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Tuesday 13th November 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… just recently, I’ve had a profitable day and done a lot of work.

It didn’t start out like that though.

Waking up at 03:41 did me no favours this morning. And neither did reawakening at 05:46 I’m really going to have to do something about this.

But at least it’s taking me off on some astonishing voyages during the night.

Last night I was out in “The Wild West” in a homestead in an area where there were several other homesteads. And we’d been round o one of them for a bit of a hoedown, I suppose. We went home in our waggon in the dark after the event and reached home safely, only to find out that the people we had visited the previous evening had been massacred in their beds by the Commanches. And while we were looking around there for clues, we heard of another incident at another homestead so we went around there. I’ll spare you all of the gory details as you are probably eating your tea or something right now. Everyone started to talk about launching an offensive against the Commanche but I was busy loading my family into a waggon to take them to the fort. I was all in favour of launching an offensive but I wanted to make sure that my family would be safe before I went off.
Later on, I was round at Liz and Terry’s. We’d had a party of some kind and as Liz had to go off somewhere I said that I would do the washing up. Most of it was glass bowls and dishes and the like, and I was stacking them on the floor after I’d dried them, ready to put away. Someone walking past saw one of them on the floor and gave it a kick. He hadn’t noticed that it was the top of a huge pile of glassware, and ended up smashing a whole pile of the glassware. “Whatever am I going to do now to explain this to Liz?” I wondered. Anyway, after all of this, I went to bed. It was round about 700AD when I went to bed and when I awoke it was 1624AD – I’d been asleep for over 900 years. Liz was there by the side of the bed with an IKEA bag full of letters and post that needed signing and I had to go through them and initial them all. I apologised to Liz for sleeping so long but she said that I must have needed it and it must have done me good. In the bag were a few things that I hadn’t wanted Liz to see – after all, I’m entitled to a private life – so I had to distract her attention from them somehow.

With an early start like that, I had an early breakfast and then an early attack on Day Three of the High Arctic.

I had several breaks during the day – for a shower, a couple of walks, to make some muesli, lunch and so on, as well as a little … errr … relax during the afternoon, but nevertheless I’ve done about a third of the page. We’ve taken off from Yellowknife (twice in fact), refuelled at Pelly Bay and are now overflying Baffin Island well on our way to Mittimatalik.

Another couple of days like this and I’ll have this page finished. But can I keep on going?

Lunch was taken inside again today, but maybe I ought to have tried to go out on my wall and eat it.

When I did finally go out for my afternoon walk today, rather later than usual, It was much warmer than it has been just recently and the wind had dropped dramatically.

I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the beautiful weather either. There was some kind of seabird scavenging in a rock pool down below.

The sun was shining nicely too and we had some really clear skies to enjoy.

The view over the tidal harbour was really impressive this afternoon even if the tide was out and there wasn’t anything out there moving around.

Outside the building as I arrived back I bumped into one of the neighbours. We had quite a lengthy chat about nothing special at all. But I have to be sociable every now and again.

Tea tonight was stuffed taco rolls with rice and vegetables. With the stuffing that was left over from yesterday I added a tin of kidney beans, some olive oil, tomato sauce and hot cayenne pepper.

Totally delicious, it was.

On my evening walk around the walls there was plenty of moonlight and with the skies being clear it was reasonably light.

From the top of the rise in the rue du Nord there was a view back down the street and across to the College Malraux at the back of where I live.

And this photograph has come out rather well too.

While I was out there I didn’t encounter a soul. And I mean that too. There was absolutely no-one around in the streets. They must have heard me coming.

The wind had dropped quite dramatically this evening and the sea was reasonably calm.

And with the tide not being quite fully in there were no waves tonight crashing up over the sea wall on the Plat Gousset

The tide was however in far enough that the gates to the innher harbour were open.

And so all on my own, standing on the top of the walls I was the only spectator of a beautiful nautical danse macabre as three trawlers came sailing in line astern into the inner harbour.

They swung round in a beautiful synchronised U-turn and went over to the quay at the back of the fish processing plant.

I stood up there and watched them for quite a while as they tied up, presumably ready to unload their catch.

And I walked back to my apartment, musing on the fact that the amount of free and exciting entertainment that I’ve been having from the boats in the harbour while I’ve been has been rather impressive.

And now I might be going. To bed, I mean. I’ll be making the most of an early night, I hope. High time that I had a decent night’s sleep. I still live in hope.

Thursday 8th November 2018 – I’VE FINISHED …

… the second day of my mega-voyage to the High Arctic and it’s now on line.

All you need to do is to go to this page and follow the link to Day Two. There are five pages in total and they should give you hours of endless fun.

Even more exciting is the fact that I’ve made a start on adding some photos to Day Three of the blog. That might even be finished if I have a good day, and then I can start on the web page that goes with it.

Or pages, probably, if it’s anything like Day Two.

In case you are wondering, I’ve had a good day today and done quite a few things. That early night that I had must have done me a world of good.

There was even time for me to go off on a ramble during the night. I was heading towards a boat, travelling down a valley, and we were to collect a group of kids to take skiing with us. They came running down the sides of the valley down to the bottom, screaming and squealing like young kids do. And what was surprising about all of this was that there was plenty of snow on the sides of the valley so it was difficult to understand, even during a nocturnal ramble, why they would need to go off somewhere else to ski.

After breakfast, I finished off the form that I’d been completing, but at this moment the printer decided to pack up yet again. It always seems to do this at a crucial moment, and it’s getting on my nerves.

But then again, I did pick it up in the Spring of 2013 and it was second-hand so I can’t complain too much. But I’ll be buying another one on Saturday. I hope that I’ll have more luck with this, but it never seems to work out between me and printers.

