Tag Archives: place d’armes

Wednesday 5th June 2019 – IT’S BEEN PROBABLY 25 YEARS …

… or maybe even more since I last had a bath.

But this afternoon I took the plunge, as it were, and it was delicious.

Yet another difficult night and I was awake by 01:35. At 04:30 I was up and about and having my medication and by the time that the alarms went off I was ready for breakfast.

This morning, trying my best to find some concentration, I finished off transcribing the notes for Canada 2017 at long last, followed by making the photo templates for the rest of the summer.

That took me until lunchtime.

After lunch, I ran a deep hot bath, lowered myself in and then slowly added a half-cup of salt. And then I lay in it for well over an hour.

All of my wounds have cleared up, the swelling has subsided and the bright red colour has now changed to a more medium red. and for an hour or two I could move around quite happily.

Even now, it’s much freer than it was before.

But I can see a deep hole in the knee where it is weeping. It looks as if a large piece of gravel was embedded in it, and that is what has caused all of the problems.

I’ve no idea if it’s still there, but I’ll go for another hour or so in a slat-water bath tomorrow and see if that helps.

For Friday I’ve arranged an appointment with the doctor, and as Liz can’t take me, I’ve asked Brigitte if she would.

For a change I’ve done a little tidying up today, and I’ve also made some tea for the first time for a while. A baked potato and beans, so nothing exciting. But it’s a start.

and I managed to keep out of bed until about 17:30 before succumbing to sleep.

So I’m ready for a good night’s sleep. I’m intrigued now to see how I’ll be feeling in the morning.

Tuesday 4th June 2019 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a slight change in the situation today, in that the knee has now turned itself into a bright red lump, a little smaller than the area that was medium-red before.

It’s now taken the form of a blister with a load of pus in it, and sometimes when I move my leg it weeps from behind the skin. What comes out has the consistency and colour of red grapefruit juice.

However it’s now giving me absolute agony because it’s not settling into one particular place like it used to before. Whereas up until a couple of days ago once it had settled into a particular place I could walk around without too much distress I can’t do any of that right now.

I was awake again at 04:00 this morning but lounged around until about 05:15 when I got up and had my tablets. Breakfast was at 06:00, but by 08:00 I was back in bed.

That’s how I’ve spent most of the day.

At some point during the day I managed a shower but that was total agony, but I need to keep on doing that.

Shame as it is to say it, I’ve accomplished nothing at all today because the only time that I seem to be able to have some relief is when I’m lying down in bed. So this is where I’m spending most of my day.

No tea again – just a handful of nuts and a couple of squares of chocolate. But that’s not something that will be worrying me as I have a few kilos that I need to lose.

So there’s something good that might come out of it, but I just don’t know what I’m going to do about this.

Monday 3rd June 2019 – I MIGHT POSSIBLY …

… be mistaken but by the end of the evening today I might have noticed a slight (and I DO mean “slight”) change in the way that my left leg is performing, and it might (and I DO mean “might”) be a change for the better.

But we shall have to see

The alarm went off of course as usual at 06:00 but when I finally surfaced it was more like 08:35. If I get up and move around too much too early I end up in agony.

We had breakfast of course and then much of the morning was spent copying the blog notes over to the web page for Canada 2017 – when I was feeling up to it. It’s not easy with the pain.

There has been some bad news too. Many years ago I bought a cheap cassette player from ALDI – they kind of machine that plugs into a USB port so that you can digitalise your audio cassettes.

I have hundreds around here and that was to be my next project. I went to make a start but for some reason the thing doesn’t want to work. I tried various combinations of batteries but it doesn’t want to fire up at all.

So it looks as if this project has gone back on ice for a while – either until I have a sudden revelation about what it is that I have forgotten to do or until I buy another machine.

Most of the afternoon has been spent in bed – for at least that way it eases things off a little and it doesn’t hurt so much. I can cope with the leg when I’m lying down like this and it’s not too painful.

It’s being upright that’s causing me most of the problems, and the transition between being lying down and being upright that it causing all of the rest – and they are the worst.

But as I said, this evening I noticed that things seem to be slightly different in the way that the leg is performing.

Once again, I didn’t feel like any tea. A couple of squares of chocolate and a handful of nuts. I’m still not in the mood for eating and seeing as I have a number of kilos that I wish to lose it’s no skin off my nose if I don’t eat. I’ll eat away at these excess kilos instead

So now I’m off to bed, nice and early. As in 21:05. But I don’t care. I need to make the most of this immobilisation and catch up on my beauty sleep so that I can feel so much better when the time comes for me to start to work again, which I hope will be soon.

Saturday 1st June 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was last night.

There have certainly been nights when I’ve felt as though I’ve lain awake all night, but last night with the bedroom door open I could see the clock all the way through the night.

In fact I’d been to bed very early and dropped off for an hour or so, but that was that. I spent the rest of the evening lying there watching the clock.

By 04:45 I was up and about having my medication and by the time the alarm went off I was already eating my breakfast.

However there was no chance of my keeping going. By about 08:15 I was back in bed asleep for an hour or so.

And that’s how my day has been – up and about for a couple of hours and then crashing out in bed for an hour or so.

The leg is still giving me sheer agony, but it’s quite comfortable when I’m lying in bed – so it’s not too much of a disappointment. I need to take it easy and to rest the leg.

During my more lucid moments I’ve been reading the manual for the new camera, ordered 500 business cards and done some packing. And that vacuum bag that I bought a few weeks ago, as regular readers will recall, works in spades because I have enough clothes for several weeks now packed into a tiny space. I just hope that I can find a vacuum cleaner at the other end of my trip when I need to repack it.

There was also some time to add another day or two’s blog entry texts to the Canada 2017 page.

Lunch was rather late – about 16:00 in fact – due to various reasons, and so I’ve not had tea tonight. It’s been a few nights this week that I’ve not had tea and I’ve lost 3kgs. That’s always good news.

But now I’m off to bed. I’m not all that tired but I can listen to the radio for a while.

Sunday tomorrow so there might be a lie-in. And I’ll try for a pizza for tea again.

Friday 17th May 2019 – SERVICE MIGHT BE …

… interrupted for a while.

I’ve been to the hospital today and following an x-ray it’s been discovered that I’ve broken two bones in my right hand.

It’s all swathed in plaster right now and that has set rigid so that I can’t move it. Only my left hand is free, and if you consider how long it has taken me to type this, you’ll understand.

During the next couple of days I’ll have to work out another system but for now you can have some peace and quiet

Thursday 16th May 2019 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

I’ve had a very bad fall today – the first real one since I became ill.

My excuse is that I tripped over an upraised stone on a footpath, but I’m sure that my loss of balance contributed to the way that I ended up.

On my hands and knees, almost flat on my face. I’ve gravel rash on my left knee, both hands and, even worse, I think that I’ve broken a bone in the side of my right hand. It’s swollen up and I can’t make a fist.

It’s a shame that it’s my right hand though. had it been my left hand, it wouldn’t have interfered with my sex life.

