Tag Archives: trawler

Monday 17th June 2019 – I’VE HAD A NICE …

… day out today.

Sitting in the sunshine on the edge of a flower pot outside a supermarket eating a baguette and tomato, it reminded me of the summer in 1977 that I spent hitch-hiking around Brittany.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, is it?

Last night I went to bed rather later than I hoped. And despite turning over in bed a couple of times I slept right through to the alarm.

And it is another occasion where whatever I had been doing during the night was simply wiped out of my memory the moment the alarm went off, before I even had chance to grab the dictaphone. I do however have some kind of vague memory of being depressed about the nominations for “Sports person of the year” for a Nabisco breakfast cereal competition, thinking that as far as I was concerned, never mind who might be likely to win, the best names were missing off the list.

With an early start, I had an early breakfast and then dealt with a mass of files off the dictaphone. We’re now down to 60 files – and once they are all done I’ll have to update the blog to include the entries that I missed.

After a shower (I need to look pretty) I headed off up the road for the station and the train.

I was interrupted on the way down the hill though because they were cracking on with repairing the city walls and I thought that I’d stop and have a little look to see where they have got to.

Every day they are going further and further along the wall ripping out the loose stuff and building up. But nevertheless they are still quite a way behind schedule, according to the statutory notice on the protective fencing.

And of course that isn’t all of the construction work that was going on either.

There was a diversion in the rue Couraye, sending all of the traffic off down the back streets so I went on to investigate what was going on. It appears that they are digging up the street for some reason or other.

The street is paved with small granite setts and they were digging them up round by where there was a grid. It’s right opposite the reopened Credit Agricole so I’m awaiting news some time in the near future of a bold bank robberry

Even though I was early, the train was earlier still and was at the platform.

It’s one of the Bombardier X-76500 series of trains – the backbone of the French rural rail network these days. New, comfortable and smooth. A far cry from the old rattling Pacers that run around as best they can on the UK’s ailing network.

The was quite crowded too. This route has only been open for a short while since the reinstated the curve near Folligny and it is clearly doing the business.

It was a very pleasant ride out to Coutances this lunchtime. It only took the train 25 minutes to reach there.

My appointment isn’t until 14:20 so that gives me plenty of time to go for a look round. I started off at the railway station because I’d never been here before. It’s quieter now that it used to be because in the past there was a direct line to Cherbourg via La Haye du Puits but that closed down back in the 1970s.

Nowadays trains follow the remaining line towards Caen and passengers for Cherbourg change trains at Lison

Outside the station and down the road a few hundred metres is a monument to the dead of the First World War of the town.

There are quite a few names on the memorial, giving you some idea of how much the French suffered during that war. In total, 1,357,800 French soldiers lost their lives out of a total population of 41,415,000 in 1911. That’s one-thirtieth of the population. To put it even more into perspective, in 1911 the population of France was 41,415,000. in 1921, the population was 39,108,000 – a decrease of 2,307,000

There were a few casualties listed for the Second World War. That wasn’t as disastrous in casualty terms because once the British front in the North-East of France collapsed and the Germans got in behind the French armies, the end was pretty quick.

If you were to look at a map of Coutances, you would see that the hospital is just outside the railway station.

But that doesn’t take into account the topography. The town is built on the top of a steep hill and the railway station is perched on the side. The hospital is actually 100 feet or so lower down the hill.

And in any case, I’m not going there.

Instead, I headed off down the hill towards the rheumatology clinic.

Down at the junction of the rue de Regneville and the rue Geoffroy de Montbray is this really beautiful cross. You see pleny of crosses and calvaries at road junctions in France, but I’ve seen few that have been as impressive as this.

And that reminds me of a story I once heard about a competition for the design of a calvary. And due to a misunderstanding on the telephone, one sculptor sent in the plans for John Wayne on his horse.

It’s been a whike since these pages have featured an old car. But that’s about to change;

Down near the bottom of the hill parked in a little yard was this beautiful little Renault Estafette.

Not the first one we’ve seen – we saw one around Granville a year or so ago. And had this been 30 years ago we would have seen them everywhere because they were the archetypical French medium-size vans used by inter alia the Police.

There’s a Carrefour supermarket at the bottom of the hill and although I could see it quite clearly, finding the entrance was quite something else. But eventually I was inside and furnished myself with a baguette, some tomatoes, some bananas and a bottle of water.

Outside, perched on the edge of a large flower pot in the sunshine, I ate my lunch as I mentioned above.

When we were in Coutances 18 months ago we got to see something of the Cathedral.

From close to, it was impossible to have a reall good view of the entire building but from down here in St Pierre de Coutances the view is absolutely excellent. You can really have a good idea of the size of the building.

The cathedral dates from the 11th Century although it has been redesigned and rebuilt on a regular basis. It was built on the site of a church dating from the 5th Century that was destroyed in a Viking raid, and it’s quite possible that there was a religious establishment on the site before then

On the way to the clinic, walking along the Granville road through St Pierre de Coutances, I passed a building that resembled very closely a railway building.

It had all of the style, architecture and patterns of other small railway buildings that I have already seen while I’ve been out and about on my travels.

I doubt very much that it was a railway station though because there are no “running in” notices on the side of the building, like you would expect to see in similar circumstances so I shall have to reserve judgement.

And as I was musing about all of this, I walked past a track that had every possible indication that you could wish that it might have at one time have been a railway.

It’s signposted as a walk out to the Pont de la Roque, the ruined bridge that’s a memorial to the Liberation of France out near the coast.

I’ve not as yet been able to trace any record of a railway line going out to there, but it certainly looks very “railway” to me.

Furthermore, I made another little discovery in this respect some time later.

On the way back, in the immediate vicinity but just around the corner in the Pont de Soulles, I discovered a street called rue du Tram.

And so I can see that I will have to be doing some more research into this, although I would have liked to see the tram that could have climbed up that bank without very much of a run-in.

It’s not only the bank that the tram would have had to negotiate, there’s a considerable disparity in altitude.

The road from which I took the photo of the rue du Tram passes underneath this enormous viaduct, over which passes the railway line on which I’ve just travelled from Granville to Coutances. If we assume that the terminus of the tram was near the railway station, then I imagine that the route must have been something like a roller-coaster ride, down from the station and then back up here.

However, returning to our story, at the clinic I didn’t have to wait too long. I was seen pretty quickly, given an ecograph, and the specialist diagnosed that I had a hygroma. He wanted to draw some fluid off the knee (which I will have to take to the laboratory for examination) so stuck a hypodermic in my knee – right in the most tender part of it.

I have never ever in my life been in so much agony.

On the way back I called at a pharmacie. I found one in the rue du Pont de Soulles but I was distracted once more.

Almost next door to the pharmacy, there in an alcove in a wall is an old hand pump for pumping up water, presumably from a well or a spring. It’s certainly an interesting place to find one

Meanwhile, in the pharmacy, I asked them to deal with the prescription that the specialist had given me. I have to make up a mix of 50% water 50% clinical alcohol and apply it to a patch that I have to place on my knee. For no longer than 20 minutes (because it will burn otherwise) three times per day.

