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Monday 28th January 2019 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really good lie-in is that when you eventually go to bed, it takes a positive age to go off to sleep.

And so it was last night. It was well-gone midnight before I went to bed, and then I was tossing and turning around for quite some considerable time.

Mind you, once the alarm went off I was pretty much wide awake, although it did take some considerable time for me to leave my stinking pit.

After breakfast, I sat down and set to work.

First job was to go through a mountain of photos. The other laptop that I had been using was struggling to cope because the quality of the screen and the graphics card was not up to much and I couldn’t see properly what I was doing. And it’s a whole wide world of difference with the graphics card in this computer and the new IPS screen.

Second thing, that took all of the morning and quite a bit of the afternoon was to download a huge load of *.zip and *.rar files for the accessories for the 3D program that I use.

Luckily, I’d bookmarked most of them so I could track them down fairly quickly. Although downloading them and unpacking them took all of the time. And it’s amazing how much I had forgotten that I had.

Cheese and salad butties for lunch. I’ve finished off the hummus and there’s some cheese opened from when I was in Belgium last week. One of these days I’ll make some more, and have a mega-cook-in too because I have some puff pastry that needs using. I fancy an leek and potato pie, and I might even put some tofu in it too – except that I don’t have any.

There was a terrific wind blowing this afternoon. Not as much as yesterday morning though but impressive all the same.

We had a really impressive array of waves smashing onto the harbour wall.

The power of the sea is really astonishing and if only people would put more effort into harnessing it, the world’s energy problem would be solved without any difficulties.

It was a beautiful day for photography too.

The air was quite clear and you could see for miles down the coast. Montmartin-sur-Mer and the Sienne estuary stood out really clearly today so I took a few photos.

I cropped and enlarged a few selections and you can see them below.

Tea tonight was vegan sausages and vegetables, all covered in vegan cheese sauce. It was delicious. Especially when followed by pineapple and coconut-flavoured soya cream.

This evening’s walk around the walls was really nice.

The wind had dropped, it was warmer than it ought to be this time of the year and the sky on the horizon was quite clear. The lights of Jersey stood out quite clearly.

The way things are going, I’m going to have to buy a better camera with a more responsive ISO as well as a decent attachment for the tripod.

But even so, the Nikon D5000 can still bring out some really good photographs in the right lighting conditions.

Now that they have installed some illumination in the Place Maurice Marland it’s producing some really nice effects.

I shall have to do some more of this when I have the time.

The fibre-optic cable works are continuing.

We saw them the other day digging a hole on the corner of the rue Notre Dame and the rue de l’Auditoire. Now, they have put an inspection hatch in there, ready for the cabling.

While I was out there I nearly flattened another pedestrian, and I also met a new cat, a youngish short-haired black one that I had never seen before. And talking to the cat made me realise that I haven’t spoken to a single person today.

And in other news, there are reports coming in that British travellers arriving at Dusseldorf Airport from the UK were pushed into the “non-EU” lane.

Things are beginning to bite, and we aren’t even at B-Day yet.

agon coutainville granville manche normandy france

hauteville sur mer granville manche normandy france

st martin de brehal granville manche normandy france

storm port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawlers fishing night granville manche normandy france

medieval city walls granville manche normandy france

trees night place maurice marland granville manche normandy france

Friday 28th December 2018 – WHAT A …

… horrible day.

It didn’t start off too well. I was in bed early enough and away on my travels too.

I shall spare a few blushes by mentioning no names but it concerns someone who went away from home in the afternoon to see a friend and I didn’t see her after that. So I locked the door and went to bed. She turned up at some time during the night, well the worse for drink which would have been quite an unusual thing. Although I knew really what had gone on, I had a member of my family round and so she explained that she had gone to meet a friend at the Wistaston Manor Hotel who was crying in her cups about a failed relationship. This had led to something of a consolation drinking session, which then overflowed into the evening. Consoling her friend took much longer than it seemed so she came back home late, found the house locked, thought that I was out and so went round to my parents’ house in Davenport Avenue – but they were out. So she went across the road to the Social Club which was still serving, and so waited in there until my parents returned home. But of course, she couldn’t wait there without making use of the facilities of the club, such as the bar. A load of nonsense of course, but it wasn’t in my best interests to contradict her in public.

The alarm went off at 06:00 and again at 06:10 and 06:20, and I was up and about at some reasonable time. But it ended up being a late breakfast as I was sidetracked by a few issues.

After breakfast I started to work but at about 08:30 I started to yawn again. And from then on, despite a second coffee, I couldn’t keep going. A short time later I lay down on the bed and the next thing that I remembered, it was 10:45. All in all, it was sometime after 11:00 that I managed to haul myself out of bed.

That wasn’t all either, because this afternoon I had another trip away into the wild. The stresses of the journey yesterday are proving far too much for me.

Most of the day has been spent in debate on a group in my Social Networking account. The affairs of Doctor Beeching and Ernest Marples crop up quite regularly and lead to a huge chasm between the participants, depending upon which side of the political fence one sits. And my regular contribution is to post a pile of facts into the argument, which don’t fit too well with either party. It rumbled on for most of the day until the group Admin closed the debate. That was a shame because everyone was (for a change) conducting themselves with respect and dignity and all in all, it was quite enjoyable. Harks back to the days of OUSA Debate.

The rest of the day has been spent in editing photos and tidying up a pile of directories on my laptop. I’ve freed off a huge pile of space on the laptop by doing that.

We had our usual couple of walks of course today.

It’s obviously “that” time of the year because there were loads of people out there on the beach with buckets and spades and the like, presumably searching for seashells among the rocks and in the sand.

Flexing their mussels, one might say. Still, it keeps them out of mischief.

It wasn’t just at Granville that they were doing their Neville Shute impressions.

Down there at Donville les Bains it looks as if they are bringing in a boat. There are some oyster or mussels beds out there and it looks as if they have been out there servicing them.

They have certainly picked a nice day for it.

Remember last night when there was a fog that had descended over the Baie de Mont St Michel?

It’s still here this afternoon. The pillar with the marker light for the entrance to the harbour is swathed in mist. That puts visibility down to about 800 metres, I reckon.

When you consider that a modern supertanker required several kilometres to pull up to a dead stop, it’s not the kind of day to be out there on board ship without a radar.

Tonight’s meal was a pepper, sweetcorn and mushroom curry from 15th January. And it was just as delicious as it was when I cooked it.

later on after tea, I was out again for my evening walk.

The fog has lifted pretty much, and there were a good half-dozen or so fishing boats already in, tied up at the fish-processing plant and unloading.

Not only that, there were about another dozen fishing boats loitering in the vicinity waiting to come in on the evening tide for their turn to unload.

So now I’m going to have an early night. It’s shopping in the morning of course, being a Saturday and I need to be on form.

people on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

winter fog haze baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night fishing boat port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 18th November 2018 – AS KENNETH WILLIAMS …

… and Alfred Hitchcock once famously said, “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”.

There I was, down at the brocante this afternoon admiring the head of a wild boar affixed to the side of a van. So I went up to the stallholder and asked him “don’t you find it rather inconvenient when you are loading up your van?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Having the body of that wild boar going crossways across the van. Doesn’t it interfere with the loading?”
So he looked at me with a rather bewildered look in his eye.

As for other matters however, waking up at 03:45 didn’t help me very much last night.

And neither did 04:40. Or 05:40. Or 06:45. but 07:45 I’d had enough though and couldn’t go back to sleep, so at 08:20 I was up and about.

I’d been away during the night though – to see a former friend of mine in Stoke on Trent (and it’s a long time since he’s appeared in one of my voyages, isn’t it?). I was walking down a street that bore more than just a passing resemblance to Coleridge Way in Crewe. I arrived at his house and had to walk in the street as the pavement was blocked by two huge Jaguar Mark X cars of the like that we saw the other day. One of these two was silver and the other one was red like the Daimler that I owned. Up his drive I walked and couldn’t quite get into his garage because there was a third Mark X Jag blocking the entrance. He was inside the garage, sweeping the floor and fixing something. I noticed that his inspection pit had been filled in and the floor of the garage had been painted red. He told me that I shouldn’t have come down to the garage without letting him know I was coming, but I go the impression that he was implying that I shouldn’t come down to his house at all.
A little later, I was thinking about buying a new coach. I needed to think about what I wanted and to see a few examples, so I asked a (female) friend who lived near a coach sales place to see what they had for sale. She was thinking that she would have to buy it for me but I explained that all that she needed to do was to look at it, see if the body had any rust on it or something like that.

With a rather late, leisurely breakfast, I didn’t do all that much this morning. However, that didn’t prevent me from changing the habits of a lifetime and actually doing some tidying up in the bedroom. Putting away a pile of papers that have been loitering around here for a while.

Another thing that I have done too was to change the plug over on the record deck. There was a British plug on it but if I’m going to use it here, which I shall do in early course, it needs a French plug on it. And looking for something else yesterday, I came across a couple doing nothing very much.