Last night was a decent sleep. There was another trip down the corridor at some silly time or other, but nevertheless still plenty of time to go a-voyaging.

Last night there was some issue involving a polar bear – I’m not quite sure what now. It was out in Canada and the Candian national day and the subject of the polar bear came up. A few people were scared of it as you might expect but someone was giving rides on it. There were some people who were having a ride when all of a sudden the polar bear roared and these two people leapt about 3 feet in the air and cleared off quickly. They said that they hadn’t realised that it was a real polar bear that they were riding -they thought that it was some kind of toy or mock-up or demonstration
There was a hotel being used as a film studio, a lot films had taken place there but the hotel had gone bankrupt and everyone had to move their possessions. I was one of them with a friend and we had a shipping storage container there and we had to move it away. He just picked up one end of it and got me to pick up the other end. I could hardly manage to pick it up and we struggled but eventually started to move it with these people watching. It looked like the start of Rope lane in Shavington. As we went away from this hotel we noticed things like film company signs hanging off it. We got about 12 steps before we had to put it down. The second time was better and the third time we decided to go all the way, so off we staggered. Once my friend found his rhythm I was hardly doing anything – more of a passenger in fact than anyone carrying that end. It was icy so it was sliding along the floor and he was pulling the front of it to where we were going. But halfway along was an internal customs post in Canada. We passed through these villages with ski schools and the like and there we were with our container. At the ski schools these kids were in little car like things and were knocked over by the passage of the container so I picked them up and put them back on their feet. But it was a really steep slope and the container got away and crashed. We stopped at this internal border post and there were loads of people in the same boat who couldn’t go any further because of the ice. We had to fill out customs declarations and check everything that was in our pockets and pay duty on that with the idea that we’d return and pick it up later in which case the duty would be refunded. Someone else was there saying he was held up by the ski school and someone else said he was held up by the container and said to the Blue Mr Pertwee(?!?) about it. It was all confusing.

As seem to be the case these days, I missed the three alarms but I was up and about fairly early.

After breakfast I had a shower and clean-up, and then headed off to LIDL. They had more of that sports bread that I tried at the weekend and which was so delicious, a pair of universal pliers and then just the normal bits and pieces. I wasn’t out there long.

Plenty of action hereabouts and when the swelling on my right hand goes down I shall post the photos. At the moment it isn’t possible.

As I returned to the building I had a good chat with one of the neighbours about storage in the building. He’s pointed me in the direction of a possibility, but it’s not all that reasonable

After I came back here I attacked the rest of the photos for yesterday’s blog entry and now they are all up-to-date.

Lunch was in here again and then this afternoon I attacked last night’s dictaphone notes. There was still time before I went on my afternoon walk to attack the Canada 2017 notes. Not much progress was made unfortunately because this section was quite confusing and my notes weren’t as clear as they might have been.

I’ve already explained about my afternoon walk, and I limped back here to hash the gravel out of me and disinfect myself. I know only too well the problem of gravel rash.

However, I was overcome by a wave of total fatigue that I haven’t encountered for quite a while and ended up in bed. And there I stayed until, would you believe, 19:45.

Even in that time I’d been on my travels too. Driving into Sandbach and losing myself in the new one-way system (installed in the 1980s!) and ending up on a Council estate and becoming totally confused.

With things being somewhat late, I missed my tea and ended up with just a handful of biscuits. But I still managed my evening walk, despite the agony in which I find myself.

Anyway, now I’m off to bed. I hope that this pain will ease off overnight and the swelling in my hand will go down so that normal service will be resumed.

Otherwise, I’ll be off to the hospital tomorrow.

Wednesday 15th May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes yet again!

There I was, out on my evening walk, and the autogyro that hangs around out here flew by slowly overhead. So Yours Truly went to take a photograph of it, only to find that he had forgotten to put the memory card back in after extracting the afternnon’s photos.

So last night wasn’t as early as all that, and it was something of a mobile night too.

I started off by going round to a friend’s house. He had been doing something wrong and was on the point of having a nervous breakdown, and his wife and daughter were quite broken up by it too. The doctor had prescrbed them all a very strong sedative so I had a look at it. I saw the name and knew that it wasn’t appropriate for their situation at all so I told them all not to take it and have a word with the doctor. But the husband took his and it poisoned him. As a policeman I asked for his desk lid to be sent to me. It took quite a while to have this sent to me so that I could examine it. I must have forgotten it though because several years later when I was tidying up my office I actually came across it in a corner. I thought that it was far too late to do anything about this case now so I may as well stick it back in the corner and forget all about it.
After that, some woman was in a restaurant last night and sitting there she had a parcel on the table. All of a sudden someone came over to her, threatened her with a gun and asked for the parcel. She refused to hand it over and a third person sitting at an adjacent table grabbed hold of the parcel, threw it across the room, the waiter caught it and he and the third person disappeared immediately. he problem resolved by me appearing, a bit like the Saint sorting everything out and dealing with this other person, had him arrested etc. Then this woman had a threatening letter – either return this article or face death. But she didn’t have this article – what could she do? We were wandering around the school in Nantwich by the way. I said that we are going to have to find it. What do we know about all of this?. We discussed the facts as they happened and came to the conclusion that this third party was nothing to do with the robbers at all – the people who were after this. There must be some other reason why they had suddenly become involved. It seemed to be a very well worked out plan too. There was something going on that none of us knew anything about. She made a remark about “these people, they can’t really spell”. I asked her why and she replied that they had spelt “dagger” as “daga”. That suddenly rang a bell with me – wasn’t that some kind of sculptor or painter or something? Are they talking about the same thing? Are they really interested in what’s in this parcel? Or is there a fourth puzzle now going on?
From there, it was a question of some kind of ballet due to take place but it was one of those things that kept on being postponed a bit like East Lynn – always next week. Someone came to see me about it and said that he had been given the opportunity to finance the ballet. What did I think? I thought that the first thing to do is to see it, find out about it and why it’s being postponed. A question of finance is one thing but a question of competence is quite another. He asked “how do I know what’s good or what’s not?” I replied that you have some professional advice, take some people. I know someone in the area – TOTGA – who could help. I explained that her daughter had danced with the Royal Ballet when she was 10. I was sitting in my car and he got in, and said “take me to …” (some address) that was only 50 yards away. So I reversed the car, without looking or even trying, between two vehicles ready to turn round, thinking that it’s only 30 yards away now if I were to go backwards. But I went forwards and ended up down a long dead-end where there was this gorgeous 1960 Massey Ferguson chromed tractor. We looked and said “God this is wonderful”. We were on foot after this and that was when the conversation had taken place about the ballet, half in the car and half on foot. TOTGA was in the bit on foot. We walked past some shops – one had been Nichole’s Dance Wear but was empty and the sign badly painted over. The other one was a Sports Shop with all of these little kids trying out these weird swimming costumes and doing some kind of running group action for photography. We were talking about this ballet of course. He wandered off and there had been this queue somewhere. I asked him how handy he was – dood with his hands. If he were no good with his hands he would have to get someone in to make all these dresses and this would cost him a fortune because they aren’t cheap. That was something that he needed to bear in mind.
Later on, someone had made an incredible mchine. It was 6 solar panels fastened in a circular formation so that they would pick up the sun 24 hours per day and the machine was in the middle of this circle. We’d seen the diagrams and the notes which had taken up a couple of pages of A4. I thought that whoever patented that would be making a fortune and he’s going to need all of these drawings because these are going to form part of his patent application.

