… through the doom and gloom and the fog and mist you can just about make out the town of Port Joinville on the Ile d’Yeu.
I’ve managed to struggle across the Bay of Biscay. Strawberry Moose was smuggled aboard as a stowaway in a suitcase along with the usual bottle of the hard stuff.
As a result we were treated to strains of “It Was On The Good Ship Venus” all the way across.
After all, you can all remember him rehearsing for the chant de marins competition in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, Canada last year.
Here’s my spec from last night though. Tucked out of the way down a dead-end road near a sailing school kind of place.
That was another comfortable night spent here – as you know, I’ve stayed here before and I had no complaints that time either.
I was up and about quite early too, and took Caliburn to the garage where he’ll be staying for the next week or two.
The owner is a big fan of old cars and we had quite a chat – so much so that I almost missed the navette that would take me to the ferry.
Luckily though I managed to leap aboard – well, with such leaping as I do these days – I’m not as young as I was and we headed off into the briny.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a ship of the day and there isn’t a great deal of choice here in Fromentine.
This little offshore supply vessel will have to do for now. She’s the Fort Boyard, built in 2002 (although you would never think so to look at her) and just 472 tonnes.
She takes her name from the Napoleon-era island fortress just down the coast near Rochefort.
Our boat, which I forgot to photograph by the way, is just a simple jetfoil thing.
It’s the kind of ship that people as old as me would remember that used to do the express connection between Dover and Oostende back in the 1970s and, looking closely at it, it was probably the same boat.
And not a coffee machine in sight. What a waste of time this is.
And so I passed the time on the way across by reading one of the books that I had bought at the bookshop yesterday.
And it wasn’t until I was half-way across that I realised the significance of the book that I had chosen. Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember
– probably the most-famous (and most-likely the most accurate) story of the sinking of the Titanic.
How appropriate was that?
Cécile met me at the terminal at Port Joinville and took me for a ride around the island to show me everything.
And one thing that I do like about island life is that the Controle Technique – or MoT regulations to the British – are somewhat relaxed if you have no intention of ever taking your vehicle to the mainland.
And so here’s a vehicle that I would absolutely die for.
A Peugeot 203 plateau, or pick-up. I would pay a King’s ramsom to have one of these, that’s for sure.
It’s been my dream to own one of these for almost 40 years, ever since I first encountered one on my walking tour of Finisterre in the mid-70s
I’ve seen a few since then, and more than just the odd one for sale, but none that was worth having.
They had rather the unfortunate habit of bending in the middle due to rot round about where the rear of the cab joined up with the pick-up bed and that’s not a do-it-yourself repair by any means.
But this one looks pretty sound underneath, due not least to the amount of oil that has been thrown up out of the rear seal of the gearbox
Apart from that, I’ve had the guided tour of the cote sauvage – the wild part of the island, and it really does live up to everything that I was told that it would.
Mind you, it’s only early June and the tourists haven’t yet arrived.
I bet that it will be nothing like this in August.