A shower and setting the washing machine going, and then into town, with Yves and Lily whom I encountered at the foot of the stairs. We had a good chat until we went our separate ways in the town centre. Me to the magasin de presse for the photocopying and then to the Post Office to send it all off.

On the way up to LIDL there was a cherry-picker working on one of the lamp-posts by the station.

It looks as if they might be starting to put up the Christmas decorations. It’s getting closer to that time of year already. And of course, I’m not going to be here to celebrate it, am I?

LIDL didn’t come up with anything special – in fact, the cupboard was pretty bare. But I did remember to buy 2kgs of carrots for freezing.

On the way back to town, I went past the private car park of the local Tax Office, and saw a sight that made me laugh.

There’s a demonstration due to take place soon against inter alia the amount of tax being charged on fuel.

People are expected to show their solidarity by putting their reflective chasubles on top of their dashboards.

I found it extremely ironic that a couple of people who apparently work in the Tax Office are demonstrating against the amount of taxes being charged.

In the town centre there was a big crowd around the War Memorial.

The local schoolkids had been learning about the Armistice as part of the school curriculum and so they were holding a commemoration service there for them.

There was a considerable number of adults who were passing by and were swept up in the emotion.

There was an enormous number of kids there listening to the service.

And there was also a film cameraman recording the event, presumably for the local television channel.

He was quite interested in filming the kids listening to the service, and so I couldn’t resist the opportunity of filming him doing it.

I have quite a few photos of this kind of thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

On the way back here, I had a strange encounter in the rue des Juifs.

In one of the art galleries there was a really nice painting of a tramp steamer. It looked quite nice so I was interested in having a closer look at it.

Just as I was about to go inside, the owner came out
“I’m just closing up because I’m going to an exhibition” he said. “I’ll be back in a week”
And he locked up the shop right in front of me.

The next person who complains that there’s a recession going on will get a smack in the mouth. People throwing customers out of their shop like this.

Up the hill again where I fell in once more with Yves and Lily who were on the way back home.

Lunch was inside again – far too windy to go outside and sit on my wall. And then I finished off the web pages that I mentioned earlier.

A cookery session followed next. I peeled, sliced and blanched the carrots and then prepared them for freezing. And 2kgs is too much to freeze at one go. 1kg at a time will do in future. But I should really have bought a bigger freezer.

There was a pile of mushrooms left over too so I prepared a mushroom and potato curry with the left-over potatoes from the previous batch, and added a giant tin of macedoine vegetables and a dollop of soya cream.

And now there’s no room in the freezer for it so I don’t know what I’m going to do.

What with all of that, I was rather late going out for my afternoon walk around the Pointe du Roc.

And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either, due to the high winds that were still blowing a gale around in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But the winds were making quite an impression on the waves, as well as blowing the seabirds around somewhat.

they couldn’t have found it very easy to move around, and neither did the pedestrians down there either.

A little further around the bend we came to a position where we could see the wind full-on with the waves, pushing them forward towards the port de plaisance.

They were making some really pretty patterns too and it looked quite impressive.

You can see what kind of a beautiful day that we were having too. It was rather a shame that the wind was cooling everything down.

With the time that was left before tea I started on Day Three of the blog, and sometime during the proceedings I had a little repose.

At tea time I went to try a helping of the curry with boiled rice and veg. Not my best, I have to say, but then I only made it to use up some of the food that was left and in danger of going off.

It was at that moment that I remembered that I had left the washing in the machine.

The high winds didn’t prevent me from going for my evening walk around the walls.

Even though the tide was well on its way out, the high winds were still catching the waves and smashing them down on the promenade at the Plat Gousset.

What was even more impressive was that the new f1.8 lens was working well enough to pick up the motion, and the crop of the image was sharp enough to bring it out.

So I carried on with my walk around the walls and back into the old medieval town.

And here at the Place Cambernon there was a hive of activity. Dozens of people at the bar, and the pizza van that comes here on a Thursday evening was doing a roaring trade.

One day I’ll take some of my cheese down to the van and try out one of their pizzas

Back home in the hallway I met Brigitte who was back from her holidays. We had a good chat for over an hour down there.

It’s definitely my day for being sociable with the neighbours.

However, it’s made me later than I intended to be and I won’t have a night as early as I would like.

But I’ll do my best.

Children’s Armistice Day commemoration

Children’s Armistice Day Commemoration

Storm, high winds and waves, Plat Gousset

The Pizza Van in the Place Cambernon, Granville

Wednesday 7th November 2018 – WHILE I WAS …

… cooking my evening meal, I was suddenly taken by surprise by an album that appeared on the playlist on the hi-fi.

Another one of the huge pile of underrated groups of the early 70s I saw the O Band supporting Man sometime in the early 70s in Liverpool and they stuck in my mind. And when I came across their album The Knife in a second-hand shop in Stoke on Trent it was added to my collection. And subsequently it became one of the first LPs to be upgraded to CD.

The second half of the album – several track which, combined together make one long rock opera – is totally phenomenal. It brought back a very bizarre memory of my playing it on a continuous loop along the I95 near Bangor, Maine, USA while I was looking for a motel for the night, coming back in Strider from seeing Rhys in South Carolina last year.

Yes, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

With having had a reasonably early night last night, leaving the bed at the appropriate hour wasn’t too difficult. And the howling gale from last night was still blowing too. All very wild outside.

After breakfast I did a few bits and pieces of tidying up and then attacked the second day of the High Arctic trip, when I was in Yellowknife.

And by the time that it came round to lunchtime, I’d finished the pages and was working on the meta tags. It might even be on line by the end of the day tomorrow if I have a good afternoon at it.

Lunchtime was taken indoors today. It might have been nice and sunny outside but with the wicked wind outside it would have been impossible to sit down in comfort.

This afternoon I was hunting for documents to go with this form that I need to send off tomorrow. That took a while and I’m still one or two missing.