From the pharmacy there was a stiff climb up some very narrow streets towards the railway station.

The rue des Teintures is pedestrianised from halfway up, which is just as well because it’s very narrow and twisty. But there’s a beautiful view of parts of the old city that I have never seen before, such as the old chapel of the Augustine monastery.

The old bell-tower is classed as a Historic monument by the French authorities, and quite rightly so in my opinion. However I can’t find out very much about it.

There was a three-hour wait for the train back – this new line only has four trains each way per day. So it was a good job that I had taken a book with me and that I had bought a bottle of water.

So while I was waiting for the train I was reading my book, drinking my water and … errr … having a little relax.

A train from St-Lô pulled in but to my surprise it terminated here and then set off back. It’s not like there’s a lot of traffic on the line so I would have thought that they might have run on to at least Granville.

Eventually my train came in – bang on time too which is always good news. There weren’t too many empty seats, which surprised me, but I managed to find a place of my own to sit and relax.

And for the first time for I don’t know how long, there was a ticket collector on the train who was actually checking the tickets. I’d bought mine on line before setting off, so I was quite okay.

I was soon back in Granville. I’d missed the laboratory, but I was just in time to see all of the shops close up. 19:00 already. Where did the day go?

There was a lot going on down in the town that I saw as I was climbing up the hill.

It goes without saying that with the tide in and the gates open, there was a line of trawlers unloading at the fish-processing plant. I just wish that I could remember what it was like back before 1992 when the Grand Banks were open and the port was heaving with deep-sea trawlers.

And even earlier too, when the railway line was operating and all of the catch was taken away by rail. I shall have to go to the library and do some research into the dockside railway.

There were a couple of people gazing over the wall at something going on down below, so I joined them.

There was a bride down there having her photograph taken amidst the plastic rowing boats. And I’m not sure why because it wouldn’t have been the place where I would have wanted my wedding photographs to be taken.

And that wasn’t everything either. On the way up the hill I’d seen a big black-and-white cat dash across the road, run up a tree, knock a pigeon out, dive out of the tree and drag the stunned bird off in triumph.

Well done him.

Rosemary had rung up while I was out. She rang me back later and we had a really good chat for ages.

For a change I didn’t feel like a big tea, so I just had a nibble here and there. Now I’m off to bed to relax my knee and have a good sleep.

And I need it too. I’ve done 125% of my daily target today – 9.8 kms. And much to my surprise, I don’t feel any worse than I did before I set out.

But I shall probably sleep tonight. I had a little doze here and there in the station but I’ll need more than that.

gare de coutances railway station manche normandy france

old cars renault estafette coutances manche normandy france

Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-la-Victoire Rue des Teintures, coutances manche normandy france

fire drill firemen st pierre de coutances manche normandy france

motorcycle training school st pierre de coutances manche normandy france

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Coutances manche normandy france

voie de la victoire Pont de Soulles st pierre de coutances manche normandy france

rue des teintures Centre Hospitalier de Coutances manche normandy france

Clocher de l’ancienne chapelle des frères Augustins rue des teintures coutances manche normandy france

bollards with metal inserts rue des teintures coutances manche normandy france

Clocher de l’ancienne chapelle des frères Augustins rue des teintures Centre Hospitalier de Coutances manche normandy france

Thursday 13th June 2019 – THIS PHOTO …

… is quite symbolic.

It’s one of the first that I have taken with the new Nikon D500 camera.

It’s one of the Joly France, one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey, heading off to the island with another load of visitors, passing one of the local trawlers heading into the harbour with the day’s catch.

So there I have been over the last couple of days crowing about how despite how late I might (or might not) have been to bed and how disturbed the night was, I had still managed to rouse myself from Ye Olde Stinkinge Pitte at something like a reasonable hour.

And so here I was this morning, in bed early, sleeping all the way through the night in comparative comfort without having to prop up my leg on a box, and sleeping right the way through all of the alarms until about 09:30.

What a way to start the day!

So with having set out all horribly late, I eventually sat down and started to edit the photos that I didn’t do yesterday, and added them into yesterday’s blog entry.

This afternoon I had a read of the camera manual and then went out for a little walk to see how it all would turn out.

And I have quite a lot to learn about this machine – not the least of which being the fact that the controls work backwards from any other Nikon that I have had.

You can probably gather that from some of these iaages

Setting up the camera is quite complicated because being an up-market camera, it’s more of a machine than a camera.

It has buttons and controls everywhere for all kinds of different things, and that’s an advance on the earlier Nikons where you had to program “function” buttons to carry out some of the tasks.

And the manual exposure is so much easier too.

With the older cameras, you needed to set the aperture or the speed by using the “Aperture” or Speed” function, set the camera to Manual, and then adjust the function that you didn’t previously set.

With the Nikon D500 it has separate buttons for “Aperture” and Speed”, and also a separate button for the ISO settings.

So from that point of view it’s much more straightforward.

But as you admire St Helier and the Channel Islands, I’ll mention the problem that I noticed with the controls.

And that is that the “Aperture” and Speed” dials work back-to-front. To widen the aperture on the older cameras you rotate the button clockwise.

But with this one, you have to rotate the button anti-clockwise.

And that caught me out well and truly with the first couple of photos.

Trying to add a little extra light to my images, I ended up adding a little extra dark instead. And that was rather depressing.

I shall just have to work a lot harder in this respect, won’t I?

The camera is also quite heavy compared to the others that I have used.

And so I’m glad that I bought the monopod the other week. I’m certainly going to need that as I work my way around, until I can get to grips with the machine.

And that might take me a few weeks, so I shall have to start to get out and about more often with it.

But I can’t wait to try out its low-light capability.

Feeling now a little better in the leg, with much more bendability, I eschewed the salt bath this afternoon, to give things a chance to settle down.

If I have another good night’s sleep, I’m hoping that I’ll feel even better tomorrow.

We can but hope.

Tea was some more taco rolls with the last of the stuffing that I made. Followed by pears and coconut soya cream.

And now it’s bed time. And I’m ready for it too, even though I had a good lie-in. Another good sleep will do me good and get me ready for Monday.

brittany coast baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

vilde la marine brittany france

pointe de carolles granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 15th May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes yet again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I was rather confused by something in the harbour.

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

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

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

trawler granville manche normandy france eric hall

speedboat pleasure boat granville manche normandy france eric hall

yacht buoy granville manche normandy france eric hall

sea plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hall

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

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

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

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trawler granville manche normandy france eric hall

speedboat port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

Tuesday 14th May 2019 – I HAD A …

much more productive day today;

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

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

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

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

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

Glorious sunshine but still rather windy for my liking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But such is life. There is always tomorrow.

trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france eric hall

speedboat granville manche normandy france eric hall

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

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

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

classe decouverte port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hall

cherry picker beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hall

Monday 13th May 2019 – I DON’T KNOW …

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

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

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

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

The sea was absolutely beautiful this afternoon.

It wasn’t just trawlers out there either;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

fishing rod and line granville manche normandy france

fishing boats english channel granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 8th May 2019 – THE BIG ADVANTAGE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the plot sickens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

victor hugo port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Tuesday 7th May 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… start to the day today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There had been several pauses and interruptions too.