Once that was working, I had a play around with Audacity – the audio program that I used to use to edit my live tracks for the radio program. I’ll be using this to record all of my LPs and I need to make sure that I can remember what to do.

After lunch (and wasn’t my home-made hummus delicious?), I went for a walk down into town. No football today. It’s Cup week and all of the local clubs have been eliminated.

I retraced my steps from yesterday and went down the steps to the Rue du Port. And then across the road and onto the docks again right by the fish-processing plant.

However the tide was in so the harbour gates were open. I couldn’t come across to the other side but instead it gave me an opportunity to photograph then.

You’ll remember that I took a photograph of them while they were closed yesterday.

While I was down there in the beautiful sunny afternoon I took the opportunity to have a good mooch around the fish docks for a while and take a few photos

The pile of gravel down at the edge of the quayside is now growing rather quickly. It looks as if we will be having a visit of the gravel boat quite soon.

She’s not been here for a while.

On my way down into the town centre I had a good look at the old railway track embedded on the quayside.

In an early photograph that I had seen, there had been something that looked as if it might have been a broad-gauge rail-mounted crane.

And on closer inspection, what this looks like to me is not, as I had originally thought, a double-track line, but a single-track railway in the centre. The two outer rails are raised slightly higher than the two rails in the centre, so I reckon that they might well be rails for a crane.

I’ll have to find an imperial tape measure and go down to measure the gauge. That will tell me what I need to know.

The stupid, ignorant racists from Britain First are launching a campaign to boycott the Subway chain of sandwich restaurants because they are offering halal food in certain outlets.

It’s all quite reminiscent of the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops in the 1930s – and they say that they aren’t racists!

But here, our local Subway is offering a promotion involving that famous cartoon character Shaun the Sheep.

I wonder if it is he who is rotating on the skewer. And whether he has been killed humanely.

It does rather remind me of the story of Larry the Lamb and when the BBC abandoned the series.

When they came to sell off the assets of the programme, someone asked how much they had received for Larry the Lamb.
“Three and six a pound” was the reply.

Something similar happened when they stopped “Children’s Playtime” on the BBC.
Someone asked “what did they get for Muffin the Mule?”
“Eighteen months” was the reply.

Back here later, I organised a few photos on the internet and then did some more work on Day Three of the High Arctic. As well as a little … errr … repose.

Tea was a vegan pizza of course, and it all worked out rather well. One of the better ones that I’ve done.

Back out tonight for my walk around the headland and I was the only one there. Hardly surprising because it’s freezing outside. Well, 6°C actually, but that’s still the coldest that it’s been so far this half of the year.

Winter has definitely arrived.

The sailing ship Marité in the harbour in the Port of Granville

The harbour and port and the walled town of Granville

Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou in the walled town of Granville.

The sailing ships Marité and the little La Granvillaise mooored here in the harbour of the port of Granville.

Monday 5th November 2018 – IT ALL WENT …

… rather haywire today.

The alarms at 06:00, 06:10 and 06:20 all went off. I know because I heard them and even switched them off. But it was more like 08:15 when I finally brought myself round well enough to crawl out of the stinking pit.

The fact that I had been on a voyage during the night is neither here nor there – and I won’t tell you about it because you are probably all eating your tea right now.

So a late start means a late breakfast of course. And a pile of things that I meant to do were rather shunted aside for now. The most important – a form that I must complete – I made a good start on it and it won’t take long to finish off.

Another thing that I carried on with is the project that involves a huge mound of photos going back to Time Immemorial. I’ve been gradually working my way through these here and there, and another huge pile have been classed as irrelevant and filed under CS

A session on the bass too. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good play around.

Lunchtime was indoors today. Autumn has definitely arrived and it’s no longer pleasant to sit outside. That’s how it’s going to be until the end of March, I reckon.

The High Arctic too. I’ve been pushing along with that too. And I’ve reworked two of the pages that I’ve been doing. The order runs better like this, but that’s not to say that it won’t be changed again in due course before it’s published.

What with one thing and another (and once you make a start you’ll ne surprised at how many other things there are) I was late going out for my afternoon walk today

But just in time to notice, away in the distance, a huge ship sailing … “dieseling” – ed … along out in the English Channel.

A little bit of crop, enlarge and enhance will be able to bring it out.

But in the meantime, there are a few things much closer to home that need attention.

Like the beach at the Pointe du Roc for example. I don’t recall having seen it properly from this angle before.

It looks very inviting but there’s no way down to it right now.

And out just off the coast is this little yacht.

I was going to say something about it sailing along in the breeze but if you notice carefully, there are no sails hoisted. So he’s dieseling along too.

It beats the purpose of having a yacht if you ask me – especially with all of this wind that we have around here.

Talking of the wind, we were having another windy day again today. It’s a mystery that our intrepid yachtsman isn’t taking advantage of it.

And the wind was pushing the tide well in. The tidal co-efficient isn’t very high today, but you would never have thought so with looking at this.

And it’s not high tide for another hour or so either.

The crowds down there on the Plat Gousset were certainly enjoying the weather this afternoon.

I cropped out a bit of the previous photograph and blew it up (which I can do these days despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) and you can see how powerful the winds are today.

Quite a few of those people will be having an unexpected shower if they aren’t careful.

Round the corner in the harbour we were having a couple of interesting shops to see.

I know the sailing ship that is there, but as usual these days I can’t remember her name. I’m going to have to prepare some kind of database of ships here so that I can bring them to my fingertips.

And I was admiring the paint job on the trawler too. We all know that the vital statistics of a mermaid are 36-24-£3:60 per kilo.

Bearing in mind the maritime traffic that I had seen earlier, I decided to change the habits of a lifetime.

And so I continued my walk by incorporating a promenade down to the end of the road and around the headland.

And found a suitable place to couple up the zoom/telephoto lens

I took several photos of the ship and cropped out the interesting bits.

Back here, I blew them up and enlarged them, because despite … “you said that just now” – ed.

And if you are wondering about the poor quality of the images just let me mention that the photos were taken of the ship as it sailed into the entrance road to the harbour at St Malo down the Brittany coast.

And that’s 38 kms – 22 miles – away, so you can’t really complain about the quality of the image at all

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Ship of the Day, so let’s all say hello to Pont Aven, the flagship of the Brittany Ferries fleet.

She’s on her way into St Malo with the afternoon ferry from Portsmouth. Mind you, last week she was seen in Cobh in Ireland and also Santander in Spain, so she gets about a bit

This view of Pont Aven is cropped out and enlarged 200%, and while you admire it, I’ll tell you a little about her.

Built by Meyers in Germany, she displaces about 41,000 tonnes, was launched in 2004 and is powered by FOUR Caterpillar 12-cylinder engines.

185 metres long and 32 metres wide, she has a capacity of 650 cars and 2,400 passengers.

While I had the zoom/telephoto lens on the camera I took another photo of the Plat Gousset from the headland at the Pointe du Roc.

The wind seems to have died down during the half-hour or so that it had taken me to walk all the way down here.

No waves splashing up over the promenade soaking the passers-by right now. In fact, there are considerably fewer passers-by out there now.

From this viewpoint there’s a really good view of the beach at Donville-les-Bains too, including that building where I saw that depressing apartment 18 months ago.

The houses on the clifftop just there look quite interesting too. I wouldn’t mind trying to rent a room in one of those, as long as it overlooks the sea.

Back here, I encountered a neighbour and we had a good chat for a while. And then I came in here and finished off the grapes from Saturday.

Tea was a stuffed pepper and rice – and beautiful it was too. And then a walk around the headland in the dark.

Now I’m going to try to have an early night. And maybe I’ll be up in time to do some work tomorrow.

Friday 26th October 2018 – IT WAS HARD …

… this morning to get out of bed and I ended up with something of an unexpected lie-in.

And so it was something of a rather late breakfast this morning, what with one thing and another.

This led to a nice walk up town to collect my railway tickets. And it was a good job that I was somewhat later than planned because the ticket machine wasn’t working and I had to go to the booking office. It’s a good job that I hadn’t waited until Sunday to do this.

Round the corner and down the road to join the Madding Crowd at the Hotel des Impôts. And afer a rather long wait in the queue I was handed a form by a Civil Servant who smiled and wished me luck. I was rather taken aback by that.

On the way back I remembered the lettuce and I bought myself a baguette too so as to have a nice lunch. And for that, I went out onto the wall but I was only there for five minutes. It was bright and sunny, but there was a cold, biting wind and that drove me back to my apartment.

The day has been spent in editing the photos from yesterday, but also attacking a huge project that I started the other day on the other laptop. That’s taken me most of the day, and I’ve made a load of rapid progress there. I’m pleased with that.

I also spent some time on the Arctic pages too, but not as much as I would like.

The walk this afternoon around the walls was freezing. The wind has increased in volume and it was quite uncomfortable.

