… to go out for a walk this afternoon. Mind you, it was a bit touch-and-go.
Last night was another difficult night as far as sleep went, but I was still asleep when the alarm went off so it must have done some good. And it was a nicer morning too – I enjoyed my walk down for my baguette. And I did come back via the scenic route too seeing as how the weather was so nice.
I treated myself to another coffee when I returned, and then spent most of the morning sorting out the confusion on this old laptop. So far, I’ve cleaned out about 30GB of duplicate or unnecessary files and I’m sure that there’s more to come.
Once it’s tidied up, I’ll be moving most of them onto a portable drive and then I can “retire” this laptop. It has a smashed screen (I’m using an external screen off Marianne’s old desktop computer) and a keyboard that has some keys stuck and some other keys missing (I’ve plugged in an old keyboard) and it dates from 2011 yet it still soldiers along, which is more than can be said for the two that I have bought to replace it. One of them ground to a halt in Germany two years ago, and the current one hasn’t ever worked right since the first day that I bought it.
In fact, I’m half-tempted to salvage the keyboard and the screen from the one that failed and use it to rebuild the smashed one. Shame that I’ve left all of my tools and equipment back in the Auvergne.
After lunch, I carried on with what I was doing, as well as doing a little tidying up around here. Strangely enough, the place doesn’t look any tidier no matter how much time I spend on it.
I don’t know what it is about doing nothing much but it makes me more tired than when I’m working hard. I was away with the fairies for a good half an hour this afternoon. But I awoke round about 17:00 and decided that with the sun shining and the sky nice and blue, I really ought to go out and about.
From up on the city walls at the back of my apartment, there’s a beautiful view of the building where I live these days.
If you look at the tree in the centre of the photograph, the window directly above it is my bedroom window. The two windows – one of which is partly obscured by the tree – round the corner are the windows in my living room.
And if you look carefully, you can see Caliburn parked round the front of the building.
I’d taken the big telephoto lens with me up onto the walls, because it was another one of these marvellous days, ideal for photography.
And with the telephoto lens there was an excellent view of Jersey out there in the English Channel. It’s very difficult to believe that it’s at least 59 kilometres – 36 miles – away out there.
From this position, there’s an even better view of Jersey, and you can even see some of the superstructure and buildings on the island. I’m quite determined that one day in the not-too-distant future I’ll be out there on a day trip.
Especially if it means negotiating the buoy and the seagull that the telephoto lens has picked up.
And that reminds me. Michael Jackson had once applied to join the navy, but withdrew his application after he was told that no matter how it was pronounced, the objects that you find in each port are called B-O-U-Y-S.
While we are on the subject of going out to the Channel Islands, there in the harbour this afternoon was the ferry that I would take when I go there. It’s not a vehicular ferry and you can tell by looking at it that it won’t take long to go there.
And that’s the reason why I’m here in Granville. Being a Pisces I always feel the call of the sea and here,
I can pop on a boat whenever I feel like it.
But it’s really a bad idea, because it doesn’t do my humour very much good. Every time I see a ferry, it makes me cross.
Meanwhile, back at the ran… err … on the city walls, there’s an excellent view right out along the coast. Right out there in the background on the horizon is the coast around Barneville-Carteret where I went to see those apartments a while ago, and that’s over 80 kilometres – 50 miles – away.
On the left-hand edge of the photograph is the lighthouse that warns of the rocks that are out there half-way between the coast and the Channel Islands. I do know it’s name, but it’s temporarily slipped my mind.
And on the right of the photograph is the big buoy that marks the entrance to the shipping channel into one of the rivers up there. This telephoto lens is magnificent, isn’t it?
That’s the main road into and out of the town. Right at the top of the hill is a roundabout – straight on is the road that leads eventually to Caen. The football stadium, the big shops and the hotel where I stayed the first night that I was here are along there.
To the right is the road that heads south along the coast to Avranches and eventually to Rennes and it’s how we would arrive here from the South.
Half-way up the hill at the roundabout that you can see there is where the railway station is – just to the left.
That down there is the road that leads from the harbour to the centre of the town.