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

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

There was of course the usual afternoon walk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then off for my evening walk around the walls.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So an early start tomorrow.

trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

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

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

yachts trawlers english channel granville manche normandy france

Sunday 5th May 2019 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a baking day. Or, rather, a food making day.

We started off by making another batch of vegan hummus. You can see all of the ingredients here, plus some coarse-ground black pepper of course.

I started off by cutting the pepper into tiny cubes and then roasting it.

While that was doing, I took my whizzer, added a pile of chick peas, half the weight of tahini (sesame seed paste), chick pea juice, olive oil, garlic, sea salt, black pepper and tarragon, and whizzed it all up into a nice creamy paste.

It doesn’t need to be too liquidy so I usually don’t add much liquid and oil at first, but keep on adding it during the mix to make it right. Remember that you can always add more liquid, but you can’t take it out.

Once it was done and mixed how I wanted it, I added the pepper and olives, and gave them a little whizz, just enough to distribute them throughout the mix and not disintegrate them.

Some of the mixture went into the freezer and some in the fridge for lunch for the next week or so.

Later on, I made an apple pie.

Having an affinity with Belgium, I used boskoop apples, brown sugar, desiccated coconut, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg and a couple of vegan pastry rolls

Some lemon juice too, of course.

So first you spread out one of the pastry rolls onto your cutting board, and using the baking tin as a template, cut the pastry round the tin to make the top of your pie, allowing for a 1cm overlap.

Then, grease your baking tin, unroll the second pastry roll and put it in the tin, pressing down VERY LIGHTLY the roll to fit the base properly

Cut the apples into quarters, decore them and cut them into very thin slices. Then add them into the baking tine.

Add them in layers, and on top of each later add some lemon juice (to keep the apples white) some brown sugar, raisins, desiccated coconut, nutmeg and cinnamon.

By the time you’ve built up the layers of filling, the base of the pastry should be completely covered.

Moisten the edge of the pastry in the pie where it overlaps the lip of the pie tin, and then put the pastry top that you cut out earlier on top.

With a fork, press down the edges onto the lip of the pie dish so that the pie top and the pie bottom are completely sealed. Then trim off the excess pastry that’s overhanging the pie dish.

Brush the top of your pie with milk, and then prick holes into it with a fork to let out any steam that might build up.

Bung it into the oven at 200°C until it looks like this.Probably 40-45 minutes, something like that.

So what do you do with the excess pastry and apple that you have left over?

Roll out your patry with your rolling pin until it’s flat. Keep on cutting off the irregular edges and adding it back to be rolled in, so that the pastry resembles a square as best as you can.

Add your apple, coconut, spices, raisins, lemon juice etc into the centre, and then fold the pastry over the top and, dampening the edges, squeeze them together like a cornish pasty so it’s all sealed togather.

Brush with milk, poke holes to let the steam out, and then bung that in the oven too until it looks like this.

Yesterday I remember saying that knowing my luck, with Sunday being a Day of Rest and no alarm, I’d be wide-awake pretty early on.

And I reckon that 03:50 corresponds pretty closely to this definition. But there was no chance of me rising from my stinking pit at anything like that time. 08:50 was much more like it.

Plenty of time of course to go a-rambling. I was with Liz Ayers last night in Crewe round by the Wistaston area. I’d been taxiing and we had quite a few jobs going on including taking Mrs Urion home for lunch and pick her back up at 13:45. But she was already booked in at 13:45 for a trip to the bank, so I wondered if I was expected to combine the two trips or were they separate. In between jobs I was socialising with Liz then nipping out to do jobs. Liz was talking to a load of other taxi drivers – not me because I didn’t get on with them. She was chatting to him who lived in Ruskin Road. I went past twice, shook (or rather touched, because that was all he was willing to do) his hand and went off to do a job. She said that she was going to stay behind and have a drink. She was chatting to this guy and said they were going to have a drink together. I went back home, and Roxanne was there. I told Roxanne what Liz was doing and she commented that she bet that she was flirting with this guy and she wanted to see. So I put her in the car and we went to this pub at Wells Green and sure enough that’s what she was doing. The dirty look on Roxanne’s face was priceless.
Later on I was out around Nantwich last night with someone or other and we bumped into this friend of mine. I’d been searching the internet about something and had discovered something about Burt Reynolds – his real surname was Diamond because his father had been a diamond cutter. He played bass, including a weird 2-string bass. I happened to mention to this friend of mine that I’d seen this. He said “yes, but he just happened to have been in the right geographical position. I played bass one day and never had the recognition”. “One day!” I retorted. “I’d played bass for years and never had any”. To which he replied “yes, but I played in the daytime”. This conversation went on and he headed off towards London Road – he was probably staying there with his work. We discussed food and he had been to a Chinese restaurant somewhere for his tea. I ended up back home staying in some kind of strange apartment with two bedrooms à l’enfilade living with a woman who had two kids. They had the other bedroom. She said they should both be in year 2 or 3 but one was much smaller than the other. She’d had serious health problems, including incontinence. We talked quite a lot about these kids. She’d had severe medical treatment but was so much better. I was wondering why this friend of mine never said that he had come to stay down here. I’m sure we could have put him up somehow – there’s a comfy sofa for a start, he would have loved that. The conversation drifted away from there and I ended up in the kitchen. My mother was in there doing the washing up, with a length of green garden hose coupled up to the tap and a high-pressure “squirter”. Every question I asked her was answered with “I’ll tell you tomorrow”. I tried to find out what was going on and in the end she said “do you know my neck cancer specialist? Steven? He’s actually died of cancer and I’m going to his funeral tomorrow”. I said that it happens to all of us. We’re all going to get it some time or other and let’s face it – by the time that we get to our age if we haven’t had a serious health crisis already we are doing really well. She didn’t understand for a minute what I meant. I went outside, to find myself at les Guis. there was a load of my friends out there. They had moved Caliburn but there was a pile of smoke everywhere. Piles of wood had been cut. They said that while I had been in the house they had cut all of this wood for me and put it in stacks and cleared the drive that was all overgrown and got the van down there. I thought that this was really nice. All this wood was nicely stacked up. It just needed cutting to length and then I could burn it. I thought that this was marvellous.

After a leisurely start to the day I attacked the dictaphone notes and by the time I was ready to stop to make my hummus for lunch, I was down to just 129 entries.

The hummus was delicious as I expected, and once I’d dined I went out into the gorgeous weather.

It really was nice out there today, and I took quite a few long-distance photos of things miles away, to see how the new lens performs.

This is a photo of the lighthouse that is just offshore from the Pointe-D’Agon

There’s a really interesting point along the coast where the River Sienne enters the sea.

Because of tidal drift of sedimant, the mouth of the river now faces south rather than east.

And we can see in the background, if we look carefully, the wind-farm near Barneville-Carteret

Jersey was standing out quite clearly on the horizon today too.

The houses of St Helier and that area, 54 kms away, stood out quite clearly in the distance and have cme up quite well in this photo once I enhanced it.