But at least the skies were clear and there was a really good view out to see and Jersey was quite clear.

And so I attacked the island with the new 70-300mm zoom/telephoto lens to see what I can see.

I blew up (because I can do this despite modern anti-terrorism legislation) the photo and cropped out and enlarged a few selections from the images

Very blurred and very shaky of course, but considering that we are looking at something 55 kms away and there’s a strong wind blowing, it’s not really come out too badly.

To do much better than this I’ll have to invest a lot more money than I can afford into my equipment.

But never mind the view out to sea. The view out along the coast past Donville-les-Bains all the way down to Agon-Coutainville was beautiful too.

This was taken using the 18-105mm lens with a focal length of 25mm so it’s something of a wide-angle shot.

It’s brought out the scenery and the colours, and you can tell the strength of the wind from the whitecaps on the waves breaking on the beach.

A short while ago I posted a photo of some men on a cherry-picker drilling away into the wall of a house on the rue du Nord.

It’s far too windy for them to be working up there today so I could see what they were doing.

It looks as if they are going to replace the lintel over the window there, although I can’t think why.

Here’s something that I have never noticed before.

On the corner of the rue Paul Poirier and the rue Etoupefour is a building with “Residence des Granvillaises” cast thereupon. It’s not very easy to see this from street-level

Apparently it’s some kind of holiday accommodation, but it’s probably well out of my price range and out of the range of most people who might want to visit me.

Tea tonight was the rest of the crèpes with salad. Just as delicious as it was before.

And there was no walk this evening either for we had football. Llandudno v Cefn Druids in the Welsh Premier League.

Two clubs scrapping it out in the basement and the first half was pretty dismal. It livened up after the inteval and the last half-hour was quite good. The Druids were the better-organised team but Llandudno looked the more dangerous going forward.

But with both sides being totally incapable of hitting the nether regions of a ruminant animal with a stringed musical instrument, a 0-0 draw was no surprise.

There are four clubs slowly coming adrift at the foot of the table – Llanelli, Carmarthen, Cefn Druids and Llandudno and it’s clear to see why these two are down there at the bottom. There is no-one pulling the strings and there is no-one providing the service to the forwards. Rittenberg for the Druids looked quite dangerous when someone gave him the ball – which wasn’t all that often.

So no walk – the howling wind and now the rainstorm is enough to keep me in the house tonight. I’ll have an early night instead.

Thursday 25th October 2018 – I WAS OFF …

… on my travels last night.

However I shall spare you the details. You are probably eating your tea or something like that right now.

But I was so far away on my travels that I didn’t leave the bed until after the 06:20 alarm which was rather disappointing. But then, I didn’t go to bed until late so I suppose it was only to be expected.

After the medication and so on (I missed breakfast due to one reason or another) I had a shower – and a haircut too. This new hair trimmer works a treat and my hair (such as I have left) looks quite good now.

And then I headed off to the shops.

Just by way of a change I’d taken the Nikon 1 with me so that I would be ready if I were to see anything worth photographing.

And Iw as in luck down at the docks because one of the giant cranes had come back.

I’m not sure why because there were no lock gates to be replaced. It might be replacing the mast in one of the boats but I couldn’t really tell.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing a few months ago a photo of a house down in the rue du Port where they had demolished some of the walls.

Today, I had noticed that they were cracking on with building up the back walls.

They had made quite a good bit of progress while I was away.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch I hadn’t been on my way for more than 15 minutes when I realised that I had forgotten the details for my rail tickets. So I’ll have to do that again.

At LIDL grapes were €1:99 per kilo so I grabbed a load of them. Together with, finally, a pastry brush and a few other bits and pieces.

On the way back home I had to go to the Hotel des Impôts to pick up a form. But it’s only open 4 days a week. Can you guess which day of the week it’s closed?

At least, it brought me home via a new route that I don’t use all that often and with different views than the usual.

It was pretty cloudy and miserable as you can see. But none of this stopped the sailing club from taking out some of their pupils today.

Not what I would call plain sailing in this kind of weather, is it?

There’s a really good view over the harbour from this spot too. I’ve not noticed this before.

There’s the Pointe du Roc out there just to the left of centre and the Eglise Notre Dame du Cap Lihou on the skyline just to the right of centre.

Where I live is one of the large buildings just to the left of the church spire.

Walking a little further along the promenade at the bottom of the Boulevard des Amiraux Granvillaises, there’s a nice little beach here.

But it’s not a beach for sunbathing or anything like that because bathing isn’t permitted here due to its proximity to the harbour entrance.

To the right are the installations of the Port de Hérel where all of the maritime activities take place and where there is the Youth Hostel.

The view looking behind me is equally interesting.

Down at the end of the promenade is a nice-looking block of flats – the Résidence Port Granville – that’s maybe 30 years old or something, with the Roche Gauthier in the background.

That’s the kind of place where I would like to have a little apartment, but I saw how much it costs to rent something even smaller than where I live, and it’s well out of my budget.

That’s not a surprise though is it?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the house in the rue St Gaud that was demolished a year or so ago.

The other day we noticed the rear of the plot that was being rebuilt. From down here on the promenade we can see the front of the plot and how far they have advanced with the rebuilding.

Mind you, at this rate it’ll be another year or so before they’ll finish it, I reckon.

I carried on my little stroll along the Port de Herel and I was interrupted yet again.

Earlier today, we saw a large mobile crane working on one of the boats down in the harbour. But here now we have the mobile crane having finished its work and setting off to go back from whence it came.

It’s quite a bit of serious kit, isn’t it? I can think of a thousand uses for one of those back on my farm.

By now, I’d left the port and was climbing my way up the Rampe du Monte Regret and from there, there’s a good view across to the inner harbour.

We noticed in the photo of the cranes earlier today that the Channel Islands boats were moored up in the inner harbour.

Both of them too. Victor Hugo is there of course, but the new one, whose name escapes me for the moment, is also there.

It’s the first time that I’ve seen her back here for quite some considerable time.

I’ve often wondered where she has been for all of the summer. Probably working her passage out of Barneville-Carteret I imagine.

One of these days I’ll have to get myself aboard one or the other and go for a good run around.

Back here I unpacked everything and then made a coffee, seeing as I hadn’t had one yet today. And duly refreshed, I attacked yesterday’s photos.

Lunch was taken indoors in view of the cold, windy, overcast weather. And short commons too because I forgot the lettuce.

The afternoon was spent doing the rest of the photos and working on the pages for the Arctic. It’s really slow progress and I’m not sure why because it’s not as if it’s complicated or anything. I just don’t know what the issue might be.

But then, it didn’t help with having a little half-hour curled up on the office chair.

The afternoon’s walk was around the walls again.

Despite the cold weather, it had brightened up considerably and the sun was out making the day quite pleasant.

And the sun wasn’t the only thing that was out either. The tide was out, and so were the people.

And that wasn’t all either.

The fishermen (at least I imagine that they are fishermen) were also out there working away.

No idea what it is that they are hoping to catch, but it can’t be very much given the size of the boats. But they are out there quite often so it must be something worthwhile.

Further down along the beach, the sun and the low tide had brought out even more members of the public.

They were all there having a good look in the rock pools, presumably for crabs and other crustaceans and the like. Although I have heard that there’s a ban on harvesting from the rocks around here due to pollution issues.

But at least it keeps them out of mischief.

And the other day we talked about the old stone construction on the beach that I reckoned was a tidal fish pond.

Now that the tide is going out, we can see it much more clearly this afternoon.

I would have expected to have seen more water in there given the fact that the tide hasn’t long gone out. But there are several people having a ferret about in there to see what they can see.

Round on the town side of the walls, I remembered that I hadn’t taken a photo of the rue Paul Poirier for quite some time.

It’s all covered in bunting right now and I’ve no idea why. But it still looks quite interesting from up here.

It’s not as crowded as it usually is either. On a Saturday it’s absolutely heaving, but then that’s market day so that might account for it.

There’s not much going on today so I came back here to carry on work, with another coffee to keep me going.
.

For tea, I had a frozen potato and chick-pea curry from last year. And it was just as delicious.

Later on this evening I went out for my night-time walk.

I took the 50mm lens and the tripod with me and took a hotograph in the dark of the rue do Nord inside the walls and the Plat Gousset.

On the left-hand edge of the image is the beach at Donville-les-Bains.

But the purpose of going out so armed was to have some more fun with long exposure photos

The scenery didn’t come up too well, but the moving car lights were a great improvement on what I managed yesterday.

I was out there for a good half-hour amusing myself with the lights, the exposure and learning quite a lot too.

Back here, I sorted myself out and then prepared myself for yet another early night again – I hope.

Tomorrow it’s back to the Hotel des Impôts and then, if I remember, I can pick up the rail tickets.

I’ll leave you to look at a few more of my long-exposure night photographs.

Night-time photography with long exposure times, Rue du Port, Granville, France

Wednesday 24th October 2018 – I’VE HAD …

… a little better day today.

