have come out to complain.
Now its raining cats and dogs. I’m glad that I crashed out last night at about … errr … 21:40 otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to sleep at all.
After breakfast we went for another load of shopping and I wanted to buy some mortar to seal the handrail into the length of piping as well as some rawlplugs to fix a handrail in the shower (my next task, so it seems).
I bought the stuff but remind me, someone, next time I think about doing something silly like living on an island. I paid more for 25 rawlplugs than I would pay for 500 at Screwfix, and a 5kg sack of mortar cost more than a 40kg sack at Brico Depot.
Having cemented in the handrail after lunch (after a siesta, of course – I’m becoming quite fainéant in my old age) we went for a drive out
We’ve already seen one lighthouse on our travels – the one at the Pointe des Corbeaux – but that’s not the most famous one on the island. Ohh no!
And so with my fascination for the aforementioned, off we went into the doom and gloom in search of the phare de l’Ile d’Yeu.
Believe it or not, it isn’t situated on the coastline – something that comes as quite a surprise to most people.
It is however situated on the highest point of the Ile d’Yeu, a hillock called “La Petite Foule” at a height of all of 57 metres, and the lighthouse is sometimes known by the name of the hillock.
Being away from the coast, the hordes of tourists on the island don’t really visit it, and it is this fact that led to Thomas Hardy writing his famous novel “Phare From The Madding Crowd” … "are you sure about this?" – ed.
It has four things in common with the lighthouse that we saw the other day
- it’s not the original lighthouse on the site
- the previous lighthouse was blown up by the Germans when they evacuated the island in August 1944
- the current one was designed by Maurice Durand
- it was built in 1950
And built in a modern 1920s-style art-deco design too.
Made of “modern” lightweight concrete on a stone base, it’s 36.5 metres tall and has a halogen light bulb of 650 watts that can be seen for over 23 miles.
It was badly damaged in a hurricane on 29th September 1952 and again by fire on 2nd November 1953 but was repaired each time
With the lighthouse’s unusual situation well-inland, the dangerous parts of the coast (of which there are many) are protected by light buoys.
I was told that there is a certain technique involving lining up the light buoys with the big lighthouse in order to work out your position as you approach the island from the sea.
That wouldn’t help the pilot of the Air Quebec flight to London who, when asked by the control tower to “give height and position”, replied
“5’8″, front seat”
This evening we all had a sing-song of traditional French songs, something that Cécile’s mother particularly enjoyed, althugh I’m not quite sure why because a sing-song like that usually heralds a torrential downpour.