And while I was at at, I was photo-bombed by a seagull. It reminded be very much of that famous World War II photo that a German photo unit took of the UK radar masts at Dover from Cap Griz Nez and managed to pick up a beautiful image of a Supermarine Spitfire that buzzed into the image.

The tide was on its way out and the crowds hadn’t yet flocked to the beach.

There was one early bird out there already though, and I couldn’t at first make out what it was that he was doing. But cropping the photo and blowing it up (which I can do these days despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) I noticed that he seemed to have a metal detector with him.

He didn’t look as if he was doing all that much good with it though

Back here, I regrettably crashed out on my chair for 20 minutes, but I managed to wake up in time for the football. It’s the Welsh Cup Final between (predictably) TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads. And just as predictably, TNS won it at something of a canter, 3-0.

Mind you, it’s probably fairer to say that the Nomads lost it. The first goal was the Nomads central defence being half-asleep. Greg Draper is probably the best striker the Welsh Premier League has ever seen and you can’t give him even half-an-inch of room, even when he looks as unwell as he does just recently.

The second goal was the fault of the keeper losing his sense of position, and the third goal was the classic keeper’s dilemma from a set-piece of “do you cover the onrushing forwards in case they make contact with the ball, or do you cover the shot in case the onrushing forwards miss it” and in the end being caught in no-man’s-land between the two.

And the match might have had a totally different outcome has the referee awarded to the Nomads at least one of the three penalties that I would have awarded had I been refereeing.

After the match I made my apple pie and then cooked a vegan pizza, which was just as delicious as normal.

Later on I went out for my evening walk around the Pointe du Roc.

The harbour gates must have just opened because the sea was alive with trawlers.

Here’s one of them heading off into the sunset, with the coast of Jersey away in the distance. How long they will be continuing to go off that way depends upon the outcome of Brexit.

But my attention was drawn by some kind of object on the horizon.

I couldn’t see at that distance what it was so back here I used my “crop – enhance – enlarge” technique to see if I could identify it. And I have to say that I’m still none-the-wiser about what it might be, over there on the extreme right of the image.

What I’ll have to do is to take a similar photo in a day or two’s time to see if it’s still there. If it is, it’s a lighthouse. If not, it’s a ship.

Back home, it’s only 21:30 and despite my little repos earlier this afternoon, I’m exhausted.

So badger the writing of the blog. I intend to take full advantage of my fatigue by going to bed for an early night.

hauteville sur mer manche normandy france

buoy jersey channel islands

yachts english channel islands

trawler ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

trawler english channel granville manche normandy france

trawlers english channel granville manche normandy france

trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Saturday 4th May 2019 – WONDERS WILL NEVER CEASE!

US Granvillaise have not been playing so well just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And tonight, they were playing Stade Briochin, the league leaders, who were in yellow.

And I could see all of this ending in tears.

But to the surprise of everyone in the ground, and probably the players too, Granville actually won. 2-1 it was too.

They scored first with a penalty – a carbon copy of the goal the other week. The little n°10 wiggled his way into the penalty area, going nowhere and inviting a foul challenge.

And the opposition defence duly obliged.

Mind you, Stade Briochin equalised 2 minutes later – another penalty from a rather soft and accidental handball in the area.

Granville scored a second goal about 5 minutes into the second half with a beautiful flowing goal, and then hung on for the rest of the match.

We had no less than 6 minutes of injury time at the end of the match and I’ve no idea at all where all of that came from.

Stade Briochin, whose supporters turned out in numbers, complete with flags and drums, can count themselves unlucky in this game because they were the better team, but we were treated to a goalkeeping masterclass by the Granville keeper Florian Verplanck.

He’s a player who has impressed me right from the start of the season, and what he’s doing keeping goal at this level I really don’t know, and today he played the best that I have ever seen.

He made several brilliant saves at crucial moments, and even managed to get his hands to the penalty. The only time that Stade Briochin got past him, there was a defender present to clear off the line.

And Granville had their moments too. They had a couple of excellent chances too. One that will stay in my mind for a long time was the quick, long throw-in from the n°2, a back-header from the n°9 and a beautiful shot on the half-volley from about twenty-five yards out that screamed into the area, grazing the crossbar on its way out for a goal kick.

Last night was another depressing night. I had my early night and went off to sleep, but I kept on waking up throughout the night.

Plenty of time to go on a ramble though. And more than one too.

I’m not sure about what happened first though. It was something to do with 3D modelling or something like that. I’d found a modelling site that I had wanted to use but I couldn’t get access to it. There was something about the minimum order being £10:00 or something like this or whether this was the minimum payment sent to someone. It ended up with me meeting a guy who didn’t really correspond to what I had in mind to do. I wanted something more aggressive than he had. He tried then to provoke me into a fight so in the end I hit him. he went down and I thought “that’s not what I want, is it?”. I don’t know where it went after that.
A little later on I was with a group of young girls. They had already had a telling-off about overplaying to the customers and there they were again on another occasion. One of the girls came round to see me again – it was A and we were talking, saying that they had to calm down their act now and can’t go any further with it and be very careful not to go inciting the customers. I made a joke that “you can incite me any time you like. It’s nice to have that week in every two where it’s nice to have something going it – it makes like much more interesting”. I thought about the time where I’d found that bag or file with about 12 different identities in it and how I had to apply for them. I found that pretty boring but at east this idea with the girls doing their dancing etc makes it extremely interesting for those who have to wait. Like the houses in Chestnut Avenue in Shavington where house sales were such that it was taking 11 months to sell a house and move away and I’m sure that in that particular time these girls would entertain people waiting, one week in every two like they might be doing if we were lucky.
Later still I was with an old school-friend (but it wasn’t him, it was a former friend from another time) and a lady of my acquaintance last night and we’d been going for a good walk around somewhere that gave me the impression that it was somewhere in Germany but she had to wander off somewhere. She got on the bus and we carried on walking. We walked down this suburban road past a big pub and took a turning off to the left onto some kind of new industrial estate. There was a Social Club called the 5MM there so we had a look inside. Then my phone rang and the ring tone distubed everyone so they threw us out. It was our ladyfriend, saying she’d finished and where should we meet? I described where we were – the Social Club, a Hotel also with 5MM in white and blue on it, shops and things and a café and this lady (and I called her another name at the time, no idea why) knew it, but said that it was miles out. I asked this old school-friend/former friend character what we should do, where should we meet up? He replied something along the lines of “well she can get here, can’t she? It won’t take her all that long”. I suggested that to the lady and she replied “that’s miles!” I asked the old school-friend if there was anywhere in between where we could meet. He was rather offhand about it so I passed him the phone and told him to arrange a meeting place with her. He basically told her to come here in rather a brusque tone. She turned up (quicker than I would have expected) and she was really annoyed, shouting at my friend “don’t you know any North German people you could be nice to?”

Just for a change I was up before the final alarm, and organised fairly quickly too. And in the shower as well having a really good scrub ready for the weekend.

All of this led to an early start. I was out in the rainstorm before 09:00 and in LIDL early. There was nothing of any excitement there although I did spend some money there – Supplies are running rather low.