Despite a somewhat late night, I was still up and about before the 06:20 alarm went off.

And I’d been on my travels during the night too – setting out from Portsmouth on a ship only for there to be a problem and we all having to disembark on the Isle of Wight. And there being so many of us that the island became dramatically overcrowded.

And that’s rather like the combined plots of a couple of Navy Lark radio programmes to which I was listening during the day yesterday. It’s all getting to me these days, isn’t it?

After breakfast I had a pile of work to do on the other laptop and that took me some considerable time. And there’s still a considerable amount to do too and it’s going to take me for ever to tidy things up.

On this laptop though I attacked the images from yesterday and that wasn’t the work of 5 minutes either. But they are all on line now anyway.

And for the rest of the morning I carried on with the photos from the High Arctic.

Lunch on the wall again, with my book and my butties and the warm sun. Beautiful it was, and you would never think that it’s almost the end of October right now.

This afternoon I carried on with the photos but not for long because I ended up sprawled out on the bed again, flat out. And not just for 5 minutes either but for a good hour or so.

As a result it was 16:40 when I went out for my afternoon walk.

It was still quite a nice afternoon and the sun was still shining. As a result there was quite a crowd of people out there on the beach. Either playing about in the sand or hunting in the rockpools for lobsters and mussels and the like.

Which they immediately share with their friends, because everyone knows that you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

A little bit further on, part of the rue du Nord was fenced off.

There was a cherry-picker parked in the street with some people there working on a house.

I thought at first that they might be preparing it for repointing but on closer inspection it turned out that they were taking out a stone or two above the lintel.

As I have wandered along the old walls, I’ve often seen this feature here which resembles some kind of stone wall built into the sea.

And I’ve often wondered what it might be.

But a visit to that exhibition just before I left for the Arctic came up with the answer.

It’s apparently one of the many tidal fishpools that were found at one time all along the coast here. The tide fills the pools and when it recedes it leaves plenty of water and, hopefully, plenty of fish behind.

Tea tonight was some of the crèpes that I bought the other day with some kind of stuffing and kidney beans tucked in.

Tonight’s walk was with the tripod again but for some reason I couldn’t reproduce the photos from the other night. That must have been beginner’s luck.

This photo of the Baie de Mont St Michel, taken from the car park by the lighthouse didn’t turn out too bad.

But a few others ended up in the recycle bin.

On the other hand, this photo of the full moon, taken from the same place on the Pointe du Roc with the zoom/telephoto lens turned out rather well.

It was with the full 300mm focal length in ISO400, at a speed of 1/800 with an aperture of f5.6.

And then I went to shave the palms of my hands.

Seeing as I had the telephoto/zoom lens on the camera right now after the moon, I took a photo across the bay to St Pair sur Mer.

230mm focal length at f5.6 with ISO800 at a speed of 1.6 seconds and it managed to produce something without too much camera shake.

In the foreground is the roof of one of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall here on the Pointe du Roc

Round at the top of the cliff overlooking the harbour I set myself up with the tripod and the 18-105mm lens and a friendly local looking on.

And we were in luck because here in the outer harbour (the tide was in) there was a fishing trawler performing some kind of nautical danse macarbre as it left the quayside by the fish-processing plant in the moonlight.

IT passed through the harbour gates, which were open seeing as we weren’t all that far after high tide

I’m not quite sure what the trawler was trying to do but once she was in the inner harbour she cruised around for a while as if trying to find a berth in which to bed down.

Her lights stand out really well in the dark.

Talking of lights in the night, you can see a streak of red light in the centre at the bottom of the image.

I’d waited for quite a while in the hope that a car would go past so that I could have the effect of moving red lights, but nothing went past.

Eventually a young kid went past on a moped so that will have to do for now.

Back here now and working, and a raging thirst again. That’s a sign that I’m sickening for something again. And that’s no surprise. I haven’t been right for years now, and getting worse every day.

I’ll try to have an early night if I can and get myself ready for tomorrow. I’m off shopping on foot and I really don’t feel like it.

Monday 22nd October 2018 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… and about with the camera and equipment this evening. And for quite a long time too.

In case you’ve been wondering … “which I’m sure you haven’t” – ed … I have been somewhat inspired by my trip to the High Arctic as well as being totally dismayed by the photos that I was able to produce with what is really substandard equipment.

That’s not really to complain too much about the Nikon 1. As I said at the time, it’s okay for photos under normal conditions but in the kind of conditions in which I was working and with the kind of photos that I was trying to take, it just wasn’t up to the job.

It was simply my mistake in buying it.

So now that I’ve done what I should have done in the first place and bought some decent lenses, I was out tonight having some fun.

And I’ve encountered another slight problem – although it was one that I was suspecting.

I was using the new zoom/telephoto lens with a very long exposure – 10 secs in fact – with the camera mounted on the tripod (which I have rediscovered in the back of Caliburn after all of these years).

But the zoom/telephoto lens is quite heavy, and with the attachment for the tripod being on the camera, it’s all out of balance and has a tendency to topple forward.

And in a high wind like last night, even with the tripod tightened up to the max, the wind was still blowing the lens round.

As a result, with the 10-seconds exposure, the photos have come out quite blurred.

You can see exactly what I mean by comparing one of the photos above with the photo just here.

This photo has come out as well as anyone could possibly expect. It was taken with exactly the same settings for speed and exposure as the previous ones and on the tripod.

The difference is though that it was taken with the new standard lens, not the heavy zoom/telephoto lens.

When a very fast shutter speed is used, there is barely a trace of camera shake using the zoom/telephoto lens on the tripod, as you can see in the photo of the almost-full moon that I took last night.

But there’s no problem that can’t be surmounted.

The answer to this is to find a tripod mount that attaches to the lens at the mid-point of balance to that the equipment won’t sway about so much in the wind.

And I’ve been able to track one down on the internet. It’s expensive, but it needs to be correct.

While we’re on the subject of photos, I spent today working on the photos that I took on Saturday and Sunday and adding them as appropriate. I’ve still not done Friday’s yet but I shall get around to that in due course.

With my late night last night, it was a struggle to leave the bed this morning.

Especially as I had been on my travels during the night. On an island somewhere doing some painting and I don’t mean painting some woodwork but actually doing some kind of artistic stuff and that’s not like me at all is it? I was in some kind of higher group where there was some kind of price of £300,000 mentioned. Even during a nocturnal ramble I’m well-aware of my own shortcomings in the artistic world and I couldn’t understand what I was doing in a group that was far beyond my own capabilities.

After breakfast I had some work to do and that kept me out of mischief for a while, and then I spent a while with the 3D program that I use. I had a sudden idea about that that I needed to develop.

As well as that, I had to make my travel arrangements for the weekend. I’m hitting the road on Sunday afternoon for Leuven and Castle Anthrax and I need to sort out somewhere to stay.

And the return railway trip on Wednesday is shockingly expensive. It’s the day before a Bank Holiday so prices are through the roof. I’m having to travel on the 08:13 TGV, which means that I will need to be at Leuven station for about 07:00 and I’m not looking forward to that one little bit.

All of that took me up to lunchtime (I just don’t know where the time goes these days) and I took my sandwiches in here, seeing as it was windy and overcast outside.

This afternoon I started on the photographs, with the usual interruption to go for my afternoon walk.

And I chose the route around the walls because I wanted to go round the headland tonight.

Plenty of people around out there too. It’s school half-term so people were taking the air.

It might be coming towards the end of October and the start of winter but the weather was still warm enough for people to head out onto the beach.

By the afternoon the weather was showing signs of brightening up.

The sun was peeking through the clouds by now and illuminating parts of the beaches round by Donville-les-Bains and Bréville-sur-Mer and making the afternoon look quite tempting.

Had it not been for the fierce wind it would have been a really beautiful afternoon.

While you admire a section of the previous photo cropped out to show the ruin where I saw a derelict apartment 18 months ago, I can tell you about my little visit.

There’s a photo club here in Granville and they were having an exhibition in one of the public rooms. So I went along to look.

There was nothing on display that particularly excited me and although I wanted to chat to an official, they all seemed to be huddled around in a group chatting about last night’s television programmes.

Not particularly welcoming, unfortunately. So I moved on.

But not too far though.

There have been several changes in the town while I was away in the Frozen North and I’m slowly catching up with them. Like this demolition site in the rue du Nord overlooking the medieval walls and the sea.

I wonder what they are going to build here in its place.

And round by the port I noticed that we aren’t alone today.

Thora has sailed … “dieseled” – ed … into the harbour from Jersey without me noticing.

She must have come in on the morning’s high tide. That was round about 06:30 this morning so that sounds about right to me.

There’s no evidence on the quayside to show what, if anything, she brought over from Jersey.

But she’s already taken on a considerable load of supplies for taking out. And a close inspection of the load from this kind of range seems to indicate that it’s stones or rocks of some description.