That took me up to walk-time and so I headed off into the wind, which by now had abated a little.

But that was merely a hint of things to come. Away in the distance out in the English Channel there was a major storm raging.

I hope that it isn’t heading my way because I don’t fancy the idea of being out in that when it arrives here.

My walk carried on around the back of the College Malraux, but I didn’t get very far.

Lying on the floor by the entrance to the sports hall is the gate and the gateposts. And it looks as if someone with a great big jemmy has been there trying to open it.

Whoever it was who did that did it with an incredible amount of force and I wouldn’t like to meet him down a dark alley late at night.

Even though the wind had died down somewhat compared to yesterday, there was still a considerable amount blowing around.

As I rounded the Pointe du Roc I got the lot of it and I could see it all crashing down against the harbour wall.

You can see that the tide isn’t right in either, but there was still enough force in the wind and the waves to make a imressive scene.

But what’s going on here?

There ars the Pompiers and the SAMU out there, and they have brought their inflatable dinghy with them too.

It looks as if there’s something going on out there on that yacht. All of the medical people seem to be out there having a good look inside the yacht’s cabin.

While I was being harassed by a dog that was not attached to a lead and while I was booting it up the rear end and telling its owner what I thought of him and his mutt, I took a photo of the scene with the zoom/telephoto lens.

Back here, I cropped out a section and blew it up (which I can do these days, despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) to see if I could see any better.

It seems that they are manhandling a piece of equipment – a generator or a pump or something similar – either into or out of the cabin. So I’m still none-the-wiser.

Back home, I sorted out some more things for the form that I’ve been completing and then had to write a covering letter to go with it.

Tomorrow morning, if I can make the printer work, I’ll print out the paperwork and take it with me to posy off on my way to the shops.

Tea was a burger with rice, vegetables and mushroom gravy. And delicious it was too. But I’m running out of frozen carrots so I must remember tomorrow to buy some more for freezing. This lot that I blanched and froze came out rather well.

Later on, I braved the wind and went outside for my evening walk around the walls. And took a few photos of the waves in the dark.

The waves were making quite a noise as they crashed down on the cliffs at the foot of the medieval city walls. And much to my surprise, the 50mm lens actually managed to pick up the waves despite the poor lighting conditions.

I was very impressed with this. A similar photo with the 18-105mm lens didn’t pick up anything at all.

Further on around the walls, I came to the cliffs overlooking the Plat Gousset.

The tide iswell on its way out now and we’re a little sheltered in the bay, but it was still an impressive sight to see the sea storming in onto the beach.

I suppose that I should have been round here an hour or two earlier for the best effect.

While I had the 50mm lens on the camera, I decided that I would take advantage of it by taking a photograph of the old gateway that leads into the Place d’Armes.

This has come out rather well too, and you can see all the way down the rue du Roc to the bottom where the lighthouse is situated.

I do have to say that i’m very impressed with this new 50mm lens.

So after all of this, I’m really quite exhausted. An early night might do me the world of good.

Waves crashing down on Granville harbour sea wall in storm

SAMU and pompiers examining yacht in Granville harbour

Waves in the storm at the Plat Gousset, Granville

Tuesday 6th November 2018 – I’M NOT GOING …

… out for my evening walk tonight.

There’s a howling gale blowing outside right now – as strong as any that I’ve experienced since I’ve been living here. Had there been a high tide any time soon I would have gone to inspect the waves hopefully crashing down over the Plat Gousset. But it’s low tide right now so it’s not worth the effort for me to go out.

But never mind. I’ve already had a good couple of walks today.

And during the night too.

I was in the company of some nice young girl on a Saturday night. And taking the girl home she made some kind of remark about how she had to be at the railway station for 07:00 the following morning and how she didn’t know how she was going to do that bearing in mind that I usually refuse to leave my bed at any ungodly hour on a Sunday. I was just on the point of saying that she could stay with me for the night and then I could run her down there, when I realised that that kind of remark could easily be misconstrued. How I meant it was that I’d only have a 5-minute drive straight to the station instead of having to travel across town to pick her up and then back across town to the station, saving me half an hour that I could spend much better in bed. I certainly didn’t mean it in any other way (although I wouldn’t have found the idea unacceptable), but I had to think of a way to express it better so that she wouldn’t misunderstand.
A little later I was back in the Auvergne at Les Guis and I had to go down into St Eloy. The weather was fine up in the hills but down in the town it was snowing quite heavily. I ended up in some kind of meeting room on the first floor of a shop and amongst the people there was a girl who I knew really well. And it was either the Vanilla Queen or another certain girl of my acquaintance who bore a startling resemblance to the former – a startling coincidence of a resemblance about which I have commented to myself on many occasions. She was surprised to see me in view of the weather so I explained that up in the hills things were so much better. And we ended up having a good chat not about anything in particular but more in an effort for me to establish a certain position.

Just for a change just recently I managed to beat the third alarm out of bed and that made me feel a little better. Obviously going to bed at a more respectable (for me, anyway) time is a much better idea.

This morning I had a few things to do and once they were out of the way I had to sit down and fill in a form. I’ve collected most of the information that I need but I’ve no idea how I’m expected to fill in this form. I’ll just sign it, send it back with all of the assorted verifying paperwork to at least show a sign of goodwill and see what happens next.

When I was out at the shops on Saturday I forgot to buy a lettuce, so I nipped into town and the Super-U.

I had a little distraction – or two – down at the harbour.

Marité has now returned to her berth just there, with another smaller sailing ship alongside.

In front of Marité we note the reappearance of Normandy Trader who obviously cam in on the high tide earlier in the morning. There’s a pile of stuff on the quayside and it’s quite probable that will be loaded on board for her homeward journey.

That’s no all either. As I was looking at the ships, one of the lorries from the quarry turned up with a load of roadstone.