Next stop was, surprisingly, At Espace Auto in the rue de la Fontaine Jolie. Calburn’s Controle Technique is up at the end of the month so I needed to make an appointment for him to have a service and a check-over.

Leclerc had nothing exciting, and neither did NOZ, except for some vegan coconut sorbet – half a litre for €0:99!

I’m not expecting very much from this, but at that price I’m quite willing to risk it to see how it turns out.

Anyway, at least it will be different. I’ll be making an apple pie tomorrow so when I’ve finished the soya cream that’s open I’ll give it a try and see what it’s like.

Back here I put everything away and then, quite an important task -I made some more muesli. I’m running out and I can’t be doing without that.

Into the bedroom afterwards and there I made a start on the dictaphone notes. Another huge pile disappeared and there are only 150 left. But it might be slow for a few days – there was a gap in my blog entries while I was underneath the knife, but it didn’t stop me making notes on the dictaphone.

After lunch I carried on with the dictaphone notes but unfortunately I couldn’t keep going and ended up asleep on the chair for a short while.

At 17:15 I went off to the football now that the weather had cleared up.

There had been some talk around the town that the Council had been on the prowl around painting helpful notices on the street in strategic places, and this must be one of them.

You can tell that it’s the holiday season, with all of these elferly people with their little toutous messing up the streets and refusing to clean it up, despite the best efforts of the council to place plastic bags all around the town.

It’s hardly a surprise that everyone is so fed up of certain types of tourists who behave like this.

After the football I wandered back home through the crowds of people and the group of young girls who followed me almost to home.

They left me behind at the look-out over the harbour where I stopped to take a photo. You can tell that it’s weekend and the harbour gates are open because all of the fishing boats have come in and are tied up at the quayside.

Our old friend La Grande Ancre is over there on the far side.

Looking at it now, it’s hard to imagine how the port might have been 120 years ago when it was crammed with sail-powered fishing boats who would make the voyage out to the Grand Banks off the coast of Canada.

How times have changed.

Back here it was tea out of a tin seeing as I’ve been out late.
Tomorrow is Sunday – lie-in time. No alarm so just you watch me be wide awake at 05:00.

Friday 3rd May 2019 – I’VE DONE …

… a massive 15% – almost 20% – of the outstanding files on the dictaphone list this morning.

211 was the figure at which I started this morning. By late morning it was a mere 172. And the only reason that I stopped was because I reckoned that I ought to be doing other things as well.

Actually, I cheated. I finally found out where I’d copied the notes previously. I’d actually typed them directly into the blog entries without putting them in the notes file.

Ad so I simply copied and pasted them into the dictaphone notes file, and that was that.

Despite my saying that I’d be having an early night last night, it didn’t quite work out like that. Just as I was planning on going to bed, I had a phone call.

And that put paid to my early night, and in spades too because by the time that I’d finished the phone call, my desire to sleep had gone and it was long after midnight when I finally hit the sack.

And I was off on a voyage too. I was in the EU last night and a princess probably the princess of Monaco came walking through. I had my camera with me so I took a few photos of them. She asked to see them and was quite impressed. She said that she would be at a meeting at the Parliament there at 09:15 next day and would I like to photograph her there. So about 09:05 I picked up all of my stuff, cameras and the like but because I didn’t have a flash I carried a copper frying pan with me that would reflect the light. As I set off I had to walk through my office. everyone was sitting there like at school and I just walked through with my camera and my stuff and straight out of the back door, leaving them open-mouthed at what was going on. I had to fight my way through the huge crowds at the Commission (?!) And found myself at the back of this big meeting where a huge discussion was taking place. There were thousands of people there but I couldn’t see this princess. We were discussing documents and all this kind of thing. Suddenly a document came up talking about storage and I realised that it was a document that I had prepared. They were passing copies about through the meeting to people who hadn’t had them and an extra copy of this document which was in two parts appeared at my desk. I hung onto it as no-one else behind me seemed to want it. A woman came in late and had all of her documents given to her late. She started to ask “who’s this EH who had prepared this document?” I said that it was me – tey asked me who it was; She said that she didn’t have a copy so I passed mine over or the spare one that i had. She was not very impressed because she was expecting a much bigger document. I couldn’t see this princess and her children (because she had some children with her) anywhere in this meeting, but they were all looking at me and my stuff wondering what I was doing. I think that that Nicole was there at one time.

It goes without saying that I didn’t leap joyously out of bed with the lark this morning. Just after 07:00 it was when I finally saw the light of day.

After the usual morning performance, rather later than it has been just recently, I did the photos for yesterday and then attacked the dictaphone notes.

What with a stream of interruptions and the like, and searching for the notes files, it took me until probably 11:30 or something like that to demolish a good pile of them.

Next task was to do some of the outstanding blog entries – to update the photos. I’m now back to 12th July 2018. I’ve left out the trip to the High Arctic because I have plans for that.

There were no photos for 11th July, and 10th July puts me back to the last day of my voyage around Europe. We’re at the Somme battlefield and I spent much of the remainder of the day allocating the text and alt tags to the photos from that period.

When they are done, I’ll update the blog entries as appropriate, and then think about doing the web pages.

here was lunch in between all of that, and it was taken indoors again. The high winds are putting the wind up me as far as sitting on the wall goes.

I called a halt to the photos when it was time to go for my afternoon perambulation.

And I immediately came under aerial attack. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in August when we were at the Cabanon Vauban we saw an autogyro fly right past where we were standing.

This afternoon, just as I walked out of the apartment, the aforementioned machine flew right over my head. And so I took a photo of it.

That wasn’t the only aerial operation going on this afternoon.

About 30 seconds later, one of the hang-gliders flew past my head. There were a few of them out there this afternoon enjoying the windy weather.

I must admit to having a little musing to myself about how exciting it might have been had the hang-glider and the autogyro had a meeting of the minds and bodies right over where I was standing.

And that was far from being all of the excitement out there too.

Round on the Pointe du Roc not too far from where the bunkers are situated, there were some people measuring up, setting pegs and tapes on the ground and marking something out.

Further enquiries (because I believe that if you want to know the answer to the question, you have to ask the question) revealed that they are going to erect a monument to the Heroes of the Resistance on this spot

We can’t have a trip around the Pointe du Roc without going to see what is going on in the chantier navale

We have the two usual boats that have been there for a while, and on the right is the old trawler that has been on blocks over on the far side of the yard for as long as I can remember.

But on the left we have what looks like a different trawler that has come in for some kind of repair or renovation.

In between dodging the aerial attacks earlier, I’d been looking out to sea to see if there were any boats on their way in.

I’d noticed something in the distance and snapped it once or twice, but sure enough, it eventually chugged round the Pointe du Roc and into the Baie de Mont St michel.

And then I was finally able to work out what it was. We have a fishing boat and it seems to be towing a smaller boat behind it.

Back here, I had another outstanding task that needed dealing with.

The memory stick that I take with me when I travel is a mass of confusion because I’ve been very lax in bringing the files up to date.

So what I did was uploaded them all to this computer and wiped the memory stick clean for future use. Then, with all of the files now on the computer, I eliminated all of the duplicates.