So I’ve no idea why they would be wanting to export them to Jersey

While you admire yet another photo of Thora, I went back to my apartment, had a coffee and sat down to continue with what I was doing.

That was the plan anyway. Instead I ended up on the bed flat out until well after 18:00. Not even a coffee can keep me going these days.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with spicy rice and it was delicious as usual. And then off around the headland in the moonlight with camera, lenses and tripod.

Now I’m back, much later than usual, I’m off to bed. I’ll have a go at carrying on tomorrow and we’ll see where I can get up to.

Friday 19th October 2018 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… been back at Mont St Michel today doing my tourist guide bit, but Josée contacted me yesterday to say that there had been a change of plan and she was off elsewhere.

And that was just as well because I wasn’t feeling all that much like it this morning.

Last night had been quite a late night – I was absorbed in a pile of work – so leaving my bed at 06:00 or thereabouts (and I did too – I was taking my medication in the kitchen when the alarm went off at 06:20) was something of a struggle.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do and then finished off the photos from yesterday’s walks. And now they are all on-line. All 40 or so of them so you can tell that it took me quite a while.

Another thing that I did today was to catch up with some tidying up and to do the washing-up that I hadn’t finished yesterday. I’m starting to let things slide in here as far as tidiness and cleanliness goes and I need to get myself back on track while I’m still able to do so. I won’t always be fit enough to tackle things when they need tackling.

There are also a couple of other projects on the go here and I’ve been dealing with a few of them too this morning.

Lunch was taken indoors today. It was overcast, cold and windy outside so I reckoned that I could do with the comfort of a chair in the dining area.

This afternoon, I did a few other bits and pieces and then sat down to tackle the photos from the Arctic. I’m still in Yellowknife on the Pilot’s Monument, and this afternoon I rewrote the things that I wrote about it earlier in the week.

Well, not exactly “rewritten”.

What I do is to write down things as they occur to me, put them into paragraphs and then cut and paste the paragraphs to make a continuous text, adding in a few conjunctions to make the text stream together.

It also involves research. And it’s amazing what you find when you start to look. Instead of worrying about finding enough text, I now have quite a considerable excess.

We had the usual afternoon walk around the headland this afternoon in the sunshine.

And there, sailing about out in the bay off the coast of Bréville-sur-Mer was the sailing ship that we have seen over the past few days.

I had the standard lens on the camera so I took a quick photo of it at long range.

But we haven’t bought a new zoom/telephoto lens for nothing, have we?

Seeing as the ship was sailing slowly, I stuck on the new lens and took a zoom photo.

I’ve still not been able to track down the name so I cropped the photo and blew it up (I can do these things, despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) but it seems that the name of the boat isn’t painted on the bows … “she’s La Granvillaise” – ed.

While I had the big new lens on the camera, I took a photo of the caravan site out at Bréville sur Mer near the horse racing course.

That was another place where I had enquired about accommodation when I arrived here.

Liz and Terry have a little caravan and one idea going through my head was to park it on there for the summer, and then try for a good deal in a long-term holiday let through the winter.

When I arrived back here after my walk I found that I had an important e-mail message.

The third lens that I had ordered – a refurbished 18x105mm lens – hadn’t been delivered as promised. And the tracking showed that they had tried twice, even though I had been here on both occasions.

Having instigated a search, I was told that it was now awaiting collection at the Post Office. So I went down there to pick it up.

And down there I found the reason why it hadn’t been delivered, and why I was puzzled as to how come no-one from the delivery company had rung the bell.

It turns out that the address for delivery was incorrect. An error on the part of the dispatchers.

But I’m not complaining, because when I wrote to them to tell them of the delay and the inconvenience, they refunded my postage. I’m quite content with that.

After all of that, I had to sit down for a while and have a little … errr … relax for half an hour.

Tea was a curry from the freezer and it was just as delicious as the day that I cooked it.

Later on I went out for the evening walk around the walls with the camera and the new lens.

Part of the plan was to retake many of the photos that I had taken the other day with the 50mm lens so that I could compare them and see the difference.

Just like this one of the sea front at Bréhal sur Mer

And this one of the rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background to the right.

It won’t be as good as the 50mm low-light lens because it needs more light to work it, but its advantage is that the new lens is a zoom lens rather than a fixed lens.

That means that it’s more useful as a general-purpose lens (which is why I bought it) but I still need to see how it performs.

The other day I took an almost-identical photo to this one and the difference is quite apparent. The earlier one has come out much better

But that’s only to be expected with the difference in the light and in the quality of the image.

But it’s still something that the new lens will bring out an image. The Nikon 1 would quite simply not have registered enough of an image to work.

So now I’m off to bed. In the morning I have to go shopping of course. In the meantime you can admire (or otherwise) this evening’s photos.

Night time – rue du Nord with the Place d’Armes in the background.

The Place Marechal Foch in the night-time.

The Plat Gousset in the night-time

Night time – the rue Georges Clemenceau

Moon (hidden by the copyright details) shining over the harbour in the Port de Granville

Moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

More moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

Moon light in the night over Granville and the Baie de Mont St Michel

Yet more moonlight in the night over the Baie de Mont St Michel

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time with St Pair sur Mer and Jullouville in the background

The Inner Harbour in the port of Granville at night-time

Place Cambernon in the night

The Bar Rafale in the Place Cambernon at night

The rue St Jean in the medieval walled town in the night.

Thursday 18th October 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… last night I was on board a ship again and it might even have been The Good Ship Ve …… errr … Ocean Endeavour. And I don’t remember much now about the journey except that the terrain over which we were walking bore a remarkable resemblance to the Ile de Chausey, where I was the other day and of which one day I’ll finish off adding all of the photos. I was with some woman and her teenage daughter on this trip – and don’t ask me who they were. The daughter was hungry and kept on going to the fridge for some food. There were a couple of plates of beans and sausage on there and she kept on helping herself to one of them. I put it back though, not because I didn’t want her to eat it, but because I was going to cook something special and I wanted her to try it. But every time I put the plate back, she would sneak back and take it out again.

With all that going on, I was actually awake on time, and out of bed before the alarm at 06:20. And it’s been a good few weeks since that’s happened, hasn’t it?

After breakfast etc I had a few things to do, and then I leapt … “well, sort-of” – ed … into the shower for a good scrub and a change of clothes.

On my way out of the apartment I went past the harbour and there, moored up at its quay is the Marité.

Of course, she’s back home now that the weekend is over and all of the tourists have gone home and won’t now be back for a while.

But it always happens like this, doesn’t it?

But down in the town I came across an exciting sign. And next time that Alison comes here I’ll take her for a beer.

Although France might well be 100 years behind the times when it comes to allergies and dietary issues, you occasionally come across some little gems.

Just like this one, in fact. Gluten-free beer must be something exciting.

At LIDL I didn’t buy anything special really, although it might have been a good idea to have bought some tomatoes, because I don’t have any left over for anything exciting.

And on the way back, I was distracted yet again.

There’s a Catholic Primary School, the Ecole St Paul, that I pass on my way back. And I hadn’t noticed until today the statue of the saint up there, having been left holding the baby.

I thought that I would add a photo of the statue to my collection.

And just down the road from there, again in the rue Saint Paul is a house that I have noticed in passing but at which I have never taken a good look before. 4

It’s a beautiful house as you can see, but a close inspection of it indicates that the house seems to be abandoned and derelict.

This would be just my kind of house, and there might even be a sea view from the top floor of the building.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the demolition that took place in the rue St Genevieve over the winter when an old house was knocked down.

And then a sign appeared advising that planning permission had been granted for a new construction.

First time that I’ve been down here for a couple of months, and during that time we can see that construction of whatever is going to be here is well under way.

It doesn’t look particularly solid but then again this is a feature of modern construction.

Back here I had a drink and then did some tidying up (just by way of a change). And then attacked yesterfday’s photos. And to my surprise, I’d finished them off pretty quickly (there weren’t all that many actually) and put them on line.

Another important thing was accomplished too.

After the success the other day of my frozen sprouts, I had some carrots here which, I expected, would start to look doubtful in a few days time. So I peeled them, diced them, par-boiled them with some bayleaves and then stuck them in the freezer in a zip bag too.

Lunch was once again on the wall overlooking the harbour, looking at the fishing boats coming and going.

It was quite warm out there – a really sunny day – so I suppose that the fishermen were making the most of the good weather of this Indian Summer.

And I was practising with the light, bouncing it off the sea and onto the side of the boat.

Fishing boats weren’t the only things that were wandering around outside the harbour.

That sailing boat that we saw the other day – that was back again with another crowd of people, towing its zodiac behind.

One of these days I’ll have to go down and check up to remind myself of its name.

Back in the apartment I attacked the pile of photos from my trip to the Ile de Chausey on Saturday. They are all on line now with some brief explanatory notes.

There was even some time to attack the notes of the second day of my visit to the Arctic when I was in Yellowknife. The notes for the first day have been on line for quite some time as you know, and I need to press on.