Strangely enough (although it actually isn’t) I can pick little threads out of all of the foregoing that compare with a few little things that were either going on over the last couple of days or going on right now.

Even more interestingly, while we are on the subject if the subconscious, after I left school I ran away from home and moved to Chester where I met a few lads my own age.

One of them had a sister who always followed us around and it wasn’t until I said something curt to her and she burst into tears was it explained that she was interested in me. But by that time my interest lay elsewhere.

And I’ve no idea why, but she suddenly appeared in my mind today, after not having given her a moment’s thought for 45 years. It’s rather strange.

I missed the third alarm but it was still fairly early when I crawled out of bed. And with a reasonably early start I’ve accomplished a lot today.

The notes for Canada 2016 are all collated with the photographs, and I’ve made a good start on Canada 2017. But I’m convinced that I’ve done this lot before too.

As well as that, I don’t know what I did to the CD recording program that I use but today, it managed to detect the album names and track listing. Have I fixed it? Or has something else happened?.

We had lunch of course, taken indoors, and then our afternoon walk in the windy sun, or the sunny wind.

And once again, the seas around here were absolutely heaving with sea craft. More than I’ve ever seen before. All of these yachts here, off the headland at the Pointe du Roc.

It did make me wonder what was going on with them all, especially the one centre-right nearest the rocks.

And it wasn’t just out at sea where there were the crowds.

With the schools being off for half a day each Wednesday, people have plenty of mid-week spare time and today in the really nice weather it was time for the beach.

The kids were particularly enjoying themselves down there. making sandcastles by the looks of things.

But this is something that I would call “courageous”.

These days I’m much more nesh than ever I used to be, but even when I was fully-fit you’d be very lucky to see me in the water. But this guy seems to be doing fine.

He’s actually quite a way out from the shore just there.

But as we all know, once you are actually in, you’re in and it’s not too bad. But getting out of the water can be purgatory.

And I seem to have solved the mystery of the cherry-picker down on the Plat Gousset

There were a couple of guys on there inspecting the windows of the Rest and Rehabilitation Home down there. And there were a couple of vans fitted out with the kind of equipment that is used for carrying glass and windows.

So it looks as if new windows might be on order down there in the near future.

My route carried on around the walls past the Place Maurice Marland overlooking the harbour.

The gates must have not long opened, because there was a continuous stream of fishing boats coming in. Here we have three of them coming into the harbour in line-astern.

Like I’ve said earlier, I don’t recall seeing so many fishing boats getting out and about from here.

Back here, having given Minette a little stroke on the way round, I carried on working until tea time.

With some stuffing left over, I added some other bits and pieces of leftovers and a small tin of flageolet beans and made a curry.

There’s some left over for tomorrow too, which will save me a good deal of time.

Later on I had my incident with the memory card. I came back in for it and carried on with my walk around the Pointe du Roc.

Just half a dozen or so out there enjoying the beautiful sunny evening, including quite a handful of people who were fishing with rod and line once more off the Cap Lihou.

And although I stood and watched them for a while, I didn’t notice them actually catching anything. In fact I’ve yet to see anyone pull anything out of the water at Granville with rod and line

But as I said, the weather really was beautiful this evening.

Although it was rather more mistier than yesterday so the view was not quite as clear, at a certain moment tha haze over the Brittany coast lifted for just a brief moment and I was able to snap this photo of the coast and the lighthouse somewhere round by Cancale.

Tomorrow I’ll have to go to seek a reference point to see if I can find the locale
.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that every now and again some mysterious buoys appear in the sea just off the coast.

And so it was this evening. There was a whole row of orange buoys anchored for some reason just off the coast here in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

No idea what they are doing and what they represent, but at least they are clear of the lane taken by trawlers coming and going into the harbour, otherwise we might have an unfortunate incident.

There’s a change of occupant in the chantier navale too this evening.

Our 10 green bottles are now reduced to three – the dredger St Gilles Croix de Vie from the Vendée, the trawler that has been undergoing major rebuilding for as long as I can remember, and the passenger cabin cruiser.

The yacht that’s been there for a while has now cleared off and we have two bays vacant. I don’t imagine that it will be empty for long.

There’s a change of occupant in the wet harbour too this evening.

Our old friend Thora must have come in on the afternoon tide without me noticing her. Another load from the Channel Islands I reckon, with a load to pick up from here and take back.

But she’s not quite parked in her usual place this evening. There must be a good reason for that and I wonder what it might be.

But I was rather confused by something in the harbour.

There was a type of boat in the harbour that I didn’t recognise at all, so I took a photo of it thinking that I could enlarge it and have a closer look back in the apartment.

And the mystery was soon cleared up. It’s not one boat at all but two completely different boats tied up side-by-side and that was what was confusing me.

Now I’m going to try for an early night again. I need a decent sleep again, and I have shopping tomorrow of course.

trawler granville manche normandy france eric hall

speedboat pleasure boat granville manche normandy france eric hall

yacht buoy granville manche normandy france eric hall

sea plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hall

crowds on beach promenade plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hall

sailing school baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france eric hall

fishing boats entering port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

.

trawler granville manche normandy france eric hall

speedboat port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

Tuesday 14th May 2019 – I HAD A …

much more productive day today;

Probably the decent sleep helped because I was out like a light and slept right the way through until about 05:20 when I awoke.

No chance of going back to sleep, so I was up well before the third alarm went off. And all things considered, it was an early start to the day.

And by the time I’d knocked off for tea, I’d almost finished the 2016 Canada notes. And by the time you read this I will probably have finished them too because I think that I might crack on tonight and early tomorrow morning and have it done.

And then I’ll have to start the 2017 notes.

As it’s Tuesday I had a shower, and just for a change just recently lunch was taken out on the wall overlooking the harbour.

Glorious sunshine but still rather windy for my liking.

But not for plenty of others though. I haven’t seen any lizards at all this year so far at my little spec, but there were crowds of people setting off on one of the ferries heading in the direction of the Ile de Chausey.

It makes me quite envious of them. But I’m hoping that it won’t be too long before I’m out there somewhere on the high seas on board a ship somewhere.

And while I was lunching, I was running a washing machine. With all of the windows open there was quite a current of air blowing through the apartment and with the washing on the airer on the window, it dried in a couple of hours.

A day or two ago I posted a photo of some work that a neighbour had been doing on the concrete pad at the side of the building.

Underneath there are some storage units that had been converted from the underground water tanks but I’ve never seen anyone doing anything down there – until the other day.

For some reason or other they had been put out of use, but the other day there was someone pressure-washing the area. So I waited until today when there was no-one about, to take a photo of the work.