Next wtep was to allocate files to folders where I could.

Finally, I had a mass of files, some with two, three or even four copies which are all different. My next task is to do a compare and merge so that there is only one file for each, but with everything on it.

Tea was another slice of shepherd’s pie with gravy and veg, followed by fruit salad and soya cream.

Time then for my evening walk of course.

My trip took me by the house on the corner of the rue du Nord – the one that is currently under major renovation. They’ve now laid some grillage on top of the insulation that they put down yesterday, so it looks as if the concrete won’t be far behind.

I’ll be intrigued to see how it all comes out.

It was a thoroughly beautiful evening out there tonight, and the colours in the evening sunshine were marvellous.

Just the type of evening that is ideal for photography so I spent some time out there taking a pile of pics of the scenery.

This one of the cliffs above the Plat Gousset, with the Museum Christian Dior on the top, has come out particularly well.

talking of things coming out particularly well, on my way back home via the rue Notre Dame, I was greeted by Minette, the old black cat.

She came over for a good stroke, and she expressed a considerable amount of interest in the camera.

Clearly she was looking for her little moment of fame, and what could I do apart from obliging her? She really is a nice cat, although she would benefit from a good grooming.

So back here now, and I really am going to try for an early night. I was disappointed about yesterday so I want to catch up, and of course I have shopping tomorrow.

I need a pile of stuff too so I need to be on form.

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Tuesday 30th April 2019 – I’VE NOT HAD …

… a very profitable day today as far as my backlog of work goes. But there have been a few very good reasons for this.

Not the least of which being that I had yet another bad night. Tossing and turning for too much of it without actually departing hence.

At one point I must have been away with the fairies because I was off on my travels again. There was an exam taking place last night and I was doing part of the English syllabus. I was there in the exam room struggling my way through the first of three questions that I needed to answer when I suddenly found out that I had been named as a volunteer to take place in some kind of exam. They had needed someone to act as a “prop” to lie down while they danced a Highland Fling over and around, rather like a Highland sword dance. I was grabbed for this and taken out of my own exam before I’d even finished the first question. I was made to lie down and was dragged all the way across the floor and these ice floes until I was in the correct position. By now I was miles away from where my exam was taking place. All of these people turned up in a whole collection of old cars, motor bikes, pedal cycles. Even a unicycle that didn’t have a rider, an autonomous one. They all seemed to be symbolic of death. An old vehicle pulled up with a coffin in it and I had to lie there while they did this dance around me. I didn’t have a clue what was happening. Everyone was going on about their exams but I replied that they could consider themselves lucky. I hadn’t finished my first question yet, I only had three hours and I’d been dragged away over here and I don’t know when I’m going to end up back. All these kids started to join in. At one time a kid was trying to do a handstand balancing on two shovels. He could get himself off the ground like this but then he fell over and all the while I was panicking about my exam with all these old cars and people all around me trying to get me to be the prop for this Highland dance thing.

Nevertheless, just for another change I was up and about before the third alarm went off, but with some not inconsiderable effort too;

The usual morning performance was followed by a shower. I need to get myself clean and tidy because I’m having visitors. That also meant a really good clean-up around the apartment too to make it look more respectable.

Liz turned up bang on time so we had a coffee, biscuits and a good chat for an hour and a half until she had to go off for her appointment. I made a start on the dictaphone notes.

But I didn’t get very far. I had two interruptions, one half an hour after the other.

The second one, the most important one, I’ll tell you about in a day or so’s time when I’m ready. Instead I’ll tell you about the first.

In a few months time I’m hoping to go a-voyaging again and I shall be having my hands full as usual. Changing the lenses over with one hand free with the Nikon 1 is quite possible with practice, but with a full-size camera it’s impossible.

And so idly surfing the internet like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … a week or so ago I found one of these.

It’s second-hand, so I paid nothing whatever like the full retail price on here, but it’s only meant to be for use when I’m travelling on foot or on the train, not in Caliburn.

It means that I only need to lug around this one and the 50mm f1.8 lens for indoor shots, rather than all of the equipment.

The trouble with a lens like this is that with it trying to be everything, it ends up being nothing so I’m not expecting the quality to be as good as a pure focal-length lens, but it won’t have all that much use.

But anyway, you can judge for yourselves with the photos below.

Lunch was taken indoors again as there was a high wind and then I sat down to finish off the dictaphone notes.

Just as I did the last one of today’s batch, I crashed out. i’d already been away once or twice during the morning but this was more serious. I ended up in bed for 40 minutes, feeling like death.

Still feeling not much like it, I fitted the new lens onto the Nikon and went off on the prowl.

First thing that I noticed was a nice yacht in the distance. I reckoned that this might give me a good opportunity to try out the lens to see what it’s like.

And it’s not as bad as I was expecting.

We had a trawler right out to sea too heading back towards the Fish-Processing plant here in Granville.

It was unfortunately into the sun, but it was still worth an attempt. And it didn’t come out too badly either, although I had to manipulate the image somewhat to make it different.

Tomorrow, I’ll go out with the polarising filter and have a play with that and see what difference it might take. It might cut down some of the reflected sunlight off the surface of the water.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been saying for a while that these long gaps between seeing Normandy Trader and Thora in here must be down to the fact that the turn-rounds are so quick that I have been missing them.

And this is a case in point.

Just as I rounded the headland, I noticed Normandy Trader slipping silently out of the harbour.

She wasn’t there last night so she must have slipped in on the early morning tide, unloaded while the tide was out, and gone out again at the first available opportunity.

And I know what she does to earn her living too.

Her trips from Jersey to here are generally chartered by a co-operative of shell-fishermen who engage her to bring their catch over to Granville.

In an effort to catch Normandy trader heading off into the sunset, I wandered back over to the other side of the headland.

However I was rather disrupted by the noise coming from out of the bay over near St Martin de Brehal.

We have one of the Ile de Chausey ferries doing a trip around the bay. And whoever is giving the running commentary has no need of a loud-hailer or a tannoy.

It was quite a long wait for Normandy Trader to put in an appearance so I had to wait for a while.

But she turned up sooner or later and I wa sable to take a really good photo of her, with the Ile de Chausey nicely silhouetted in the background;

I really am going to gave to try the polarising filter and see if that gives me any better effects.

Back here, I dealt with the photos and then amended a few blog entries. I’m now back as far as Thursday 18th April.

That took me up to tea-time which was the rest of the falafel with steamed vegetables and cheese sauce, followed by rice pudding.

Later on I went outside for my usual evening walk.

My route took me past the house that is being renovated on the corner of the rue du Nord where I could inspect the progress that they have been making.

I noticed that the driveway for the house has been gravelled and levelled out, just as if they are about to drop a load of concrete onto it. It should be quite interesting to see it in a couple of weeks time

Further on along my walk I heard a noise coming up from the beach.

Having a look down over the wall, I noticed that there was a little party going on on the beach by the Plat Gousset.

It wasn’t that warm as far as I was concerned but I don’t suppose it matters if you are pretty well fuelled up. It’s all good fun if you are in good company.