I waited for a while hoping that she would tip but the driver locked up the cab and walked away. It must be his lunchtime or something like that.

But it probably means that very shortly we’ll be having a visit from Neptune or Shetland Trader in early course.

At the Super-U they were rather sad, the lettuces in there I mean, not the people, but better than none. And I took advantage of the situation by buying a couple of packs of the mixed dried fruit that I add to the muesli.

While I was in town I picked up one of the baguette that I like.

It was not too warm today but not very windy either. And the sun was out so I took full advantage by going to eat my butties on the wall.

And this would be the kind of thing that I would find very funny, it it wasn’t so pathetic.

One of the themes that I feature quite often here, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is the sad state of parking round here.

And as for this example of pathetic parking, here in the boulevard Vaufleury right by where I eat my butties, is about as bad as it gets.

I really don’t know what goes through the minds of some people that they can’t be bothered to even make an attempt at parking between the lines on the road.

I mean, it’s not even a BMW or a Volvo is it?

So having been dismayed by the parking, I didn’t stay out there for long. After all, it IS November.

This afternoon I attacked the High Arctic and I’ve made real progress on Day 2. It might even be finished by the weekend if I can keep it up. And then there’s only another 17 days to go. And these will be much more complicated than this one.

The afternoon’s walk was around the headland in the beautiful November sunshine.

But there were no ships to admire while I was out there. Only a pile of fishing boats coming in and out of the harbour on the afternoon tide.

Taking advantage of the ideal weather and sunlight conditions, I spent some time taking a pile of photos of the boats as they came in and went out.

There were quite a few boats tied up at the quayside unloading too.

The name of this particular one took me by surprise. Omerta, which might mean “manhood” in Italian slang, is more generally associated with the name given to the Vow of Silence that is rigorously imposed, with quite often fatal results, on members of the Mafia.

Not the name that you might expect to see on a fishing boat in Granville

This particular one, which seems as if it belongs to someone on the Ile de Chausey, was unloading piles of crustaceans and the like onto the trailer attached to the rear of the tractor.

She has quite a massive catch on board. Business must be booming somewhere.

Incidentally, in case you are wondering, which I’m sure that you are, a bouchot mussel is a mussel that has been grown from a string that is attached to a pole submerged in the water. By this method they are more grit-free and barnacle-free than one that has been grown on the sea bed.

All of the work going on in the harbour was overlooked by our old friend Georges-René Le Peley de Pléville, or Pleville le Pelley.

He was a privateer who sailed initially on a ship, the Françoise du Lac (on which in one engagement he lost a leg), out of Granville, and later rose through the ranks of the French Navy until he became the French Government’s Minister of the Navy

He was appointed a Senator in 1799 and died in 1805 aged 79

Back here, there was a brief moment of repose and then it was tea time. Falafel fried with onions and garlic with pasta and vegetables, with salad dressing and herbs. It was totally delicious too.

With not going out this evening, I can do my outstanding work and then have an early night. If I can keep it up I’ll be in a much better position to keep up with my work.

But I do need to start to take it easy. There’s only so much that I can do.

Fishing boats entering and leaving the harbour at the Port of Granville

Unloading bouchots de Chausey in the harbour at 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.

Sunday 4th November – SO THERE I WAS …

… standing in the foyer of this really impressive hotel. Big and magnificent, with as many luxury floors below ground as above. And how I was looking forward to the guided tour that I had been promised. And just as the guide appeared to see me and head my way, the blasted alarm went off and awoke me.

I’d forgotten that last Sunday I’d had the alarm working. So serve me right.

Anyway, no chance of me leaving my stinking pit at 06:00. I turned over and went back to sleep. 09:15 is much more like it for waking up.

And 09:50 is even better for leaving the bed of course, and 10:30 is much more like a decent time for a Sunday breakfast.

The temperature outside was 8°C and in here it was 10°C. A signal to put on the central heating. Can’t leave it too long without heating and then freeze to death.

With being up-to-date with the important stuff (but still plenty of less-important stuff to do) I had a whack at the trip to the High Arctic and did another 2000 words.

But the funny thing is that I don’t appear to be much further forward either. I don’t know where it all goes, this stuff that I write.

And talking of writing, I find that I’ve overlooked a couple of e-mails that I received while I was away with the fairies. I replied to one of them, and have another two to do tomorrow. As well as replying to a letter that I have forgotten.

I had a late lunch and then went out. Union Sportive des Mouettes de Donville were playing AS Gavray and as it was a beautiful afternoon, a spell at a football pitch right by the sea sounded ideal.

But when I got there, the cupboard was bare. No idea what had happened there.

But US St Pairaise were playing at home against EC Tessy Moyon Sports so I thrashed around the ring road to the Stade Croissant.

I was somewhat late arriving of course, about 7 minutes after kick-off. But according to some of the locals I hadn’t missed anything exciting.

So I settled down in the grandstand with a coffee out of the flask (because there’s no pie hut at Donville) and watched the game.

St Pair is the team in orange and black, and Tessy Moyon in the yellow and red.

US St Pairaise are second in the table and Tessy-Moyon are adrift at the foot, so I was expecting something of a comfortable passage for the home side.

But that wasn’t how it was turning out for the first thirty minutes. It’s true to say that St Pairaise were the better-disciplined and organised side, but Tessy-Moyon were in there slugging it out and defending quite well.

It looked as it St Pairaise was going to make hard work of it.

In fact, there was some very good and thoughtful football played out there.

It didn’t come off as often as the players would have liked, which isn’t really a surprise at this level of football, but it was impressive to see the players trying.

And it didn’t ‘arf look impressive when it worked out.

What changed things was a substitution that the St Pairaise trainer made after about 30 minutes.

He brought on a new attacker – the n°12 – and he immediately ignited the game.

