… which ship this is that came sailing inti the Baie de Granville this afternoon.

Naturally, at first sight I reckoned that it might have been Normandy Trader on her way into port to pick up more supplies for the Channel Islands, but the more I looked at the image, the less she resembled her

But whoever she was, she was in the bay and looked as if, with a slight correction of course, she should be heading into the harbour so I could have a good look at another moment.

As she drew nearer to the port I could see that she was almost certainly not Normandy Trader.

For a brief moment I had a surge of optimism, thinking that it might be a gravel boat coming for another load of gravel for the cement works at Sittingbourne, but that’s unlikely seeing as the gravel bins are empty right now.

But we’ll see what we shall see in a short while when she makes it into the harbour. If it’s a new freighter come to visit us, I shall be well-impressed as we could do with a few things stirring up in the port.

Strangely enough, there was no trace of any unidentified ship on my radar. The only ones that I could see were ones whom I know.

Mater on I went out again to see if there had been any activity in the port.

There was no-one unusual in the port and anyway, all of the freight that I’d noticed on the quayside this afternoon was still there this evening. It wasn’t one of the little Jersey freighter. Had they been in, turned round and gone back to Jersey, they would have taken the freight with them.

And definitely not a gravel boat either. The gravel bins are full of discarded buoys as you can see.

And so the plot sickens. Maybe she was the Flying Dutchman.

This morning though I wasn’t exactly flying when I left the bed. More like a rather desperate stagger. But then, with not going to bed until 01:00 then getting up at 06:00 is rather optimistic.

After the meds I had a listen to the dictaphone. There were a few entries from a couple of days ago so I transcribed them and added them back into the text, and then I had a listen to last night’s journey.

Much to my surprise, last night I married, to a girl with whom I used to work at one time. We had a reception afterwards and I invited all of my friends from the football and they packed the list out nicely. For a change at a do like this there was more men than women so there were people walking around sizing up the talent. Then they announced the dance. “The girls’ bakery team and the boys football team are now inviting you to dance a square dance” so all the girls were taken out and all the boys were taken out to go off and dance. We were allowed to take off afterwards and that was when I danced with Heather (whoever she was – it wasn’t she whom I married anyway).

That took a while and just as I’d finished it Rosemary rang, the early bird. She needed a few answers to a couple of questions but I couldn’t help her. But 1:18:00 on the phone is some going in those circumstances, even for us.

We might have gone on for longer too except that I had to knock off and prepare my breakfast ready for my Welsh class. That was just a revision session and we didn’t really do all that much in 90 minutes. But it’s free so who’s complaining?

After a rather late lunch with my delicious bread I came in here to do some work and also to book my tickets to Leuven in 2 weeks time but it didn’t quite work out like that as I crashed out instead. I knew that the day would catch up with me somehow.

Luckily I came back into the land of the living in time to go ou for my afternoon walk.

And right outside my door today (well, almost is not a coach or an interesting old car, but in fact a boat.

No prizes for guessing who she is either. Regular readers of this rubbish will be clearly able to identify her by the number G90 painted on her sail and her lifeboat that she tows behind her just in case ….

Of course it is none other than our old friend la Granvillaise with some passengers on board, gone for an afternoon cruise around the Baie de Granville.

She has some company today too. There were several small yachts like the one in the photo, keeping station with her.

Having dealt with the issue of La Granvillaise the next issue is to see what’s happening on the beach of course.

Off across the car park and a peer over the wall, and the first thing was that it wasn’t easy to see the beach this afternoon. The tide was well in and there wasn’t much place for people to spread out and relax.

But there were still several people in the water this afternoon. It might have been very grey and cloudy this afternoon but it wasn’t too clod and there wasn’t much wind. Nevertheless it’s not the weather for me to go throwing myself into the sea, and for more than one good reason too.

But here’s someone who will be throwing himself into the sea if he’s not careful.

This afternoon the fishermen were out in force armed with their rods and lines. One on every rock, as we have seen so often in the past.

But this one here is going to have a big problem, and that’s why I chose it. He’s on a rock just below me as I’m on the footpath and he’s going to be cut off by the tide any minute now, with the speed at which it comes in.

He’s isolated himself from the steps up to the Rue du Nord and he won’t reach them in the time that he has available – unless he knows that the tide will stop coming in before it reaches him.

Mind you, I wouldn’t be relying on a tide table right now.

As I was watching the fisherman, heard a familiar hooting of a siren from down in the port.

Sure enough, around the headland a few minutes later came the new Belle France. They always give a hoot when they reverse out of their mooring at the ferry terminal so as to warn anything that might be coming into port.