This afternoon I had my walk around the Pointe du Roc – but I had to tear myself out of my chair first, where I’d been away with the fairies for 20 minutes. Beautiful, glorious weather but only about a dozen people out there. The rest of the population doesn’t know what it’s been missing.

But there was plenty of activity out at sea today. We had all kinds of boats out there. The sea was positively heaving with craft.

Here in the channel between the Pointe du Roc and the Ile de Chausey we have a speedboat, a large trawler and a small trawler, as well as a couple of other craft.

A few days ago I mentioned that there seems to be much more activity in the area involving fishing boats. And if anything, it’s increasing.

Here on the edge of the harbour I was treated to a delightful nautical danse macabre involving two of the larger trawlers that use the harbour and also a smaller trawler from the port.

The green and white one is heading out to sea and the black and white one and small pink and white one are coming in to unload

This is one of the nicest photos that I’ve taken for quite some time.

The sailing school at Granville is out in force today and all of their yachts are swirling around offshore in the bay just off the Pointe Gautier with a procession of speedboats navigating their way around them. We have the Chateau de la Crete, and what wouldn’t I give to have an apartment in there overlooking the sea?

But I do like the colours. They have come out really well in this photo

One thing that surprised me was one of the Ile de Chausey ferries tied up at the quay right by the fish-processing plant. I’ve not seen one moored there before.

The reason for that, though, became evident. It seems to be changing over its gas bottles and that’s the most convenient place for a heavy vehicle and the ship to exchange loads.

It can’t do that at the Marine Terminal because the ramp is fairly inaccessible to lorries and is too steep. And in the harbour, it’ll need a crane to drop the bottles down to the ship.

There was another little break too. Now that I’ve properly configured the program that I use for recording CDs, I’ve done another four out of the backlog.

The sad thing though is that the automatic track detector doesn’t work for some reason so I have to add the track names manually and that takes some time.

It might well be that the albums are known by a slightly different name in France so the detector can’t pick them up. I shall have to play around with the country settings to se if that makes a difference.

And tea didn’t quite work out tonight. it should have been a stuffed pepper but the pepper had gone off – and from Saturday too. And so having prepared the stuffing already I went for the tacos, but they weren’t much better. In the end i had to invent something quick.

No apple pie, so it was pineapple slices and vegan coconut ice cream for dessert.

After the washing up I went for my evening walk around the walls.

First stop was at the house renovation at the rue du Nord to see what was going on. And I was right about the floor in the garage because they have concreted it over today. But then it didn’t take much of a guess to work out what they were going to do with it.

It’s really going to be something when it’s finished, and I wonder what their plans might be. I wonder if there will be any apartments to let.

I was totally alone out there again this evening except for some young guy.

He was sitting on a bench by the communal garden at the foot of the wall above the beachin the evening sun, playing the guitar and singing Sunny Afternoon. He was having a really good time out there and his enthusiasm was quite infectious.

So much so that when I returned home I piicked up the bass and worked out the bass lie to the song.

Liz was on line later so we had a little chat, and then rosemary appeared and we were chatting – not about anything in particular – for 75 minutes.

And do it’s a late night tonight, and I didn’t even finish what I was intending to do either.

But such is life. There is always tomorrow.

trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france eric hall

speedboat granville manche normandy france eric hall

trawler yacht pleasure boat baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france eric hall

trawlers fishing baie de mont st michel brittany coast granville manche normandy france eric hall

ile de chausey ferry port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

classe decouverte port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

cherry picker beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hall

Monday 13th May 2019 – I DON’T KNOW …

Yesterday, I’d seen my neighbours doing some cleaning up of the concrete platform at the side of the building. And so I went to see what was going on.

I’m not quite sure what this is that they have erected, and I’ve no idea as to its purpose. But I’m sure that I’ll find out in early course.

There weren’t all that many people out on land, but the seas were pretty crowded today.

There were all kind sof things out there this afternoon, including this beautiful trawler heading in towards the harbour.

The sea was absolutely beautiful this afternoon.

It wasn’t just trawlers out there either;

There were a few smaller boats out there with two or three people in them, fishing with rod and line. Just like these two here in this zodiac.

I spent some time out there watching them, but they didn’t seem to be catching anything. It’s clearly not everyone’s lucky day.

While I was looking at a couple of boats out to sea off the Brittany coast near St Malo, I could see something moving on the horizon.

Thinking that it might be a ship heading into port at St Malo I photographed it and back here, I cropped and enlarged it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a ship at all. It was just a boat with a rather large sail. The sail doesn’t look very yacht-like, so it might nevertheless be something interesting.

While I was out admiring the shipping in the Baie de Mont St Michel, I fell in with a couple of tourists.

Having established that I was from the area, they asked me several questions about the town and the fishing industry here. And luckily, I was able to help them out.

It all brings back many happy memories of a previous existence when I did this for a living.

Back here? i decided to start on the notes for 2016 and, as it happens, I can’t find them anywhere.

I know that I must have copied them out somewhere because I have already written several web pages about events on that voyage.

But where they might be, I don’t have the least clue.

Tea was the falafel with steamed vegetables and cheese sauce followed by the last of the apple pie.

Of course, I went for my evening walk as usual, and there was no-one about at all except for a solitary girl smoking a cigarette and a couple of people carrying spotlights out of the theatre.

A couple of people were enjoying the late evening sun on the beach at Plat Gousset and I don’t blame them because it really was a nice evening.

There were a few youngsters too hanging around by the cherry-picker. I must really make an effort to see what that is being used for.

But that’s for another time, I reckon. Tonight I’m going to try to have an early night and a decent sleep.

fishing rod and line granville manche normandy france

fishing boats english channel granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Sunday 12th May 2019 – I REMEMBER …

… saying yesterday that I was hoping for a good night’s sleep for a change;

And so I’m more-than-satisfied with 10:25. That will suit me nicely, thank you.

Plenty of time for going off on a little voyage during the night. Something happened last night that a group of us was out looking for a lorry. We eventually came across it – an old late-1930s British Army 2-tonne lorry that was hidden up an alleyway. We quickly unloaded it and I took it off to hide it. Someone asked me where I’d put it and I replied that I’d put it in my workshop next to my Cortinas. This person wondered how I’d managed it because that was full of all kinds of stuff, but I explained that I’d tidied it up and moved things around (however unlikely that might seem). I was round then at some woman’s house getting my things ready and it had taken me a while and I was running late. I was sorry that I hadn’t had time to go to see a girl who lived in the neighbourhood and on whom I was keen and I didn’t have time. The woman suggested that I ring her and merely say “hello” and I could see how the land lies. She might even slip round for a moment.
But somewhere in all of this a girl had asked me if I fancied a new car. I replied that a Jaguar would suit me nicely so she explained that all I needed to do was to go to a flower shop and place an order for a certain type of flower. There was an extremely long and complicated script to the way in which I had to ask and she endeavoured to coach me, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. In the end I told her that we would both go in together and instead of teaching me the script she could simply say it to the shop owner and save the trouble.