I’d gone out at the usual time too and the weather had improved even more.

It wasn’t possible to see Jersey for some reason or other, but a couple of what might have been fishing boats were just about visible right out on the horizon, so I had a quick go with the big zoom-telephoto lens.

They are probably 30 kilometres out to sea where they are there.

While I had the big lens out, I had a good look aout along the coast to see what I could see.

That’s probably 30 or so kilometres away too, right out at Blainville-sur-Mer up the coast in the direction of Cherbourg.

I’ve not yet been for a walk on that beach, so I’ll have to put that right in due course.

On the other hand, this here is a beach that I’ve walked upon. And on several occasions too.

And not only that, I was watching Terry, Darren, Kate and Dylan sand-yachting on there earlier this year.

It is of course Agon-Countainville and it’s one of the nicest beaches around here, with one of the largest tidal ranges around here too.

Yesterday, we were walking around the Pointe du Roc and we saw a handful of what might have been fishing boats loitering at the foot of the cliffs.

Today I had another look over the clifftop where they were yesterday, and there was another one down ther today loitering around at the foot of the cliffs.

I’m still not sure what they are doing.

And talking of not knowing what they are doing, this is what the council workmen have been doing to the car park by the lighthouse at the end of the Pointe du Roc.

And having seen the results of their work, I’m still none the wiser.

And I’m not even better-informed either. But that’s because the workmen weren’t there to ask.

The weather was even better in the shelter of the wind down at the head of the bay.

So now that I have a decent zoom-telephoto lens I could take a photo of what I have glimpsed before at the head of the Baie de Mont St Michel, to see if this lens will pick it up any better.

And sure enough, this lens is so much better than the older one and we can see quite clearly not only the Cabanon Vauban which we have visited on several occasions, but the hotels round by the foot of the Mont St Michel.

Not the Mont itself though. That’s hidden behind the Pointe de Carolles.

Back here I carried on with the work that I had been doing, and then made tea. Stuffed peppers (now that I had bought some) and spicy rice, with my frozen carrots too. And that worked!

And then off for my walk around the walls.

There are tons of photos though.

During the afternoon, the weather was so good that I took plies of photos with the zoom-telephoto lens all along the coast from the Pointe de Carolles back up t0 Granville.

And then this evening, the clear moonlight made the night-time photos even better.

And so I’ll be adding these in due course so that you can see them in all their glory and admire the new lenses that I have bought.

fishing boat port de granville habour manche normandy france

Port Foulon The southern part of the town of Granville

The Cale de Hacqueville

The Beach at Carolles.

The large building just to the left of centre is another one in which there’s a ruin of an apartment that was offered to me.

The Beach at Carolles.

Jullouville

Kairon Plage

St Pair sur Mer

Chateau de la Crete

Granville – Boulevard des Amiraux Granvillais

Marité

Fishing boat in the port de Granville awaiting the tide.

Crew working aboard fishing boat in the port de Granville awaiting the tide.

A rather over-exposed photo of the moon.

The Place d’Armes and the medieval town walls

Moonlight over the Baie de Granville

Another over-exposed moon shot with one of the planets

Pizza van, Place Cambernon

Wednesday 17th October 2018 – JUST BY WAY …

… of a change, I had another good sleep last night.

Out like a light and asleep almost until the alarm went off. I probably beat it by about 10 seconds, I reckon.

And I’d been on my travels too – back on a ship somewhere but I’ve no idea where and I’ve no idea what I was doing either.

Even more surprisingly, I was out of bed quite rapidly too. Obviously the deep sleep had done me a power of good and I ought to do it more often.

After breakfast etc I had a few things to do and then I set about the photos from last night. There were more than I anticipated and it took a while to deal with them but they are now all on line and you can go to see them if you like.

I’ve been having a play with the ISO levels, with cropping and enlarging some of them and the results are … errr … interesting. In one photo, you can even see the street lights of St Helier – 54 kms away – taken through a 50mm lens and that is astonishing.

You can see them for yourself.

There were quite a few distractions too and I was surprised to see that I had arrived at 13:30 without having accomplished all that much.

Lunch was on the wall with butties and book, but no lizards. I imagine that they have by now gone into hibernation.

But we still have the fishing boats coming in and coming out of the harbour. I’d missed two that were leaving simultaneously but I managed to be in time to catch this one on its way in.

And he was coming in at quite a rate too, as you can tell by his wake.

Coming back to the apartment Gribouille was waiting for me so I gave him a big stroke. His mummy was there too and she invited me to her birthday party which will be held in a couple of weeks time.

Up in the apartment I restarted my assault on the photos from Saturday and the Ile de Chausey. That took longer than it ought to have done too, mainly due to a variety of distractions, including but not limited to a little … errr … relax.

Of course we had the usual afernoon walk, during which my attention was caught by some activity going on at the foot of the cliffs.

Several boats were congregating down there and I’ve no idea what they might be doing. It’s highly unlikely that they are fishing but I can’t think of anything else.

And you can see the Iles de Chausey in the background.

Having a good view of the Ile de Chausey in the previous photo, I fitted the zoom telephoto lens to the camera to take a photo of it in the fine weather conditions.

And you can see the difference between the image produced by a lens with a focal length of 45mm in the first photograph and a lens with a focal length of 300mm in this photo – a 7 times magnification.

You can even identify the individual houses on the island, even though it’s about 17 kilometres away from where I’m standing.

And when you start to crop your original image and enlarge the selection, you can produce some even more dramatic results.

This is a crop from the main photo of the southern end of the island. You can see the lighthouse quite clearly as well as the houses that are scattered around that part of the island which we passed on our way in.

That’s not bad at all for 17 kilometres

And when you crop out an even smaller selection, enlarge it and digitally enhance it, you can produce shots that are even more dramatic.

This is a smaller selection cropped from the same photo, digitally enhanced to improve the contrast. And not only can you see the houses on the island, you can see the afternoon ferry pulling into the inner harbour of the island where we docked on Saturday.

You can see the sun reflecting off the white paint on the southern ends of the houses

This is a selection cropped from another photo, showing the northern tip of the island and the lighthouse situated there.

And I do have to say that I have no idea what that is in the sea in the foreground of the image.

But all of this goes to show just what a good purchase this new zoom-telephoto lens is and I can have hours of endless fun with this.

Back in the apartment yet again and carrying on with the photos (and dozing off again here and there). But I kept on going and now there are another pile on line and you can see those here.

Tea was another home-made burger with baked potatoes and vegetables. But I didn’t manage my evening walk because just as I was finishing off the washing up, Rosemary rang up.

It’s been a good while since we last spoke so we had a great deal to discuss. But even so, a ‘phone call of 1 hour 42 minutes and 57 seconds is something of a new world record – and by some distance too.

So now it’s late and everything else will have to wait. I’m off for an early night again and quite right too. I can’t say that I’m sorry.

I’ll need to gather my strength and gird up my loins as it’s my day to go off to LIDL on foot tomorrow.

north end ile de chausey semaphore granville manche normandy france

north end of ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

boats around marker light granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 16th October 2018 – THIS MORNING …

… didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. The alarms went off as usual and I switched them off as usual, but it was actually 07:34 when I awoke. That’s not going to do me much good, although it’s probably true to say that I needed the sleep.

And I took full advantage of it to go off on a decent nocturnal ramble too. Not into the High Arctic (just by way of a change) but to Eastern Austria and the ski slopes (and not the usual nocturnal ski slopes either). In company (which is not like me, as regual readers of this rubbish will recall) with two other people – a friend from Germany (who makes his debut in a nocturnal ramble) and a girl who, should we say, I would have been more than happy to have had as my companion 40 years ago, and why she should suddenly appear like this I really have no idea at all because we were extremely friendly during this voyage. In fact, the whole set-up last night bore some kind of resemblance to a voyage that I had once made round round about that period 40 years ago. Anyway, to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … we’d all been skiing in Austria, dining across the border in Hungary, all of that kind of thing, and now we were on our way back. We stopped off somewhere and there was a former friend of mine from Stoke on Trent and a girl who used to move about in his circle of friends and whom I didn’t really like all that much (it’s just like the Gathering Of The Clans, isn’t it?). I was telling them about my trip (with a few embellishments of course to make it sound even better) and they were complaining about things with them and how they wished that they had been lucky enough to have come along. I replied by saying that the opportunity was there – I had asked if anyone wanted to come and I’d found a couple of volunteers, and we’d all had an excellent time. And if they hadn’t wanted to come then that was their problem and I didn’t want to hear about it.

This does actually bear out some parallels with how things are in real life. I have managed to cram into my life quite a lot of excitement and adventure and people quite often come up to me and tell me how lucky I am and how they wish that they could do it.

And how all of that makes me sick.