The yellow building in the centre is the tourist information Office, and the light-coloured building next to it is the Mairie.
On the street corner to the right is the street where you find all of the normal town shops, and to the left is that nice little studio where I stayed for 12 days
.
I showed you a photo of this the other day, but that was taken with the standard lens. Seeing as I had the telephoto lens with me, I reckoned that I’d retake the photo.
It is of course the headland out at Carolles-Plage and you’ll remember that we walked out there a few weeks ago.
In the background is the coast of Brittany on the other side of the Baie de Mont St Michel
Here’s another view of a photo that I took a few days ago but I’ve retaken it with the telephoto lens.
It’s Jullouville of course. That’s another place of the many that has had my company for for a couple of days, and it’s where I had that strange encounter with that weird estate agent.
The hotel where I stayed is behind the big building that you can see to the right of centre.
Just across there is the Eglise St Paul – St Paul’s Church. Despite it looking like a typical Byzantine basilica, it’s actually reasonably-modern, construction having started in 1891 and it’s still unfinished (and it’s very unlikely that it ever will be).
The dome by the way is not made of stone as you might expect, but is one of the early examples of the use of reinforced concrete. And because salty sea-sand was used in the construction, it’s quickly crumbling away and demolition of the entire building has not been ruled out.
And in the background, you can see the floodlights of the football stadium.
Turning round a little more, my lens now focuses on my nice little building – the one with the turrets that we saw from down below the walls the other day when we were walking about.
I still reckon that the turret would be an interesting place to live, if ever it were to come on the market – not that it would be likely I suppose. The view across the harbour and the bay would be tremendous.
In fact, that’s the view that you would have from the front window of the turret. We have the fishing port just there, with the mechanical grab for speedy unloading and the storage sheds right behind.
And then a little further back we have the town beach with that nice apartment block behind it.
In between the two, to the left, you can see the masts of the yachts parked up on the quayside
Meanwhile, behind me, there’s the end of the headland around which we walked the other day and where we took some photographs.
Our pirate friend is over there on his plinth, to the left of the mobile home that you can see disappearing into the distance towards the car and coach park.
In the background on the horizon to the right you can see the Ile de Chausey
You’ve seen several photographs showing bits of the church that is here in the old walled city, but this is the first decent view that you have had of all of it.
It’s the Eglise de Notre Dame de Cap Lihou and its claim to fame is that it’s built on the site of a chapel that was constructed by the English when they occupied the site during the Hundred Years War.
The church here today though dates from 1628 and took almost 50 years to construct. It was registered as a Historic Monument in 1930.
The medieval aspect of the old city is apparent in photographs like this. While the buildings themselves might not be the originals, it’s very likely that the street layout has been preserved.
There are little alleys like that one down there all over the town and it gives the place quite a mystical air. The kind of place where it would be nice and quiet to live, but not very practical if you are the owner of a motor vehicle.
If we continue our walk around the city walls we’ll come to an area where they are undertaking some renovation work.
Part of the walls is fenced off while they repair it, and they are taking the opportunity to transform some of the vacant land at the foot into a public garden.
It’s not finished yet, and won’t be for a while, but it will be nice when it’s all done.
And so we end up at the eastern end of town where there’s a car park and an orientation table. The pyramid shape that you can see in the photo is the roof of the tower of the casino, and then we have the Casino Beach and the promenade, with Donville-les-Bains in the background.
There’s the tidal swimming pool too. The idea is that it fills when the tide is in, and when the tide goes out, the water is retained. But these days there must be a leak in it
The final photograph, for now anyway, shows you a little more of the fortifications of the old city.
If you can clamber up the rock – which is not all that easy – then you have a ditch to negotiate before you arrive at the fortifications proper.
You can see how the shape of the fortifications permits the ditch to be overlooked from all points, so any attacking army trying to scale the walls would be trapped like rats in a barrel.
So from here, I headed off slowly back to the flat. That’s enough walking for today and it’s almost tea-time. And I have another helping of last night’s curry to attend to.
And then it’s an early night. I’ve done quite enough today, and I’ll leave you with another 1950 words to read. That will keep you lot out of mischief too.