As a result of all of this, any plans that I might (or might not) have had all went gang agley.

What was even worse was that the nearest football match was about 30 kms away and while I might have travelled that far to see a game when I lived in the Auvergne, things are somewhat different now that I live here;

But I’ve not been idle. Not by any means. I’ve spent all of the day working on the photos for the trip to Canada in 2015 and they are now completely up-to-date.

So that’s another project finished and I’m pleased about that.

The next plan is to look at the pages for 2016, and then for 2017. I’m pretty certain that for the earlier years all of them have been done.

Once they are done, I’m going to work on some kind of opus magnus about Montreal – something similar to what I did about Quebec.

However, that’s a long way off, I reckon.

There were the usual interruptions. Lunch, of course, and later on I had my afternoon walk.

There was quite a lot of action on the sea this afternoon.

There were all kinds of naval craft out there, including several yachts such as this one here.

And do you notice the marker buoys in the water just ahead of it? It makes me wonder whether all of these marker buoys that we see occasionally in the water aren’t something do do with the yachting school – marking out a route or a limit maybe.

As well as the yachts out there, we had speedboats and cabin cruisers too, such as these here offshore from St Martin de Bréhal in this photo, which I cropped out of a long-distance shot and enlarged.

I’m not sure what the two boats nearest the camera are doing, but if you look closely you can see a horde of seagulls flapping around in between them. So there’s clearly something interesting going on there.

But look at the colours of the sea today. It was beautiful this afternoon.

And all of the people were enjoying themselves too.

There were hordes of people down there on the Place Maréchal Foch and heading off to enjoy the sunshine along the Plat Gousset.

Not too many on the beach today though. It might have been a nice day but the wind wasn’t making it so warm as it might have been. We might have to wait a few weeks for that, if it’s going to happen at all, for this year is turning out to be something of a disappointment.

I said though, didn’t I, that there were crowds of people out there today.

On my travels over the last couple of days I’d seen strange signs appearing all over town advertising “routes” and I’d been wondering what was going on. But my curiosity was satisfied this afternoon when I saw hordes of people wandering around in organised groups following the signs.

The days when I could tag along behind and follow them are long gone. I don’t move about as quickly as I used to do, and I’ve had it when it comes to stairs of course

So that’s the land and sea from this afternoon dealt with. We haven’t said anothing about the air yet.

And that was quite busy today too. We didn’t see our autogyro today but there was this little microlight flying around above us, presumably from the airstrip over beyond Donville-les-Bains.

But taking this photo involved something of an athletic feat because this is one occasion where the monopod gets in the way. Taking photos at anything more than about 20° means that I have to bend down underneath the camera. At about 60° I end up like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The evening though was probably the most magnificent that I have experienced since I’ve been living here.

The wind had dropped and the haze had gone, which meant that I could see for miles. I was seeing things with the naked eye that I struggled to see with the telephoto lens. It was a perfect evening for photography, as this long-distance shot of Jersey will confirm.

As I have said before … “and you will say again” – ed … it’s very hard to imagine that this shot is of objects that are at least 54 kilometres (31 miles) away. And it’s picked up the buoy in mid-channel really well.

But 54 kilometres are nothing at all compared to what I was seeing and what the camera was picking up this evening.

A rather speculative shot in the distance following a compass heading has picked out the hills at the back of the Brittany coast out between St Brieuc and Paimpol, and they are at least 80 kilometres away.

I spent quite a considerable time out there and too plenty of photos. They are appended to this blog entry and I’ve made a couple of notes of where they might be.

It really was beautiful and it’s a shame that there were so few people out there enjoying it.

On my way back to the apartment, my attention was distracted yet again.

I’ve no idea what drew my attention to it, but at the foot of a tree in the boulevard Vaufleury I saw this broken egg. It’s clearly not a hens-egg shell discarded by a tourist because it’s a completely different shape and size.

A couple of people have mentioned to me that they had seen chicks about this year earlier than usual, and it looks as if they might be right.

Where there are broken egg-shells, there would have to be a nest in the immediate vicinity.

And the tree at the base of which the egg was found would seem to be a good place to look. Sure enough, carefully entangled into the branches of this tree is a very discreet nest.

It’s so well camouflaged that it was impossible to take any sort of photograph of it. And so I’ve no idea whose it is or even how many people might be in it.

And I see that I’ve forgotten to mention tea. Vegan pizza of course followed by apple pie and coconut sorbet. Delicious. The sad thing is that tomorrow will see the last slice of pie.

And shame as it is to say it, I was away with the fairies for 20 minutes too, despite my good sleep. I ought to be ashamed of myself.

So now it’s bedtime. Not as early as I would have wanted, but early enough.

Ready for a bit more hard work next week.

east jersey coast granville manche normandy france

close up jersey coast granville manche normandy france

close up brittany coast paimpol france

brittany coast cap frehel france

close up brittany coast cap frehel france

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close up brittany coast st malo france

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close-up river mouth marker lighthouse windfarm manche normandy france

river mouth marker lighthouse windfarm manche normandy france

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close up normandy coast barneville carteret manche normandy france

lighthouse normandy coast manche normandy france

baie de mont st michel pointe de carolles cabanon vauban granville manche normandy france

baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

close up baie de mont st michel pointe de carolles cabanon vauban granville manche normandy france

cancale brittany coast france

close up cancale brittany coast france

close up terrelabouet near cancale brittany coast france

“st pair sur mer baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

brittany coast baie de mont st michel france

close up brittany coast mont st michel france

Saturday 11th May 2019 – WE HAD MORE …

… football this evening.

The second of the two Europa qualifying semi-finals, between Caernarfon Town and Cardiff Metro.

The match was certainly not without incident as the bundary wall behind the goal collapsed when Caernarfon scored a goal and about 50 fans, mostly young kids, spilled over onto the field. Luckily no-one was injured or hurt, but it held the game up 8 minutes.

We had another surprise result. Cardiff Metro won 3-2 away from home to a team that finished 3 places above them. But that was the correct result. Caernarfon’s players aren’t particularly skilful but have a tremendous team spirit and the huge crowds act as an extremely potent 12th man.

But the Met are a very skilful side, if horrendously inconsistent, but tonight once they got going they played well.

So they are away at Bala Town for the play-off final next weekend. Should be exciting.