I’ve never ever done anything else in my life that no-one else couldn’t have done had they wanted. I used at one time to invite people to come along if they liked but I have long-since abandoned that idea because no-one ever wanted to (except of course the much-maligned Percy Penguin, who doesn’t appear in these pages half as often as she deserves). They would always find some good reason why not to do something. It might be money (yet they could find the money to go to the pub or buy a new toy or to eat out every weekend) or it might be health (yet I’m slowly dying but I’m still rolling along as best I can) but whatever it is, they’ll find an excuse not to go anywhere.

And then they complain about it.

It’s all down to this though. It’s all about what you consider your priorities in life to be, and what you are prepared to sacrifice in life to get to where you want to go. Some people have their priorities all wrong, and aren’t prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.

So abandoning another really good rant for the moment I eventually tore myself away from my bed, had my medication and a little later had breakfast.

Once that had digested itself I started to attack last night’s photos. I found a few more that I seemed to have overlooked so while I was at it I dealt with those too.

Following that, I then worked my way backwards through the journal for the last week or so and updated them with the images that are now ready, including last nights photos on yesterday’s entry.

It’s not all complete though because dealing with the 80-odd from Saturday isn’t as easy as it sounds. I’ve rewritten the page for the Ile de Chausey and added a dozen or so photos, and I’ll add the rest tomorrow if I have an opportunity.

That took me nicely up to lunchtime but before I made my sandwiches I had a shower and a change of clothes to make myself look pretty – or, at least, as pretty as I can.

It wasn’t particularly sunny but I took my book and butties outside and sat on the wall to eat them – the butties not the book of course.

And I wasn’t alone either because while there might not have been any lizards about, there was one of the sailing boats that frequents the harbour.

And it shows you how long it is since I’ve been down in the harbour and how good my memory is, but I’ve forgotten its name. I shall have to go down there one day soon for a butcher’s

And that’s not all either.

There was quite a procession of fishing boats and other craft coming in and out of the harbour. And here’s one that I don’t recall seeing at all.

But it goes to show the benefits of having a really good zoom telephoto lens at last. And how I wish … “here we go again” – ed.

But returning to our moutons as they say around here, I didn’t stay out there all that long though. The weather looked as if it might turn round so I came back here instead.

There were a couple of jobs that needed doing this afternoon – involving the photos and so on. They are all backed up now onto the external drive.

And it caused me to have a little smile. When I first started to digitalise my photos 20-odd years ago I could get a whole year onto one CD, with plenty of space to spare. While I was in the Arctic just recently I had a grand total of 27.2GB of images – enough to fill over 40 CDs. How times have changed!

This afternoon I took my walk around the headland amongst a pile of schoolkids doing some kind of map-reading exercise. But apart from that there wasn’t all that much excitement.

But all of the excitement was back here afterwards when I had a little … err … relax for a while.

For tea, I had more steamed vegetables and one of the pasties that I made before I went off to the Arctic.

And how delicious were they? I shall have to make some more.

Outside this evening for my evening walk and I surprised a bunch of kids having a party in a secluded corner. We had an interesting discussion in Franglais yet again.

I also took a few more night-time photos that I’ll add to this entry in the morning. There aren’t quite as many as yesterday’s and the quality might be … errr … different because I was experimenting with the ISO settings and one or two other tricks too.

So I’ll try again for another early night. And this time, I hope that I’ll rise up from the Dead at some kind of reasonable time.

la granvillaise sailing ship port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Fishing boats off the coast – with a high ISO setting.

More fishing boats off the coast – with a high ISO setting.

The orange lights slightly to the right of centre are actually the street lights of St Helier in Jersey, some 54 kilometres away.

Yet more fishing boats off the coast – with a high ISO setting.

The barracks of the Place d’Armes and part of the city walls can be seen on the left margin.

Donville les Bains – about 6 kms away – with a high ISO setting.

Photo cropped and enlarged.

The roofs of Granville and the lights of St Pair sur Mer, Kairon-Plage and Jullouville away in the distance

rue le Carpentier looking down to the rue Cambernon and the museum.

Rue Notre Dame

The Boulevard Vaufleury, the Upper Car Park and the port;

Fishing boat leaving the harbour in the dark.

Boats in the outer harbour

The Place d’Armes

The rear of the Place d’Armes

The Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

The Montéé de St Jean

The rue St Jean and the Montee de St Jean

Monday 15th October 2018 – BACK INTO …

… the routine again. I don’t think!

Certainly the alarms went off – at 06:00, 06:10 and 06:20 as usual. But to say that I was eager to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit would be somewhat economical with the truth too.

I’d also been back in the High Arctic again. There were 50 of us leaving the voyage, trying to get into three zodiacs arriving one after the other, each one with a capacity of 12 persons. So that’s going to work, isn’t it? But it seemed that no-one was too eager to go in the first boat, and neither in the last one. So everyone was more interested in clambering into the middle boat. You can see immediately why this might cause a problem.

After breakfast, I did some tidying up so that this place looks more like a home, and then sat down and had a look at last night’s photos.

They have all been edited and reworked as appropriate and uploaded them to yesterday’s journal entry where they can be seen in all their glory.

That took most of the morning, which might come as a surprise to many people, but not when you consider that for some part of the morning I was … errr … away with the fairies.

It was my intention to go and sit on the wall and eat my butties but at that moment it was overcast so I ended up eating in here.

This afternoon I re-reviewed the photos from the Ile de Chausey on Saturday, chose a few as good samples and then started to rewrite the entry and add some photos. I didn’t get anything like as far into this as I was hoping, but you can see where I’m up to right now and this may well yet change.

But once again, I was somewhat overwhelmed. The effects of the last few days have caught up with me yet again.

There was a nice afternoon walk around the headland, and seeing that I’m in a photography mood right now, I took the camera with me.

I’m not sure it I’ve previously taken a photo of the blown-up bunker and so I took one this afternoon.

I’ve told you previously … “at great length” – ed … about the Atlantic Wall that the Germans built here in the early 1940s. And after the war the French set about trying to remove the casemates and bunkers.

But they were built much more substantially than anyone realised, and all that they succeeded in doing was moving half a dozen enormous lumps of concrete a couple of yards away from their original position.

And so they gave up any further attempt and left the rest of the bunkers here.

While I was there, I noticed some of the local council workmen carrying out a bit of work on the car park round the corner on the Pointe du Roc, so I went over to have a quick look to see what they were doing.

It seems that they are laying some paving stones as if there’s going to be some hard-standing for some purpose.

I’ll have to have a wander over there in a couple of days time to see how it’s evolving and what the purpose of it all will be.

Having taken my photo I carried on a-wandering around the headland to the little spot where I can overlook the harbour.

The tide is well on its way out of the tidal harbour right now and it was interesting to watch some of the larger ships settle down on the silt as the sea disappears.

The yellow one seems to have settled in the wrong direction so I hope that it won’t flood when the tide comes back in. It should really be careened over onto the landward side

But my reverie was interrupted by something of a racket coming from the shipyard.

It seems that they are carrying out some kind of major work on a fishing trawler that’s been hauled out of the water onto the top of the quay just there.

I’m not sure if they are in the process of dismantling it or whether they are renovating it. This is another thing to go back and check on in a couple of days’ time.

Tea tonight was steamed vegetables, sausages and vegan cheese sauce, and it was totally delicious too. I really enjoyed it and I shall make some more of that in due course. My frozen sprouts are working well.

Later on, I was back out in the evening for my walk around the walls. I took plenty of photos too with the new Nikon lens.

I went through them later and added them to the blog so that you can see them.

And I’m sure that you’ll be as dismayed as I am with the quality of the photos that I took in the Arctic when you see what this new low-light lens can produce under these kind of conditions.

In the previous photo you saw the lights of Donville les Bains in the background.

In this photo you can even see that the new lens was even able to pick up the fleet of ships out there to see – presumably a fleet of fishing boats.

The little Nikon J1 would never even have made the attempt, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

I can see that this time next year I shall have to go back to the High Arctic, won’t I?

On my way round, Minette was there waiting for her stroke – and a pick-up – as well. She’s clearly missed me.

So now I’m going to have a reasonably early night. I need to get myself back on track as I have plenty of things to do.

The Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs

The Moon

Bréville sur Mer and St Martin de Bréhal.

Place d’Armes

Plat Gousset

rue General Patton

Place Marechal Foch

Plat Gousset

Rue Georges Clemenceau

rue Paul Poirier

Place Maurice Marland

Port de Granville

Place Maurice Marland

rue du Colombier

rue Notre Dame

Place Cambernon

rue St Jean

Monday 8th October 2018 – SO MUCH FOR …

… the alarm this morning!

My telephone decided to do an update during the night and as a result it was waiting for me to restart it this morning. At … errr … 08:15 or thereabouts.

And it also took me until 09:00 to leave the bed either. I was making the most of it.

Just by way of a change though I had ended up with an early night. Flat out at 22:30 and Gone With The Wind in an instant.

And, would you believe, just by way of another change, back in the High Arctic. One might say that it’s all left quite an impression on me, mightn’t one?