So I’m off to bed. I have lots to do tomorrow and I have – surprise surprise – an appointment at 15:00 tomorrow. There’s a cunning plan rearing its head.

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Monday 22nd April 2019 – WITH IT BEING …

… a Bank Holiday I have imitated the example of the the mathematician who shares my name and I have done three fifths of five eighths of … errr … nothing.

We started off with a turbulent night where I couldn’t manage to go off to sleep for very long. Long enough to go on several nocturnal rambles though, and to leave my bed to go to look for some new batteries for the dictaphone too.

I started off with a group of students back at school outside the old “Room 10” having a huge discussion about something but I can’t remember now. Then a band in the assembly hall struck up some kind of high-tempo dance number. Most people disappeared to go off to this dance. One of the girls just standing around was a very studious type, long brown hair in a pony tail and glasses 3 or so years below me, very prim and proper and the correct uniform. I took hold of her and started to dance with her. She pulled such a face so I asked what was the matter. She just grunted something at me which was a bit of a shame.
A little later I was in Crewe, Davenport Avenue, painting the living room. I can’t remember who I was with. It might have been Marianne or Liz. There were huge plasitc sheets everywhere masking everything off. It was thick white emulsion. I had been masking everything off while she was painting and when I’d finished that I was daubing the paint on with a kitchen towel. I asked if there was a paint brush, and I was given a big old paste brush which wasn’t so good and I was smearing it on with that. For some unknown reason I had to go outside, with Nerina by now and we were at Gainsborough Road to the road down the side. We saw a large black plastic pipe so we walked down the road to look at it. It was sticking up out of the road then a 90° bend down the street with a drop so as to allow passage into the back entry and then back on and down the street. On the way back we went past the entrace to my drive and in there on the drive was my brown Cortina TNY. I thought “what is this doing here? It should be in its lock-up garage. How come it was suddenly appearing here? What was the tenat of the property doing with it on his drive? How had he known where it was? How had he obtained the keys to the garage?” I’d had a vague recollection that one of my Cortina estates had been seen on there but I had dismissed that as unlikely gossip. But now I wasn’t so sure. There were probably 20 vehicles on this driveway, all from the 60s and 70s and in all kinds of states of repair. I wondered what was happening. This was so realistic that I sat bolt upright at this point. It’s a recurring thread, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, about me having Ford Cortinas in various lock-ups and parked up all over the town and not knowing where they were or worrying about them.
Later still I was in a supermarket last night buying something and TOTGA was the manageress there. I can’t remember whether there had been some kind of issue between the two of us. I was in the queue waitig to pay when the cashier was called away. I saw TOTGA walk past but she didn’t see me but as I was in the queue I couldn’t leave it to go up to her to go and tap her on the shoulder and say hello. She stopped at a display rack where there was bottled water and rearranged something. She turned towards me and I waved hoping to catch her eye but then my view was blocked by a couple of people walking past. After they had gone I waved again but now it was a different girl so I felt rather silly. Another cashier came back now and took my item. I said something about TOTGA being there. She replied “ohh you’ve decided to come back to the shop then have you?” as if I have been boycotting it, which I didn’t understand.
And even later, I was here in my apartment with Terry. I was toasting hot cross buns for both of us and took the first lot out of the toaster and put them on his plate. He took some margarine and spread it over and ate them. He made some remark – is this margarine apple-flavoured? I looked and it was something and pineapple. He replied “God what a horrible thing!” so I asked if he wanted something different. I went to put mine in the toaster but his second round was still in there so I took them out and put them on his plate – this was when he made the remark about the margarine, but he put his knife into the same butter and spread it on the others too and I didn’t understand that when he didn’t like the stuff and there were other things that he could have asked for.

By the time that I arose from my stinking pit it was after 09:00 so I had my medication and caught up with a few things, and then just as I was about to go for breakfast Rosemary rang me.

We were chatting for a good hour or so, so I ended up with a very late breakfast.

Later, I attacked the dictaphone. I transcribed the notes from the night and then attacked a pile from the backlog of stuff. That was interrupted by someone coming on line and wanting a chat.

As a consequence I was very late for lunch and so seeing as it was Easter Monday I ate my vegan Easter Egg instead.

This afternoon I was intending to carry on with some work but I was interrupted by a special one-off sale of 3D items that involved spending an hour or so surfing through the web site to see what might be of interest.

That was interrupted my Ingrid ringing me and we had a really long chat for well over an hour.

That meant that my afternoon walk was rather late.

But when I finally did make it outside I was immediately struck by the strange lighting conditions that we were experiencing.

There was some kind of light grey light reflecting off the sea and the Ile de Chausey was standing out silhouetted on the horizon. I’m not quite sure why this should be.

And it goes without saying that I wasn’t the only person out there this afternoon enjoying the weird light.

There was a painter out there too doing his thing. He had drawn quite a crowd of spectators eagerly admiring his work. And it wasn’t bad either. I wouldn’t have minded it hanging up on my wall.

He isn’t the first painter that we have seen in action either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we encountered one in Québec in 2011.

Yesterday I mentioned that the path around the Pointe du Roc had been reopened. This afternoon I went that way to see what it was like.

You need to be quite athletic to enjoy the trip because there is a considerable number of steps down to the bottom. And what goes down must come back up, as we all know.

But it’s worth it because there’s a view of the coastguard station that I have never seen before.

But something else caught my eye while I was down here.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve spoken quite considerably in the past about the construction of the Atlantic Wall during the latter stages of World War II to defend the coast against invasion;

Here on the floor I found a fine example of 1943 graffiti drawn into the concrete, presumably drawn by one of the workmen when they were pouring the concrete.

Another view that I haven’t seen was the Cap Lihou from the rear.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen the sentry’s cabin on the headland before on several occasions but we haven’t seen it from this angle.

And I’m also interested in what looks as if it might be a cave just down there to the left. One of these days when there’s a very low tide I shall have to walk around there for a good look.

As for the walk itself, it’s very picturesque, but it’s also very difficult and very narrow.

What didn’t help either was that there were hundreds of other people out there enjoying it too so there wasn’t much room to move about.

Because of all of this, it’s not something that you would want to do in the dark either. It’s definitely going to have to be a daylight job.

Back here someone else wanted to chat so by then end of that I was hours late for tea. So I didn’t bother. I went for a walk around the walls in the twilight instead.

Now I’m back here and I’m going for an early night. I have a lot to do over the next few days and I need to be on form.

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Thursday 18th April 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

… strikes yet again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last night I wasn’t feeling tired so I didn’t go to bed until late. Not that it would have mattered very much because I switched off the alarms on my telephone so I could have a lie-in – necessary when I’ve been on a trip back from Leuven.

The fact that I hardly slept at all during the night didn’t bother me too much either because I was going to have a nice long lie-in this morning.

And all went perfectly according to plan as well, right up until 06:00 when I was awoken bolt upright . Bane of Britain had apparently forgotten that before going to Leuven he had set up the back-up alarms just in case the main alarms failed to go off.

And so that was that.

Mind you, it wasn’t until about 09:00 that I finally crawled out of bed. But it was rather a waste of three good hours.