Talking of exciting, the night-time was exciting too. We were at the football last night and it was the Welsh play-offs. Of the first game, it was the unexpected team that won, rather like last night – znd tonight too. And we were getting ready for the second. There was this huge monstrous type of guy there watching the game and I can’t remember very much about what he was doing right now, but we ended up back on Ocean Endeavour and off sightseeing. We came into a harbour that was very narrow and restricted, and there was some kind of red bar across the harbour to stop boats in the river being brought out by the tide and current. I had to go in and out of here on a zodiac and every time I went past this red bar I had to be verified. It was the same man verifying me all the time. he had to walk up to me, I had to anchor the boat, he’d check the boat over and we’d walk back in together. When I was going out we had to do the procedure in reverse. He would be wandering off checking all these boats and I wouldn’t be sure where he was going. I’d look around and he’d disappeared up some alley of boats. It reached the stage where the locals gathered to see this pantomime, me and this guy walking up this river every now and again. I could always tell when he disappeared because I would get hoots of laughter and derision as I was carrying on marching, so I’d have to stop and wait for him. He’d go off, check a boat and come back and follow me. It was all a big pantomime
Later on I’d been given a new job as a doctor. Actually we passed all the exams so I turned up at the place where my room was to be given to me. There was some kind of discussion about the rooms because we’d all had pre-printed visiting cards showing our room numbers but people had changed into different rooms. We had to move everyone around and sort that out. In the end I got my room, or rather the corner of a communal room of four people, all furnished in heavy oak like a private library. We had to go off somewhere and I could choose my company car. I chose an old Jag XJ-S convertible with a 56 plate. I took some people with me and the car ended up in a terrible state with rubbish everywhere. I had to vacuum it but I needed to be careful because I’d pulled some things out of my pocket earlier and all bits of important things like micro-SD cards were everywhere. I mustn’t hoover them up. We discussed getting back into the car later but the people in front of us had already gone. We wre in Telford at the time so someone asked if I knew the way back to Stoke on Trent. “Are we going past the such and such nightclub where we could have a good time or drive straight back?” I said that I wouldn’t be in work the next day. They asked why. I replied that I had an interview for a job. People were amazed that I was going to turn this one down but I said “not really. I had five interviews for jons and this one I was offered but I wan tto go to all the other interviews just to see what goes on and how things sit and practise my interviewing techniques”

After all of that, I was rather late leaving my bed, but not too late that I would be worried.

We had the usual medication and breakfast, followed by a shower and I forgot to do the washing, and then I went off shopping.

Today? I spent very little. I didn’t need much and what I did need wasn’t in stock. lIDL had nothing special, NOZ just had a couple of little bits and pieces (and more coconut sorbet) and LeClerc had just the usual, minus my vegan burgers.

Back here I unpacked and put everything away, and then dealt with a few things relating to the blog for yesterday.

After lunch (which was taken indoors and was a lovely fruit bread from LIDL) I attacked the photos for September 2015. These are now done back to Saturday 19th September, which means that there are a mere 18 to go. I’m hoping to finish that off and even October’s before I go to Leuven next weekend.

There was the usual afternoon walk of course, seeing as there’s no football tonight.

And I wasn’t the only one out and about either. The sea was humming with people out there enjoying themselves, including a dozen or so people having a run around the bay on a zodiac.

Makes me wish that I was out there with them. And who knows? one of these days I might be.

That wasn’t all either.

WIth the new telephoto lens I can take some good distance photos without having to change lenses.

Right out there across the bay near Montmartin Sur Mer there seemed to be a sailing school out there today. Dozens of yachts are down there sailing around offshore

And hang-gliders too.

Here’s one taking off from the place that they always use – at the back of the Christian Dior Museum by the cemetery.

And I think that that is an appropriate place for them to begin their adventures. If they make a false manoeuvre on taking off, they don’t have too far to go.

But at least I was enjoying the weather out there.

Whoever this person is here, she clearly isn’t. And I can’t blame her either because I wouldn’t have liked to have been sitting on the beach.

The wind was far too strong for that and I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.

Out of the wind, though, the situation was better.

There were crowds of people walking along there on the promenade and even a few people sunning themselves on the beach. Clearly the wind wasn’t as strong down there.

And there was a cherry picker down there too. I’ll have to go and have a look down there to see what is happening.

There was a lot of action on the sea today;

We’ve already seen quite a bit of it but as I wandered further on round on my route, I observed one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey coming in to dock at the Marine Terminal.

Hordes of people on board today. And they must all have had a good time out at sea today.

Plenty of entertainment on land too.

At the Square Maurice marland there was a woman sitting on a bench playing the accordion. I asked her if she would mind me photographing her, and she smiled and carried on playing.

This is one of the most bucolic events that I have witnessed since I’ve been here in Granville.

At least, it was until I went around the corner into the rue Notre Dame.

A group of young men were playing some sort of wierd game, so I went over to ask them about it.

The game is called palet and it’s played in several different regional variations. They were playing the Palet Breton.

This is a similar game to boules or petanque in that there’s a pion or target that is thrown onto the board, and each person stands 5 metres away from the board to throw in turn their discs onto the palet. And the closest to the pion wins.

In Palet Breton the discs are made of lead and about 50mm diameter. Other regions use different metals and/or different sizes.

And in the background two girls were playing open-air darts.

Tea tonight was out of a tin, but it was delicious nevertheless, especially with more apple pie and coconut sorbet.

There was time for a quick walk and a chat with a neighbour.

The crowds were still out and about on the sea. This rather beautiful yacht was sailing around in the Baie de Mont St Michel. And I must admit to admiring thr colour scheme.

And then back to the apartment, the sofa and the internet for the football.

So now it’s a long lie-in tomorrow – at least I hope so. I’ve had a couple of little crashes today so I reckon a good sleep will do me the world of good.

people on zodiac granville manche normandy france

Friday 10th May 2019 – I’VE HAD A …

… better day today, much to my own surprise. Much better than the weather anyway, and that’s saying the least.

Last night wasn’t as early as I was hoping, and I needed to go for a stroll down the corridor in the middle of the night, and it’s been quite a long time since that’s happened.

And on top of all that, I didn’t manage to beat the third alarm. Not by much, it has to be said.

But there was still plenty of time to go off ona little voyage during the night. We had to go to the seaside, four or five of us. One guy with us was an old Italian. I remember him being something like the Italian football team manager and I couldn’t think of his name or put a finger on his career. I asked him how he had been doing since he left Italy – a vague question – and he replied “surely you knew. I won the league with (he mentioned a few clubs) and won promotion with Torquay United” – It all sounded amazing to me. And someone came along with this huge, enormous shopping trolley. I remembered having lent it to someone and was hoping to have it back, but he replied “no, we’re going to take it on to someone” but I ended up carrying it or pushing it. We got on a train and went down to Brighton and ended up in an apartment that was to let. One of us was thinking of taking it but I can’t remember who now. The girl asked about it and another guy said that it was up for let. But someone is going to take it but it needs work doing to it. The tap is leaking or something. IS there anything about it? So we had a rummage round and found a big manila envelope. We pulled it out and went to open it to read what it says. At that moment a young guy with us, very like him in Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced started to cook and was serving up pancakes with fruit or veg, giving one to this girl.
That wasn’t all of it either, but there were parts of this voyage that wouldn’t make good reading if you are eating your tea.

After breakfast I settled down to do some work, and I’ve been hard at it for most of the day.

I started off by finishing off last night’s entry and adding the photos. And that wasn’t as quick as it might have been too.

That was followed up by merging the photos and the dictaphone notes for August 2015 in Canada. And then, I went through the blog entries for that month and added in all of the text from then.

That took ages but it has produced quite a copious file, and it won’t take much to edit and expand it into a proper series of web pages.