And scored with probably his first real kick – a delightful scissor-kick volley from a corner, right into the top corner of the net.

I bet that he wouldn’t ever do that again in a million years.

And so we continued in the same vein for the second half.

An evenly-matched contest between the two teams with US St Pairaise having marginally the better of the game, but then the n°12 suddenly getting to grips with the game again.

And things then moved up a gear.

Sure enough, with about 10 minutes to go, US St Pairaise scored a second goal.

A good header from a cross – the keeper really had no chance with that.

And EC Tessy-Moyon can feel aggrieved with the result. They weren’t maybe as good as Us St Pairaise, but St Pairaise weren’t two goals better. It’s hard to see, on this performance, how it is that EC Tessy Moyon are adrift in the basement.

And interesting as it might seem, not a single yellow card today, never mind any red one. That’s something to celebrate.

On the way back, I had a real surprise in Granville. A 1960s Van Hool-bodied coach came driving round the town. Immaculate condition, clearly recently restored and very impressive.

When I finally returned to my apartment (which wasn’t easy seeing as I was stuck behind yet another grockle admiring the seagulls) I went off to see if I could find it.

No such luck though. It wasn’t on the coach park down the road, which was the obvious place to look.

But what I did see was a classic example of what can happen when you put some street furniture in the wrong place.

So “Bottoms Up” to the Town Council of Granville, hey?

On the way round, it did occur to me that I have never yet taken a photo of the sports ground just down the road here.

This is the Gymnase Jean Galfione, whoever he was when he was at home, if he ever had been … “he won the Olympic Gold in the pole vault for France in 1996” – ed.

There’s a running track there and a sports field, used by the school.

If the coach wasn’t on the coach park, it might well have been on the mobile home park, so I went for a look around there.

It wasn’t there either, but this interesting vehicle caught my eye.

With Polish plates it was bound to be different, and indeed it is. A “Laika” caravanette, named for the Russian dog that was the first living creature to orbit the earth in a spacecraft – 61 years ago to the day as it happens.

I’ve never seen one of these previously

So being totally unsuccessful, I headed back for home.

And the Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou looking so interesting, I took a photo of that too. I’ve not taken a photo of it from this angle before.

Back here, Lili brought me back my dish from yesterday evening, and then I did the photographs from today.

Tea tonight was a vegan pizza, and very nice it was too. They are improving, although the oven still isn’t hot enough.

But now I’ve left it rather late for bed. I could have done with an early night for a change and I bet that I’ll regret this in the morning.

Wednesday 31st October 2018 – THE BODY CLOCK …

… is working well again to day.

Never mind the awakening at 01:30 – that’s the kind of thing that happens quite regularly these days, but the being wide-awake at 05:20 can only be good news, especially as I needed an early start.

The downside of all of this is despite being off on yet another nocturnal voyage during the night, all that I can remember is that I was shepherding around another group of young ladies. But as for why, I don’t have a clue now and isn’t that disappointing when I’ve spend the evening with a bunch of bouncing beauties?

06:10 I was out of bed and it took me just 2 minutes to pack the rest of my stuff.

But not all of it.

I’ve lost the top off one of my little water bottles – one of the ones that I use to bring soya milk and fruit juice with me when I come on a Sunday.

Well, when I say “lost it” what I mean is that I seem to have brought with me the top off one of the bottles that I didn’t need and so threw away. And I must have thrown away the good top with the bad bottle, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, by 06:30 I was on my way to the railway station and it’s a long time since I’ve been out and about this early.

And doesn’t the station look beautiful in the artificial lighting?

At the railway station, instead of catching the 07:09, the 06:36 was rather late so I hopped on that without having to wait around at all.

As a result I was early in Brussels, but the Carrefour in the station was open so that I could pick up some raisin buns and some fruit for breakfast.

I didn’t have to wait long – just long enough to eat my breakfast in fact, before we were ushered up onto the platform for our train.

And on there in the windswept weather the train soon put in its appearance and we could clamber aboard. And just for a change, I was first on board.

And then we had to wait.

dDe to the late arrival of the portion of the train that arrives from Amsterdam, the TGV was 12 minutes late leaving the station.

It was one of the same rather elderly TGVs but it was much cleaner and tidier inside than usual, although there was no water in the washrooms.

And the journey was so uneventful that I can’t remember a single thing about my seating companion

15 minutes late arriving in Paris Gare-du-Nord but the Metro was quite rapid and, for a change, half-empty.

And we were on the platform at Montparnasse-Vaugirard with 20 minutes to spare.

There wasn’t even enough time to have a look around. I’d only been there a couple of minutes before they called us up to the train. And I ended up sitting next to a nice young girl, but unfortunately she wasn’t interested in having a chat.

We set off on time too and for the first 30 minutes or so I caught up with my beauty sleep.

Once I’d woken up, I carried on with my “Voyages Of The Norsemen“.

Bearing in mind that the book was published 104 years ago, it’s a totally fascinating read.

For example, Hovgaard quote a beautiful story that “There is a tradition among the Eskimos in Labrador about a fierce race of men of gigantic size and strength, who delighted to kill people. But these men themselves could not be killed by either darts or arrows, which rebounded from their breast as from a rock”..

Can you think of a better description by isolated people of small stature when they talk about Europeans of the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries dressed in breastplates? It’s now accepted unequivocally that Martin Frobisher did in fact reach and explore Baffin Island in the 1570s and breastplates would have been in his wardrobe, but it’s interesting to speculate about who might have been there before and dressed in breastplates too.

It’s a similar kind of situation that I mentioned years ago about the old Mi’kmaq legend of Glooscap building a giant canoe and planting trees in it, which can, from the isolated mind, be no better description of the building of a European ship by European people on the coast of Nova Scotia long before the arrival of John Cabot.

The train pulled in on time at Granville station, which is always good news.

