… strikes yet again.

All the way to LIDL and all the way back this morning, and I forgot my fitbit, didn’t I?

And I can’t blame being tired either, because I’d been to bed early and had a reasonably decent sleep.

Off on my travels too. I’d been staying in a hotel somewhere in a small town near Commentry with a couple of people and we’d been out looking for food. Eventually we came across a place that did couscous take-aways so we went and bought something from there. A while later I was back living in Les Guis so I had the idea of going back there to ask if they ever might need a delivery driver on occasions. I had to go home and print off a CV and I thought that while I was at it I’d print off a few extra copies and hand them out at similar places on the way. But the area was nothing like where I lived. It reminded me of the downhill slope of the road out of Clermont Ferrand past Vulcania and out to St Ours.

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite beat the final alarm, but it wasn’t far away. And after breakfast and a shower and general clean-up I headed for the shops.

You can tell that it’s election time very shortly.

The council has special poster boards that it erects at strategic places just before any election, and competing parties can paste their posters up on there instead of defacing the walls and doors of buildings.

It seems to work quite well, and helps to keep the place tidy.

LIDL didn’t come up with anything special at all, but at least the walk did me good and that’s the whole point of doing it.

Back here, I started to put everything away but my attention was distracted by some goings-on on the car park at the back.

It looks as if there’s some kind of meeting of driving schools going on in the public rooms. There are about a dozen driving school cars parked out there.

No idea what is going on though.

Back at work, I had a busy morning. Back in December 2013 I’d been to Clermont-Ferrand and ended up in the war cemetery there where I’d seen a few war graves.

Something about it had piqued my interest today so I spent a couple of hours doing some research into the incidents that led to the deaths;

Surprisingly there’s a lot of information available on the internet, including contemporary press cuttings and photos, and so I was able to edit the page to include an enormous amount of factual information.

We were interrupted by lunch, of course, taken indoors yet again due to the high winds. I’ve spoken to a couple of neighbours today and we’ve all been saying that the Spring this year is much colder than usual.

Having updated the page from Clermont-Ferrand, I attacked the photos from my 2015 trip to Canada. All of October 2015, all of September 2015 and half of August 2015 are now collated to the dictaphone notes by the time I stopped for tea. It’ll probably be finished tomorrow with a bit of luck.

There was the usual interruption for the afternoon walk in the wind.

And you can see just how windy it was by looking at the whitecaps on the waves down there

There was even someone out here wrestling with a kite, trying to make it stay aloft in the gale. He was having endless fun but I can’t say that he was particularly successful.

And I was shaken out of my complacent reverie by a rattle from overhead.

Someone in the area has had his chopper out this afternoon, because the helicopter went flying by overhead. It’s painted yellow with a red stripe and that makes me think that it’s the air-sea rescue helicopter.

It’s impossible to say whether or not it’s been out on a mission, or whether it was just a training flight.

Having had a day off yesterday for the Bank Holiday, the workmen were back today at the site of the new war memorial to the Heroes of the Resistance.

By the looks of things, they were installing shuttering along the edges of where that had dug out and laid gravels.

I hope that this doesn’t mean that they are going to concrete it over. I’ll use concrete because I’m no good at paving, but I’m sure the Council can do better than that. The paved path that they just dug up was quite well-done.

So I continued on my walk around the headland at the Pointe du Roc and had a quick glance at the Coastguard station to see if there was anything exciting going on.

There was someone out there on a ladder cleaning a piece of equipment. I’m not sure what it was though, whether it’s a CCTV camera or a siren or something.

But the concrete bunker underneath, that is roughly in the position which would correspond to where a mast anchored by that concrete cable-stay would be positioned.

Round now at the chantier navale to see what’s going on.

We seem to have acquired a different yacht today, the little one with the pale blue superstructure to the right of Grand Beau Temps.

The big pontoon dredger from the Vendee, St Gilles Croix de Vie is still down there and there seems to be someone working on her right now.

Further on around the footpath we can see down over into the harbour, and tied up to its quayside is our old friend Thora

She wasn’t down there in the harbour this morning when I went past on my way to LIDL, so she must have come in on the lunch-time tide.

And given the rather sharp turn-rounds these days, I wonder how long she’ll be staying

I came back here for my mug of hot chocolate and my brazil nuts and then continued on attacking the photos, with an interruption to wish Rosemary a “happy birthday”.

Tea was steamed veg and falafel with vegan cheese sauce. And I do have to say that it was the most delicious that I have ever made. I could eat that again – probably next week too for the second helping of falafel.

The apple pie and coconut sorbet that washed it down was delicious too.

Back outside for my evening walk again, and despite the wind it was another pleasant evening.

And another evening where the colours were totally beautiful too and they have come out really well in this photo of the beach at Plat Gousset at Donville-les-Bains.

You can see how strong the wind is by looking at the waves. Tons of white caps and the waves are quite strong. Just imagine the power in those waves there, waiting to be harvested.

And I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the weather either.

There was a group of young people down there having a beach party and watching the sun slowly sink down to the horizon. It’s the kind of thing that takes me back 50 years.

As long as they were out of the wind they would be fine down there. It wasn’t quite so pleasant up here though on the walls.

A few days ago, I noticed a pair of seagulls up to no good in broad daylight on the roof of a house across the road.

And even more recently the gulls have been diving down to pick up the grass offcuts that the council had been cutting.

And now we know what is going on, don’t we? It’s nesting time and it won’t be long before we start seeing the baby seagulls staggering around on the roofs of the houses.

Just a final check in the harbour on the way home.

And Thora is still in the harbour, complete with her shipping container on board. Obviously the turn-round today isn’t that quick;

And round the corner I met the old lady who is Minette’s “mother”. We had quite a lengthy chat about cats, and even Minette came out to join in, although she remained rather aloof.

So back here and I don’t really feel like all that much. I’m going to have an early night and I’ll do the rest of this tomorrow morning.

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