Like I said, I do one job and the closer it gets to finishing, the more work it seems to spawn.

To finish off the day I started to do the same for September 2015, and I’ve done three days of that. This is going to be quite a lengthy work, so it’ll take me longer than a couple of days to finish it off.

During all of this, I stopped for lunch of course, indoors once more.

And of course there was the afternoon walk. In the rain of course, so there wasn’t anyone out and about.

There weren’t all that many fishing boats out there this afternoon, as far as it was possible to see through the driving rain.

La Grande Ancre was out there however, and she had just performed a U-turn outthere ofshore. She won’t be towing a net behind her with a tight turn like that, I wouldn’t have thought.

There wasn’t anyone about working on the Resistance Monument either. And by the looks of things, it doesn’t look as if anyone has been out there at all today

And that’s hardly surprising given the amount of rain that was teeming down right now.

I’m intrigued though to know why they have dug a big hole on the centre of the emplacement down there. It doesn’t look as if it has any purpose to serve, and it hasn’t been shuttered off.

As it happens, I wasn’t quite correct when I said that there was no-one about at all.

Yesterday we had someone with his chopper out and today we have someone with his rod out. Down on the edge of the rocks off the Cap Lihou is someone fishing.

I’m not sure that he ever caught anything, but it does remind me of the story about why sex has a lot in common. In both cases you take out your rod and you never know what you are going to catch.

Despite the rain, I walked on round the headland to where I could overlook the chantier navale.

Yet another change-round in there. Grand Beau Temps has now departed, which is hardly any surprise in this kind of weather.

But she’s not been replaced. The berth in which she was installed is now empty. But I don’t imagine that it will remain empty for long.

Tea was a burger with vegetables followed by apple pie and coconut sorbet – delicious.

The evening walk, I almost abandoned it due to the rain. But I pressed on none-the-less.

And here’s something interesting that seems to be happening in the rue Notre Dame.

I’ve absolutely no idea what an “enquete policiere grandeur nature” is, and even less of an idea why they need to ban parking in the street in order to carry it out.

I suppose that I’ll have to present myself sur place on 18th May in order to find out.

Fighting my way back through the rain, I made it back here just in time for the football.

Clubs in the Welsh Premier League are entitled to 4 places in European competition. The Champions play in the Champions League , and the Cup Winners (or runners up in the League, if the Cup winners are the Champions) and then the next-highest club in the league. So that’s TNS, Connah’s Quay Nomads and Barry Town.

The four next-lowest teams have a series of play-off matches to decide who has the remaining place, and tonight Newtown (5th) were playing Bala Town(5th).

In one of the most exciting matches that I’ve seen for a while, Bala won 2-1. And the difference between the teams was firstly Keighan Jones’s foot, and secondly Henry Jones.

Henry Jones, one of the most skilful players ever to have played in the WPL, has been off-form for a while but tonight he recovered all of his skill and more besides, and put in a match-winning performance.

And when Newtown broke through the Bala defence, and found themselves on a one-on-one situation with Keighan Jones in the Bala goal, his outstretched right foot saved them on both occasions. He’s only the second-choice goalkeeper too, but that was a superb performance tonight.

So tater later than intended, I’m off to bed.

Shopping tomorrow so I need to be fit.

Thursday 9th May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes yet again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No idea what is going on though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

helicopter pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 8th May 2019 – THE BIG ADVANTAGE …

… about wearing the kind of clothes that I do (fleeces, shell-suit trousers) is that when I’m caught outside in a torrential downpour for 10 minutes, I dry off just as quickly as I became wet once the sun came out.

This afternoon I went out and about on my afternoon ramble with the aim of going down to the chantier navale

However I was held up at the top of the Pointe du Roc by an exceptionally good view of the Brittany coast.

It’s not come out so well though, because even with the monopod the strong gusting winds were making it impossible to hold the camera steady.

Just for a change seeing as I was heading down to the harbour, I took the stairs all the way down to the foot of the Pointe du Roc.

We’d been down there once or twice after it reopened and I’d taken a few photos when I was down there on the viewing platform.

But it came to my mind that I hadn’t taken a photo of the viewing platform itself. I need to remedy that.

Continuing on around the footpath, and dodging the pedestrians who pressed on regardless of how narrow the path was, I had a good look around.

And here’s something that I missed on the previous occasions when I’ve been round here. It’s a concrete wire anchor, presumably for a radio mast or something similar, and quite possibly dating from the time of the Atlantic Wall.

I’ll have to look on my 1943 photograph and see if there’s anything that gives me a clue.

And it was round about here that I was drenched in the rain.

The maystery of the new yacht in the chantier navale is resolved.

She’s called the Grand Beau Temps and she is apparently registered here in Granville, although I don’t actually recall having seen her here in the harbour.

There wasn’t anyone around working on her to ask any questions unfortunately, so I don’t know any more about her.

While I was down here, I went over to have a good look at the red and yellow pontoon that has been in the harbour for a couple of weeks and has now appeared in the chantier navale

The first thing that caught my eye was here on the front. It looked at first as if it might be a grab of some description

But a closer inspection revealed that it might actually be some kind of gratter and suction pump

Round the back, there is what appears to be a suction outlet.

And that makes it much more clear. She’s probably a dredger, although that doesn’t explain why she’s been in the harbour here the last couple of weeks.

After all, they only dredged that last winter and it won’t be silted up quite yet.

There’s a plaque from the owners affixed to the cabin. and the surprising thing that the plaque told me was that she’s apparently owned by the town of St Gilles Croix de Vie

That’s on the Vendée coast opposite the Ile de Yeu where Cécile lived and where I went to visit back in 2013.

So the plot sickens.

This morning, having had a good early night and a decent sleep, I was up and about before the final alarm wen toff, which is always good news.

I’d been on a little voyage too during the night. I had an appointment at the Income Tax Office of all places in Northwich at 14:30. I was in Middlewich about an hour before, although it wasn’t much like Mifddlewich, and I had a couple of bags with me and a few other bits and pieces. I was on foot. I suddenly thought “how do I get to Northwich?”. I know the two roads that go there but which one do I take and which one gets me to the town centre because I couldn’t think which would be the best way to go. I was walking past Middlewich railway station (which was nothing at all like Middlewich railway station). There were some travellers parked there, a fairground, loads of buses and cars parked around there. And a taxi, an old FX4, was going to the station. It was L-registered (1973) so I thought that this must be the oldest taxi still working in the UK. It was rattling and clanking. I had to climb the hill to get over the railway bridge which of course doesn’t exist (but reminded me of where the canalised Weaver runs through Northwich near the old Hospital) but going up this bridge I just could not put one foot in front of another. It was just as if I was having to drag tons of stuff up behind me over this bridge. All I had was a couple of files of paperwork. I was just not able to put one foot in front of another. In the end there was some kind of office and for some reason I went in to sit down. It was like a doctor’s surgery with loads of people sitting round. I sat down and there were a couple of small girls behind me about 6 years old chatting like little girls do. I suddenly wondered why I was there. This wasn’t doing me any good at all, I had my appointment at 14:30 and it was now 14:15. I thought that I would now have to take a taxi to get there on time and I’ll need some money for that – I didn’t have any English money. So I stood up ans started to go out of this room. I said to everyone, as a gesture of pride, that I would be back in a minute. Some woman asked “how long?” so I replied “a minute or two” but of course I wasn’t coming back at all. I smiled at this young woman by the door and said “you can’t do anything without any money, can you?” and I went out, planning to go to the station to see if that taxi was there.
At some point though right at the very beginning of this I’d been out on the Northwich by-pass. I remember thinking that I didn’t have much time but I was hungry and there was a corner shop in one of the small towns on the by-pass so I remember walking there thinking that most people wouldn’t bother doing this because it would be too far. But I went anyway, ended up in this town, missed the corner shop and that might have been where I ended up in Middlewich.