Here on the platform we were met by a couple of giant pumpkins. It’s nice to see the SNCF employees enter into the spirit of Halloween.

And that wasn’t all either. All the way down into town I was assailed by all kinds of demons and ghoulies. Someone whom I knew was chased into a pit by the demons, but was dragged out by the ghoulies.

On the way past the boulangerie I stopped to pick up a baguette for lunch. It’s been a long day and I’m hungry.

On the way up the hill, I looked over the wall into the harbour.

There was Victor Hugo moored up, all dressed in some kind of corporate advertising as if she had been hired to go off on a private excursion

I heard somewhere that one of the Channel Islands ferries had been broken down for a month during the holiday season and had cost the operators a great deal of money.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in the summer I did mention that I hadn’t seen her sister for quite some considerable time.

I had a very late lunch and then for the rest of the day I vegetated. I had a visit from the neighbours who invited me for a drink on Saturday, and I managed a walk around the headland later.

But it’s cold. 11°C in here and this would ordinarily be the signal to switch on the heating. Winter has arrived at last and it’s only going to get colder.

But I’m not. I’m going to be and I’m going to stay there. It’s a Bank Holiday so there’s no alarm tomorrow. I intend to have The Sleep Of The Dead, so just you watch someone come along and spoil it.

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.

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 – THE BAD NEWS IS …

… that when I went to put on my boots to go out this afternoon, I noticed that the right boot had split all the way down the seam.

That’s really disappointing because although I’ve had them for about 18 months I’ve only worn them for the last three or four months and they cost me a lot of money too. It seems that the whole idea about “quality” has right gone down the tubes just recently.

Despite something of a late-ish night I was up and about before the third alarm went off, and that is certainly progress. I’d been on my travels too, but as soon as I awoke it all disappeared right out of my head and I don’t have a clue where I was … “nothing new there” – ed.

After the medication and breakfast, I had a few errands to do before I can start work. And there were such a few that it was about 10:30 when I finally settled down in front of the laptop.

First task was to deal with the photos from yesterday. There were more than I thought too and now they are all on-line. And well-worth a look too because a couple are really good.

After that, I had a little fun with the old Nikon D5000 that died a death about three years ago. I fitted a new battery in it and eventually it powered up. And I could see the problem – in that the LED screen display is so weak that in the natural daylight outside it looks as if it’s not lit – and hence the camera appears not to work.

So I fitted a lens and an SD card into it and sallied forth for lunch on the wall with butties, book and the aforementioned. I started to take a few photos with the camera but after the first photo, there wasn’t enough in the battery to power up the auto-focus.

I put the battery back in the newer Nikon and it worked perfectly. Back in the old one and there we were again with not enough power.

It looks as if the PCB is corroding and stopping the current from passing through. But then again I’ve had it over 8 years and it’s done some heavy work in that time. And it was second-hand when I bought it too, having been manufactured in 2008 apparently.

So it’s not too bad, I suppose.

At least the camera in the mobile phone was working, which was just as well.

At a meeting that I had attended a few months ago there were complaints from householders about kids descending the cliffs and clambering over the roofs of the houses.

And while I was eating my butties there was a group of kids doing just that.

This afternoon I carried on with my High Arctic pages for a while.

But later I went out for my afternoon walk around the walls.

With it being he school holidays there were quite a few people about, walking on the beach in the sun.

Not as many as you might expect, but there was a wind that was quite strong that would be enough to keep most people away

But there were some people out there who were taking full advantage of the wind.

In the past, we’ve seen plenty of photos of the birdmen soaring up over the cliffs and the Pointe du Roc on the gusts of wind.

And there they were this afternoon too. And I had the zoom/telephoto lens at the ready

There were quite a few who seemed to be performing a bizarre kind of aerobatics as their appliances struggled up the cliffs.

I’ve said … “and on many occasions too” – ed … that one day it’s all going to end in tears, and at least, if it happens to this guy here, he won’t have far to go afterwards.

Erma Brombeck once famously said of skiing “I’ve no intention of participating in any sport that has ambulances waiting at the bottom of the hill”, and in the same vein, I wouldn’t want to participate in any sport which involves being up in the air in an unpowered machine performing aerobatics right over a cemetery.

Round on the other side of the walls there were a couple of people working on the steep slope.

They had this most impressive drill that was making short work of drilling into the rocky slope and I wouldn’t mind taking this back to the Auvergne with me.

Full of curiosity as to what they were doing, I made the appropriate enquiries. Apparently there had been some rock falls along the slope so they were in the process of erecting a safety net across the face to retain any falling rock.

Back here, I had a little … errr … relax and was the distracted by opening the door of the fridge to find that one of the door shelves had broken, and everything on it came crashing to the floor.

Tea was a burger and bap with baked potatoes and vegetables. Delicious it was too.

But there are no photos this evening. It was reasonably clear outside in the evening but there was a vicious wind going on and it was difficult to keep my feet around the headland, never mind the tripod too.

So it’s another early night. And then I have an important thing to do tomorrow with a serious time limit.

I need to be on form.

Hang gliders Granville

Plat Gousset, Granville.

And where have the bathing cabins gone?

Hang gliders over the cemetery in Granville.

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

Thursday 11th October 2018 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… today,

Josée fancied a drive out to sit on a beach and was attracted by the sound of Cabourg, the summer home of Marcel Proust at the turn of the 20th Century.

So boldly going where I don’t ever recall having been before but I bet you any money that I have, because at one time or another either with Shearings or with Nerina I’ve worked my way along the whole coast of Northern France, for as Proust himself once famously said, “remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were”.

Thus Caliburn, Josée and I set off for the seaside.

Much to my amazement, I had a reasonably comfortable sleep last night and if I did go anywhere on my travels I really don’t remember. But whztever, I was up early, medicated and attacking the web pages for my voyage on the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour long before Josée had even shown a leg.