And she was moving at a hell of a pace too. Definitely a “high speed ferry”. If she keeps it up going as quickly as this, she’ll be able to do the work of all of the other Joly France boats. She wasn’t hanging about at all.

And in hot pursuit came Joly France I – the newer of the two Joly France boats.

And when I say “in hot pursuit”, that is rather poetic licence because she was nowhere near close to Belle France. The latter was down the road and out of sight, and the former was travelling at a much more sedate pace.

Both of the ferries looked to be rather light on passengers too. Maybe they are going over to remove the day-trippers who they must have deposited on the Ile de Chausey earlier in the day.

In which case I’m surprised that Belle France went first instead of last, give how much more quickly she can cover the … errr … ground.

Meanwhile, as all of this was going on, I was overflown yet again.

This time it was an aeroplane flying in to the airfield rather than out of it – one of our regulars from the flying school, F-GSBV, a Robin DR400-180. She’s one of their two “touring aeroplanes”, presumably being able to be hired for journeys rather than just for instruction.

She’d taken off at 16:04 and had gone down the coast as far as Avranches and then flown back, with a little diversion out to sea and back before coming into land at 16:37

But now that she’s safely out of the way I can continue on with my stroll around the headland.

And I’m really disappointed with the local yacht schools today.

Despite all of their efforts yesterday, here they are today all huddled up close inshore underneath the watchful eye of anyone in the Maison Gauthier.

Having seen one of them yesterday right out in the centre of the Baie de Mont St Michel, I was expecting them to have … errr … pushed the boat out, gone for glory and sailed out to the Ile de Chausey or something like that.

They aren’t going to get very far if they spend most of their time just hugging the coast here in the bay.

Now here’s something quite interesting that regular readers of this rubbish won’t have seen before, because I don’t recall having seen it before either.

She’s called Suzanga and she’s yet another new addition to the local fleet, following on from Le Pearl, so new that when I went to upload her photo to the shipping database, I found that she doesn’t yet have an entry there.

Built in Turkey at the Nova Shipyard at Tuzla, she’s a proper, bona fide stern trawler although she does have a set of dredges on board for the shellfish.

But stern trawler though she may be, her range of just 1,000 or so nautical miles rules her out of a return to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland whenever they might reopen for business.

By now it was time to return t the apartment for my coffee but not before I’ve taken a photo of this sign.

On Sunday we witnessed the parade from down in town up to the church, the Notre Dame de Cap Lihou. That signalled the start of a fortnight of activity up here with exhibitions, conferences and concerts.

Not that all that much would interest me though. Any art that I like would be way out of my price range, these round-table conferences generate a pile of hot air and nothing much besides, and the concerts are usually of the opera type. I’m a big fan of Edward Victor Appleton who once said “I don’t mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don’t understand”.

At this point I was overflown yet again, and at first it took me quite a while to work out by whom and where they were.

But high up in the sky, far too high up for my liking, is a powered hang-glider. And of all of the aerial craft that we have seen going around above our heads, this is by far the most precarious of them. That would be the last thing in which you would get me up in the air.

There can’t be a great range with one of those things so he can’t have come far, despite his altitude so I can’t think of where he might have taken off. The field by the cemetery is rather too short for the kind of run-up that he would eed with the extra weight of the engine and fuel.

While I was out I went for another look out to sea th see if there was any sign of that strange ship.

She wasn’t loitering out there in the bay anywhere but coming into the bay right now is one of the boats that we see occasionally, painted in what looks like some kind of French Government colours.

We saw one of those last year when we were out on the Ile de Chausey with Spirit of Conrad. That one was called Les Epiettes but i’ve no idea of the name of this one.

So unless that other ship has turned off and headed for the Brittany coast, she must have sailed into a black hole somewhere.

Back here I attacked the outstanding journal entry from the other day, in some kind of desultory fashion, but ended up having a chat to someone on the internet instead.

Halfway through, though, I suddenly remembered that due to the unfortunate demise of the pineapple upside-down cake, there was no pudding tonight.

There was however a tin of pears on the shelves and there was some kind of coconut mousse dessert stuff lying around from a while back so I whipped something up pretty quickly, put it all in its four bowls and bunged it in the fridge to set.

There was also some stuffing left over from yesterday in the fridge so it was taco rolls with rice and veg for tea tonight, followed by one of the desserts that I’m made earlier. A tin of fruit, half a litre of soya milk and one of these sachets of mousse stuff and it’s quite an acceptable way to finish a meal.

Back here I made a start on the journal entry from last night but round about 22:00 my eyes started to droop and I can see all of this ending in tears if I’m not careful. No point in flogging myself to death so I folded up my tent and crept away into the dark.

There’s always tomorrow … but how many times have I said that?