… here. Temperature was at 3°C again this morning when I awoke. And it wandered around about 5°C for most of the day. Whatever Indian Summer we were having has now gone for good until the Spring.
Last night was a bad night for me. I didn’t go to bed until rather later than I intended, and it was once again a struggle to leave my bed. I’d been on a voyage too but it had gone right out of my head by the time that I was on my feet.
This morning I had a few things to do – like deal with an upgrade to the laptop that somehow managed to wipe out the language settings on it. I had to fiddle around for a while until I could type the password in the correct character setting. And then I restarted it – and the language settings came back.
Second thing to do was to upload Paint Shop Pro to this laptop. I’d forgotten that it wasn’t on board.
Third thing was that I had had a message from the builder of Waterfox – the Firefox clone that I’ve been using. There’s a hidden link to the disabled utilities (and why it should be hidden I really don’t know) and he pointed me in the direction of where I can find the *.ftp program. It has to be configured by hand and it takes a while to do that but now it’s up and running.
I’m sure that there were a few other things that I was doing this morning but I can’t for the life of me remember now what it was. I’m cracking up, aren’t I?
After lunch I started to attack the previous blogs to upload the photos that I worked on yesterday. What with a pile of interruptions (including having a little … errr … relax on two occasions) I worked back as far as Saturday. I’ll push on tomorrow and do the rest.
It was a beautiful walk around the walls this afternoon.
The tide was quite far in and the fishermen were out in their boats at the foot of the cliffs. These people here had a couple of rods and lines and were fishing with them from the boat.
Not sure what they were catching though. But they seemed to be enjoying themselves anyway.
A little further on around the corner, the sun was shining on the beach down at the Plat Gousset.
Although it was quite windy, the tide wasn’t in far enough to push the waves over the sea wall, so there were quite a few people out there taking advantage of the good weather and the sunshine.
And the beach cabins have definitely gone too. I wonder if they take them away and store them out of the season and bring them back again next summer.
Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel the wind was whipping up nicely.
Someone was out there in a sailing boat and it was really exciting to see the sails billowing out in the wind and pulling the yacht along at an impressive rate of knots.
But you can see that there was a sea mist out there today.
You’ll remember a few months ago that there was an exhibition of paintings and photographs suspended from the town walls above the Place Maurice Marland.
Today there was a tracked machine out there that looked as if it was there to take all of them down.
That’s an exciting machine all right. I wouldn’t have minded having that down on the farm when I was living there. I could think of a thousand and one uses for it.
That wasn’t all the excitement either.
As I was walking by the walls above the harbour, I noticed Normandy Trader down there. She must have sneaked in on the tide and I had missed her, and there she was setting off back out again.
I couldn’t see what it was that she was carrying with her but I imagine that it was a mixed cargo as usual.
It’s a little-known fact but an important claim to fame of the old medieval town of Granville that there’s a connection here with the royal family of Monaco.
One of the ancestors of Prince Ranier was a girl who lived in the town and married into the Grimaldi family. That was the home of her family and there is a plaque on the side recording that Prince Ranier came here a few years ago.
It looks as if they are now going to launch a programme of renovation on the family pile.
By the time that I returned to my own family pile, I was thinking that the Normandy Trader would be well out to sea by now.
And so I coupled up the big zoom/telephoto lens and went off a-wandering round to the Pointe du Roc.
And there, setting off into the sunset against a backdrop of the Ile de Chausey was Normandy Trader, en route for Jersey.
I took another photo of it with the lens at its fullest extent, and then back here cropped out Normandy Trader and blew it (the crop, not the ship) up.
I still can’t see what she is carrying, but the photo has come out quite well considering the distance over which I was working;
When I returned to the apartment, Gribouille was outside and he let me pick him up for a stroke.
Tea tonight was the rest of the falafel with pasta and vegetables in tomato sauce.
After doing the washing-up, I went for my walk around the Pointe du Roc. And it’s freezing outside too. Winter draws on, and quite right too in this weather.
The clear, still weather was great for photography and so I took a few photos of the night. The one that I took of the boats, the harbour and the lights came out really well.
I particularly liked the reflection on the water of the red harbour gate light
And that’s not all either.
Remember the other day when they were lifting that pink and white trawler up out of the water onto the quayside at the ship repair yard?
Well, there she is now. Up on blocks now and a ladder up against the side. There’s obviously some work that needs to be done to it, and it looks as if they have already made a start.
So back here now and I’m going to try yet again for another early night. Curled up under the blankets is the best place to be in this weather, I reckon.
Beach Plat Gousset Granville
The beach down by the Casino at the Place Marechal Foch.
Normandy Trader leaving Granville harbour on her way back to Jersey.
Normandy Trader setting out for Jersey