Now here’s an exciting thing though. It was the final night of our trip before we were all due to break up in the morning. And just for a change we weren’t on the Good Ship Ve… … errr … Ocean Endeavour but somewhere else completely. And I was sharing a room with someone else, something that regulär readers of this rubbish will recall is highly unlikely indeed. This guy was of the “gung ho, full steam ahead” characteristics and he had changed all of the beds and bedding around in our room. My bed was in a different position, all of this kind of thing, and he had done it all in something of rather a strange way. But anyway, to cut a long story short … "Thank God" – ed … like The Knights Of The Round Table we had all been our separate ways, and we all had to meet up to come back to make our final reports the next morning. We were all sitting down in the lounge relaxing and who should come over to me but The Vanilla Queen. And it WAS her too. Not only did it look like her but she talked exactly in the same way with exactly the same accent that she had. She spoke to me too, which is most unlikely, and I couldn’t quite understand what it was that she was saying. So I arose and went over to her (which I wouldn’t normally have done) and asked her to repeat it. She replied “I don’t think that John Shearing needs to know anything about too much, but I want YOU to do the final debriefing and to tell everyone where we had been and what we were doing and all this kind of thing so that they could bring their notes of their holiday all up to date. I want YOU to do it”.
And to be quite honest, I was so amazed by this discussion that I awoke bolt-upright – 23:58 it was – wide awake, totally astonished. I went and tracked down the dictaphone, even managed to change the batteries in it correctly, and dictated the details so that I wouldn’t forget them.

And that wasn’t all the excitement either.

I’ve no idea who is was with whom I was rambling later on last night but she was certainly female and attractive, and she was driving a small car of the Austin 7 variety. We were having to travel somewhere and in order to do so we had to pass through a mountain range. There were two ways to pass through this range and they bifurcated at a small village. So we stopped in this village to fuel up and she tipped into the tank the contents of a metal can. I thought to myself that there wasn’t enough fuel in the can to take us to our destination and the nearest petrol station was a really good walk away. But to my surprise, where we had parked actually had a fuel pump and some woman there put a couple more gallons into the car. We then set off down the left-hand road at this fork and I thought to myself that this is a far quicker way than trekking though the countryside and little paths that I usually took and I wondered why I didn’t know this road. And we eventually turned up at a mountain pass that we have visited on nocturnal rambles on numerous occasions – usually on skiing trips and the like in the middle of winter.

As an aside, I should perhaps remind my readers (both of you) that I have indeed been asked if I am troubled by my nocturnal voyages and some of the situations in which I find myself.
My response was “definitely not. I actually quite enjoy them.”

After breakfast I loitered around for a while, including a session on the bass (because I’m starting to pic it up again after my voyage) and then set down to do some work.

Tidying up in the living room in fact. I need to make this place look much more like a home and make it clean. After a while I do have to say that it looks a little more like it, although there’s always room for improvement.

Next thing was, having been totally dismayed by the rubbishy photos that came out of my voyage to the High Arctic, I bit the bullet and ordered a couple of new lenses for the big Nikon. How I wish that I had done that a month or so before I had set off, rather than three weeks after I had come home.

And after that, I had a little … errr … relax.

TOTGA was on line later and so we had a little chat and then I went off and made my butties. There I was, sitting on the wall with my butties, my book and a lizard in the sunlight. It wasn’t warm but it was beautiful all the same.

Afterwards, I went off into town. With the possibility of a visitor arriving in early course, I need to know what activities are available. There’s a good Tourist Info place in town so my afternoon walk was down there to collect some leaflets.

Back here, I attacked some more photos but I couldn’t keep going and at about 17:20 I went ant lay down on the bed.

1:20 I was out for. 18:40 I finally came too and was able to carry on with what I had been doing. And that took me up to tea time.

While I had been going through the freezer I came across a pie that was left over from earlier in the year. So that disappeared into my stomach accompanied by some steamed veg cooked in the electric steamer and gravy.

Outside, i went for my evening walk around the headland, totally alone. Not another soul about anywhere although there were a couple of kids with scooters away on the car park.

Later I had another chat with TOTGA, with Liz and with Josée and then a little more work.

Now it’s bedtime and there will be an alarm tomorrow, I hope. Then it’s back to the grind again.

Sunday 7th October 2018 – I’VE BEEN LUCKY …

… again today with the football.

This afternoon I went to the Stade Croissant at St Pair to watch US St Pairiase play ET.S. Du Terregate Et Du Beuvron in the Manche District League division 2. Cold and windy, but at least it was dry. But there’s a covered stand at the Croissant just in case and it’s as well to be insured.

Despite the poor conditions, this was yet another exciting match. A bit short on skill but plenty of effort and the game rolled from end to end.

The attacks and midfields were about even, but while Terregate’s defence was far better, the St Pairiaise goalkeeper was in inspired form and on one occasion made a superb triple-save from the Terregate attack.

But despite the really good Terregate defending, there was just one occasion when the St Pairaise attack got through and they made it count.

Later on in the final 30 minute the temperature of the match escalated and we had some thumping challenges and a few heated arguments. One St Päiraise defender was dismissed for a late challenge, a decision that I considered to be rather harsh but they still managed to hang on to their lead.

All in all, I’ve had a really exciting weekend at the football.

And on the subject of exciting times, last night wasn’t as good as the previous night or two, which was rather a disappointment. In bed quite late, but awake at 08:00. We aren’t having that – at least on a Sunday, so I turned over and went back to sleep. 09:00 wasn’t much better but that was about me finished for the night so at about 09:45 I arose from the dead.

Despite the brevity of the night’s repose, I’d been on my travels. Back to the High Arctic yet again (this really IS preying on my mind, isn’t it?) and the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We were all on there, saying our goodbyes to each other and slowly dispersing, until in the end I was hovering over the stern of the ship about 50 feet up in the air looking at the last person remaining there. I couldn’t see whether it was or not she who has become famous as The Vanilla Queen, because she kept her head bowed. But the interesting thing about this is not the fact that it might have been The Vanilla Queen, but the fact that even though I was well away in the Arms of Morpheus, the fact that it might have been her was of interest to me.
So tell me why, nocturnal Vanilla Queen
You haunt me, even in my dreams
I’m clearly feeling the strain, aren’t I?
And later, I was away again. In a big Ford SUV type of vehicle, all black except for gold doors, exactly the type of vehicle and the colour scheme that several police forces in North America use. However, although it was me driving it, I wasn’t in it (if that makes sense), my spiritual sense was in another vehicle with my brother (don’t ask me why because I don’t know either) and Darren, Rachel’s husband. They were driving through this North American city that bore more than just a passing resemblance to the Rue de la Loi in Brussels outside the Justus Lipsius building, and I was driving aroud there in the police vehicle. They had tried … well, not to escape, but to plan their route so that it didn’t cross mine, but I managed to intercept them and when they finally saw me from their side window, they did pull up to find out what was going on. I pulled up on the other side of a crossroads, to walk back I suppose, but I didn’t even manage to leave the car before I was wide awake and it had all disappeared.

Having a few things to do today, it was rather late when I sat down to breakfast. And afterwards I had a couple of hours on the laptop sorting out a pile of e-mails from many years ago, looking for e phone number that I was sure that I had been given at one time. It took a while but eventually I came across it.

And then I sorted through a pile of photos that had been accumulating over the past couple of years. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have started this project on several occasions and run aground each time. But I have to press on.

It’s Sunday, so tea was a vegan pizza.

And then I went for a walk around the headland. It’s good to get back into my old habits. Including, I’m sorry to say, a little departure away with the fairies after the football.

There wasn’t anyone else around this evening so I was all on my own.

And so I spent a lot of time overlooking the harbour to see what was going on.

The answer is “not very much”. The tide isn’t in far enough for the fishing boats.

There’s one of the Ile de Chausey ferries over there on the right, tied up to the illuminated landing stage.

That’s really all there was of note, so after taking a couple of photos I turned round and headed off back home.

It’s Monday tomorrow so back at work and back with an alarm again. So I’m going to have an early night.

Tomorrow I’ll be tidying up because I have heard that on Tuesday I might be having visitors.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: photo

Monday 28th January 2019 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

Friday 28th December 2018 – WHAT A …

Sunday 18th November 2018 – AS KENNETH WILLIAMS …

Monday 5th November 2018 – IT ALL WENT …

Friday 26th October 2018 – IT WAS HARD …

Thursday 25th October 2018 – I WAS OFF …

Wednesday 24th October 2018 – I’VE HAD …

Monday 22nd October 2018 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

Friday 19th October 2018 – I SHOULD HAVE …

Thursday 18th October 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Wednesday 17th October 2018 – JUST BY WAY …

Tuesday 16th October 2018 – THIS MORNING …

Monday 15th October 2018 – BACK INTO …

Monday 8th October 2018 – SO MUCH FOR …

Sunday 7th October 2018 – I’VE BEEN LUCKY …

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