With an early morning, we ended up with an early start to work and, in some really excellent news as far as I’m concerned, I’ve finished all of the dictaphone notes.

And I’ve also linked up the notes to the photos for Canada October 2015 and made a start on September 2015.

This is great progress indeed – to finish off one of my long-term tasks – and I gave myself a metaphorical pat on the back.

There are still plenty of other long-term tasks that need attention, so it’s not really made mush difference to the backlog of work.

It also helped that I didn’t have any distractions of any kind today, except lunch and my afternoon walk.

And also, a little 20-minute relax on the chair.

Another thing that is some kind of progression is that I now know what to do with the left-over stuffing from the pepper. Slice some onion and garlic and fry it with cumin, coriander and turmeric. In the meantime, cut a small potato into small cubes and give it three minutes in the microwave.

Then add the potato, the left-over stuffing and anything else that’s lying around and likely to be wasted, and make some rice and vegetables, and there you are.

Followed down by apple pie and coconut sorbet. Absolutely delicious.

And then out and about for the evening walk around the walls.

The light was really good tonight, looking towards the east, and the casino and the beach at the Plat Gousset were perfectly illuminated.

It’s a shame that there were so few people about out there enjoying it. Half a dozen down there on the beach and the promenade and just two or three people wandering around the walls.

While I was out wandering around the walls, I’d seen something moving rapidly across the sea.

No prizes for guessing what it was, because it’s that time of the evening. So I wandered round to the other side of the walls and there I encountered Victor Hugo just coming into port.

It’s that time of the year again and so the regular runs to the Channel Islands have restarted. She’ll be in and out on a regular basis for the rest of the summer season.

That wasn’t the only action that was going on down in the harbour.

The harbour gates are closed as you can see, and the red lights on display give that indication to ships and boats about to come in.

But there’a a queue of trawlers lined up at the harbour gates so I reckon that the gates must be right on the point of opening.

And now I’m going to have yet another early night. I need a good shower to clean up, and then it’s shopping time tomorrow. I need to be on form and it would do me good.

victor hugo port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 7th May 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… start to the day today.

Last night I told you that it might be rather late before I went to bed. But 01:00 was rather ridiculous.

As a result I totally ignored the alarms that went off, and it was almost 09:00 when I finally arose from the Dead.

I’d been on my travels as well. It was wartime and we were in Paris. Our task was to free Paris from the Germans. We’d formed these underground cells and one or two of these were confining these Germans to some kind of castle on a pinnacle separated from a rocky spur by a huge chasm. A red and white electricity pylon had been blown up and had fallen across the gap, and it was expected that the rest of the resistance would charge across it. I was summoned up for my troop and they were going to come and join me and said that all of the resistance would be ready for this attack. But when my troop turned up they were playing football – there was a football match going on. They started to pass the ball to me and I thought that we were supposed to be fighting, not playing football.
And that wasn’t everything either, but the rest of the story is not fit for human consumption, especially if you are eating your tea.

As you might expect, it was a very slow morning and it took me almost until lunchtime to attend to last night’s dictaphone entries and to organise yesterday’s photos. And there weren’t all that many of them either.

But later on, I managed to up the pace somewhat and by the time that I’d finished for tea the outstanding dictaphone notes have been reduced to a mere 65.

This was of course the period when I was falling seriously ill so it’s hardly surprising that although I had actually transcribed the notes for my 2015 trip, they were never connected up with the images. So as one task draws on to a conclusion, another one rears its ugly head.

There had been several pauses and interruptions too.

I tidied up all of the empty bottles and cartons and took them down to the rubbish bins, where I was detained for a chat by one of my neighbours for a while. She had a lot to say for herself.

Lunch of course, taken indoors yet again. And the hummus that I made the other day is delicious.

There was of course the usual afternoon walk.

And not too many people around either because the weather looks as if it’s on the turn. That must be keeping people indoors.

I certainly didn’t want to be out there on the beach on a day like this. It wasn’t very peasant.

But there are people who clearly don’t think like me, or else they are made of sterner stuff.

There was a couple sitting down there on the bench at Cap Lihou by the old medieval sentry-box. They were quite clearly enjoying the cold wind, the spray and the smell of the ozone.

And good luck to them too. They deserve it, and probably need it too.

As I have said on several occasions recently, we seem to be having more and more trawlers out here in the bay.

Despite the miserable weather this afternoon, this photo came out quite well, all things considered. It’s a trawler working away out there just off the north of the Ile de Chausey.

We’ve seen a few trawlers working out there just recently. I wonder if this means that the fishing shoals have changed their swimming pattern

There’s another change of inhabitants at the Chantier Navale today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the yellow pontoon that appeared in the harbour a couple of weeks ago after the core driller left.

It seems that they have now pulled it out of the water and it’s up here having things done to it.

I’ll go dow tomorrow and have a close look at it and see what it’s supposed to be and what’s going on

Back here I carried on with the dictaphone notes, and had another lengthy chat with Rosemary. And by the time that I’d finished ready for tea, I realised that I had forgotten my shower today.

Tea was a stuffed pepper and rice followed by the apple pie and some of that coconut sorbet, which was delicious.

And then off for my evening walk around the walls.

For a little experiment I took the new monopod with me and gave it a try. There was plenty of activity still out there in the English Channel so I gave it a try with the camera.

It’s not as steady as I was hoping for, but it has to be an improvement on hand-held long exposures in the half-light.

aAnd round the other side, I was distracted by a noise coming from the harbour.

It seems that Victor Hugo has been out on a run to the Channel Islands and had just come back, judging by the crowds at the ferry terminal.

She had unloaded her passengers and has now come into the inner harbour to tie up. She’ll stay moored here until she goes out again.

And still no sign of the new ship Granville that is to replace her. She was here the early part of last summer but had a breakdown and I haven’t seen her since, although according to her AIS signals she was in here a few times late last year.

So now I’m looking forward to an early night. I really ought to have one and a good sleep too. Last night’s fiasco I’ll put down to taking tomorrow’s bank Holiday one day in advance.

So an early start tomorrow.

trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

trawlers baie de mont st michel brittany coast granville manche normandy france

working on monument de la resistance pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

yachts trawlers english channel granville manche normandy france

EPIC HALL

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