As a reslt of my new-found energy I now have two amended pages – one web page with lots of stuff on it and another oage which is day two of my blog which although had been published a while back, now has some photos on it..

After breakfast Josée had the idea of going to sample the local products such as cheese, sausage and the like. Of course, she won’t find any of that around here in my apartment so we duly set sail into the town.

A rather large carrier bag and a coffee later, we found ourselves back in the apartment making butties for the route.

It’s about a two-hour drive to Cabourg (and more if you go through the centre of Caen, if you stop to do a little shopping and also if you stop for a bathroom)

And at one of the places where we stopped for a comfort break, we found that our biblical friend Noah was also there making a comfort break too.

I couldn’t resist taking a photograph to prove that he had been there.

As a result of all of this it was about 15:30 that we arrived in Cabourg.

As the sky clouded over we ate our rather late lunch on the beach watching the horses and carriages exercising.

There’s a race track not too far from here and it seems as if trotting is quite the thing there judging by how they were exercising the horses today.

Wet sand is pretty good for exercise because it builds up the muscles of the horses and when they run on dry sand they have much more physical strength at their disposal.

After lunch Josée decided to go for a paddle in the sea.

Of course it’s probably far warmer than where I last put my feet in the sea – at Etah in Greenland about 1300 kms from the North Pole, but nevertheless I stayed on dry land and watched her enjoy herself.

She told me that it was quite warm in there (comparatively speaking but of course she is from Québec) but I’ll take her word for that.

I was far more interested in the activities down the coast.

We aren’t all that far from Ouistreham which is the ferry port for Caen and there are some big ships that sail out of there on their way to the UK.

There was one in the port when we arrived but at 16:30 flat it took off and set sail. I took a good photo of it, and also a good photograph of a seagull who decided to come and join in the fun.

THere was still time to take one or two more photos of the area.

The towns down along the coast looked as if they might be likely subjects and while Le Havre, although well visible, was too fr away to come out well, the seaside resort of Houlgate didn’t have the same issues.

That has come out quite well despite the weather conditions because by now it was starting to rain.

It rained almost as far as Caen but then we were stuck in a traffic queue. That took a while to clear so we were later than anticipated. And we had the usual issue at the toll on the autoroute where they wanted to charge me for Class 2 instead of Class 1.

Back here it had been a beautiful day with blue sky so Josée went fpr a walk in the evening twilight while I attacked a few more things to do. And then we had tea.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in 2012 I had been to a place in Québec called Harrington Harbour and I had spoken about a film that had been made there.

Josée actually knew the film so we found it on the internet and we sat down and watched most of it until she retired. And I quite enjoyed it, as well as recognising many places that I remembered.

But there was one thing that struck me about the film.

The “Doctor Lewis” is from Montreal and when he is installed in what is easily the best house on the island, he is heard to complain to his girlfriend about how primitive and shabby it is.

What this is implying is that the 90% of all Canadian citizens, those who live withing 50 miles of the US border, don’t have the least idea about the quality of life out on the Bas Cote-Nord – the “Forgotten Coast” – never mind places like Resolute, Grise fiord and Pond Inlet.

And if that’s the case, they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves

brittany ferries ouistreham caen portsmouth normandy france

josée plage de cabourg beach france

naval patrol vessel plage de cabourg beach france

trotting horses exercising plage de cabourg beach normandy france

Tuesday 9th October 2018 – OUCH! THAT WAS …

… a tough day today.

Just before going to bed I received a message from my internet supplier saying that my site had now been upgraded as requested. And so I set to and uploaded all of the Arctic photos while I was at it.

And while I was also at it, I had a little bit of fun with one of the photos of Strawberry Moose that we had taken.

One of the people on board The Good Ship Ve … … errr … Ocean Endeavour was an Olympic gymnastics judge and she had taken quite a shine to His Nibs. And so we had done a little posing session with the two of them.

Add a little bit of text and here we are.

The result of all of this was that it was about 02:00 when Yours Truly toddled off to bed. Not the ideal way to end the day when you have to leave your stinking pit at 06:00.

But it made no difference because at 05:05 this morning I was wide-awake and awaiting the alarms. I have a feeling that I’ll be paying for this later.

I’d also been off on a nocturnal ramble again.

Just by way of a change, not to the High Arctic. But where, I have no idea. But we returned to this very impressive stone building that turned out to be a boys’ school. We were all starving and having to queue up near the door, and I had the Cunning Plan to loiter around near the air hostesses because I imagined that with them being “staff”, they would be let into the dining hall first. But when we were let in, we were allowed to take one liquid food off the trays that were being handed around, and then another thing from somewhere else and so on. And eventually someone stuck a cold sausage in my mouth. I made my way back to my room, which was at the end in an alcove off the dining hall. And I was given a large plate of food to take with me. A little later I went back into the dining hall but it was now deserted. Someone had left their mobile phone in “broadcast” mode on one of the tables so I started to look around to see where it was broadcasting to (and to salvage some more food) but the few boys who were left were making such a noise that they interrupted my search.

Anyway despite the alarm going off at 06:00 it was much closer to 07:00 when I finally arose. And with plenty of things to do this morning it was about 09:00 when I had my breakfast. That was followed by a little tidying up and a half-hour session on the bass guitar now that I’ve restarted playing.

And then I had a little snooze. The first of three or four that I had during the course of the day.

Most of the day has been spent on the voyage to the Arctic. I’ve added the photos to one of the earlier pages of the voyage and expanded the text accordingly.

Having completed that (because it took much longer than it ought to have done) I’ve updated the front page for the travel section of the website, prepared an index for the voyage, completed an individual page of photographs for each day and made a start on writing the text for the first page.

None of those is on line yet because there’s going to be so much to do, but as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if I don’t start, I won’t finish. So I need to push on.

It didn’t help with the odd bit of dozing off here and there during the course of the day. That 3-hour sleep didn’t do me much good at all.

Lunch was on the wall with my butties, my book and a lizard. And I dropped my banana by accident.

But it was a beautiful day, really sunny and warm with a lovely blue sky. I took full advantage of the conditions by taking a nice panoramic photo of the harbour and the surroundings, all the way round to St Pair sur Mer.

Later on in the afternoon, I went for a walk around the headland. Plenty of people out there today enjoying the sunshine. And I ended up by taking off my jumper and catching a little sun on my arms.

We had a visitor in the harbour too. Thora had sailed into port today and was moored up at the crane.

I didn’t realise that she had a visor bow. I cant have been paying much attention. But there it is, raised up and out of the way of the loading operation.

One of these days I’ll get to go for a guided tour around her to see how she is and to find out how come Grima was retired from operation.

Tea was a frozen aubergine and kidney bean whatsit with pasta, more to make some room in the freezer than for any other reason. I’ll be off shopping in early course and we need the space.

And then I had my evening walk around the walls in the pleasant evening.

Fallen asleep again, but I’m going to do this and them I’m off to bed regardless of how early it is.

I need to be on form for tomorrow.

Friday 5th October 2018 – NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE …

… it!

Although you might not think so, from the way that things carried on from yesterday.

It was something like 02:00 when I finally went to bed this morning. But I wasn’t in it for long. About an hour and a half, something like that, before I realised that it would be pretty impossible to go to sleep.

So not wishing to waste the opportunity, I got up and carried on working on my photos from my trip. The first run-through is complete, and a mere 1715 photos have survived the initial cut. Now they need to be reviewed again and re-edited.

But I’ve now found a problem that I didn’t anticipate – and that is that I seem to have run out of space on my on-line file server. I managed to upload the first 220 and then it all ground out. I’m now trying to negotiate some extra space from my web-host.

Eventually it was time for bed though. 06:20 I reckoned – something like that. And I went off to sleep almost straight away.

And on my travels too. A friend and I had a couple of girlfriends who went to a select girls school and they were having a dance there. We were keen to go and, having failed to talk our way in, and to wear down the opposition with lengthy speeches that would grind them into the floor before they ground us in, we hit on the cunning plan of dressing up in girls-school uniform and pretending to be girls, hoping to pass unnoticed in the sombre lighting. We discussed our plans with a couple of our friends (you can see that this can’t be real. Whenever did I have any friends to discuss anything with?) and we were overheard by the school doctor. After listening for a while he announced that he was homosexual and he was impressed with what we were attempting, and said that there was no real need to go too far into this because once we’d rescued our girlfriends we could all come and socialise in his rooms and he would keep everyone else out.
A little later, I was back on board ship. And we were once more saying goodbye as we parted. We were presented with a map and it showed our route – the strangest route that I had ever seen because it bore some comparison with the route that we have recently taken, and yet a mirror-image. And we reached the Panama Canal from the western side down one of the bays that we had travelled. All in all, it was a rather strange and bizarre setting.

I was awake at 11:20, but not quick enough to find out who phoned me at 11:25. And then I had internet issues as the laptop refused to connect with the modem. Twice now, two consecutive days, that it has dome that. But I eventually managed to make it work and then went off for breakfast.

Having done that, I made a start on work that I needed to do.

First problem to be resolved was to make to work the USB stick that I was given on board the Ocean Endeavour. It wasn’t easy but I eventually made the laptop read it, and then I had to look for a key to open the files because at first glance they seemed to be corrupt.

But that’s the problem with people who use Apple stuff. Quite often the files that they save onto USB don’t transfer over to any other operating system without some work, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we were having these kinds of problem when we used to do the radio work. In the end, I had to format a USB drive specially to do the job back then.

Believe it or not, I did some tidying up too. Unpacking my suitcase and putting some stuff away. Not much, I hasten to add. It’s going to take more energy than I have right now to deal with all of that.

I put the washing away too – I had done a machine just before I left and had all of the stuff hung out to dry. And some more of the food too, although that involved clearing some space in the freezer and that wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

Next on the agenda was to look at all of the photos to date and to make some thumbnails of them of a reasonable size. That involves the use of three separate programs in order to get them just how I like them.

Having done that, I promised various people that I would put the photos on line in an accessible way (once I can find some additional room on my server to upload them of course). So I’ve made a start on making some web pages in the standard format that I’ve used since 2007. It’ll take quite a wile to do that but if I don’t start, I won’t ever finish.

Tea was exciting too. I’d bought a huge pile of mushrooms and some peppers the other day so I made a huge wok-full of mushroom and pepper curry in soya cream. It made a beautiful tea with rice, and there’s some in the fridge right now for a cunning plan, and there’s more happily freezing away in the freezer.

There was football on the internet this evening. Caernarfon Town v Bala Town in the Welsh Premier League. There are always good crowds at The Oval and this was no exception and the atmosphere was terrific.

The football was even better. Bala had by far the more skilful players but Caernarfon’s great strength is the camaraderie amongst the players – the Cofis really do play as a unit.

The final result of this pulsating, exciting match was 2-2 and that was about right. I do have to say that football in the Welsh Premier League doesn’t get much better than this.

Later in the evening TOTGA was on line. We haven’t spoken for quite some considerable time so we had a very lengthy chat. One day we might have a telephone chat or even a face-to-face chat if I am lucky.

So now, considerably later than anticipated, I can think about going back to bed. Even though it was a reasonably late start, I’ve gone all day without crashing out and even managing to do a pile of work.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer of course, but it’s an improvement. How will I be feeling tomorrow?

And I’ve just realised – it’s now 01:45 and not only have I not set foot outside, I’m still in my dressing gown from this morning.

EPIC HALL

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