After a rather late breakfast I had a shower and then later I set the washing machine off on a cycle. Dirty clothes have been building up all around here and they need to be sorted out.

And I’ve had another piece of devastatingly bad luck here. I took the memory card out of the Nikon 1 J5 and put it in the card reader – backwards. So now it’s shorted out the terminals and damaged the card.

Luckily I had copied some of them from my trip onto the portable laptop, but the ones from yesterday’s return trip and the previous evening’s walk have gone.

It always happens like this.

I couldn’t go off to the shops right then because I was expecting a delivery. And it finally turned up at 12:10.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I happened quite by chance to notice a second-hand Nikon I 18.5mm f1.8 lens that would be ideal for very-low-light conditions. I’d had a message to say that it would be delivered today.

What surprised me was that the price for which it was on sale was one of these unbelievable prices – less than a third of the new retail price. And so I didn’t really expect it to arrive at all. But here it is.

And I didn’t expect it to work either, but I gave it a quick try in here and it seems to do what it was supposed to. I’ll go and try it out in the dark outside later on tonight after dark and see what it can do.

Once I’d organised the camera lens, I headed out for a rather late visit to the shops.

However, I was delayed by some kind of activity in the harbour. They were out on their little pontoon again working away with their machinery.

It’s really intriguing, what is going on right now. I really ought to go down there one of these days and buttonhole the guys, in order to enquire as to what is going on.

Further on up the hill and into the avenue Aristide Briand just a short hop from LIDL, when my attention was drawn to this clever piece of urban engineering.

They were working on one of the parking spaces the other day, and now it seems that they have in fact been installing a couple of bicycle racks.

But I wonder about the purpose of the disabled parking sign just here. How are you going to manage to park a disabled person’s vehicle in there?

LIDL came up with nothing special except for a pack of jubilee clips. I don’t have any here and that’s not a very good situation in which to find myself.

But on my way home, my attention was diverted by the objects on display in an antique shop in the rue des Juifs.

This is a painting that is actually on display here for sale. It’s not been painted by a 4-year old, but by a mature adult painter, so we are informed, and if you want to buy it, it will cost you a grand total of $650, believe it or not.

The art critic Linda Merrill in her book ” target=”_blank”>Aesthetics On Trial recounts a delightful story where John Ruskin once criticised James McNeil Whistler’s painting “Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket” by saying that he “never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

Well, I never expected to hear one ask six hundred and fifty Euros for it either.

Lunch was on the wall in the glorious sunshine. it really was nice today outside.

The Pecheur de Lys was down there in the harbour, nestling on the mud because the tide had gone out.

No sign of my lizards though. I would have expected to have seen them by now. I hope that they all managed to survive the winter in hibernation. It’s not as if it was a really hard winter again.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that bad parking is a habitual feature on these pages.

This one takes some beating though. On a blind bend by a road jusntion, right by a “no waiting” sign and blocking off part of a zebra crossing, we have some stupid motorist stopped to talk to his friends.

I really don’t know what it is that goes through the heads of some of the people on this planet. I really don’t.

Back here, I crashed out for a while and then awoke to find that there was a football match on the internet this afternoon.

There’s an international Under-15 tournament taking place right now, and Wales had made it to the finals against Belgium. It was quite an exciting match, especially as Wales won 4-0 and you can see the goals here.

Mind you, it might have been a different matter had the Belgian keeper not conceded a penalty and been sent off for his pains.

Tea tonight was another helping of that shepherd’s pie with vegetables and gravy, followed by fruit salad and soya cream. Totally delicious.

Later on this evening I went out for my eveing walk.

There were plenty of trawlers out and about out there tonight. And the two boats in the chantier navale have now been joined by two small trawlers undergoing repair.

There were also a fair few people out in the fine weather enjoying the evening air.

Later still, I went out for a walk again with the new lens to see what damage I can do with it.

And now I’ll be having another early night. It’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow so another lie-in, if I have remembered to switch off every alarm.

I’ll leave you to admire the rest of the photos. The ones in the dark were taken with the new lens.

pontoon port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawlers baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

pecheur de lys port de granville harbour manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 place d’armes granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 rue du roc granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 place d’armes granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 donville les bains granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 st martin de brehal granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 place d’armes granville manche normandy france

nikon 1 18.5mm f1.8 port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Wednesday 17th April 2019 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that back in 2010 in the wilds of Labrador I encountered a musician who sat in isolated scenic spots around Canada and played the accordion.

This evening out on the Pointe deu Roc there was a bassist, keyboardist and drummer doing the same thing.

Well, they weren’t actually doing it, but they had their instruments set out and I found out, as they came running down towards me to stop me giving them a solo on the double bass, that they were only pretending to and that they were filming it with a drone.

Not a sign up anywhere to tell me – or anyone else – what was going on. So serve them right. Having ruined their film set, I wandered off.

Last night though, I didn’t wander far. An early night, but yet another one where I couldn’t go to sleep. By 04:45 I had given up, and I was even up and about before the alarms went off.

It didn’t take me long to finish tidying and packing, and I was actually on the road before the third alarm went off.

The 06:36 to Oostende arrived at the station at the same time that I did. So benefiting from the advantages of my pre-purchased ticket I could leap aboard.

This meant that I was in the station at Brussels-Midi quite early. Plenty of time to go to Carrefour to grab my raisin buns for breakfast, and I took them into a quite corner for a little relax.

The train was in early so we were allowed up. And there I encountered a jobsworth who insisted that I take my ticket out of its plastic jacket so that he could see it.

Sitting next to me on the TGV was an elderly lady, but I didn’t pay much attention to her. I was either attacking my Antiquities Americanae again or else I was having a little … errr … relax.

We were bang on time in Paris Gare du Nord and the metro was good too – just the odd hiccup here and there. But the two metro stations underneath Notre Dame seem to be closed for now.

With no hold-ups along the way I was soon at Vaugirard, and while I was waiting to board the train, I had a chat with a couple of other people too. It’s not like me to be sociable, is it?

The train was quite empty so my neighbour went off to find a seat on her own. I carried on with my book and had a doze for about half an hour too.

But one thing that happened on the train rather offended me.

There was a large North African family in the train and they all alighted at Alençon, bags, baggage, kids and all. And after they had left, one woman sitting in our carriage went down to the luggage rack to make sure that they hadn’t taken her case with them.

It was very conspicuous that she didn’t do that whenever a European family alighted from the train.

It was a nice walk back to here in the warm sunshine, and on arrival I simply sat and vegetated for a while to gather my strength. And I wasn’t as tired as I thought I might have been.

Tea was a plate of pasta and veg tossed in garlic, pepper and olive oil, and then my walk around the Pointe du Roc.

My little walk took me around to see what has been going on at the chantier navale while I was away.

There’s what seems to be an old small trawler that has been converted into living accommodation, and there’s also some kind of pleasure boat or passenger tender in there undergoing repair. There must be plenty of work here for the company there.

The fishing industry is keeping on going too.

There were a couple of trawlers out there tonight and the one on the left looks as if it is doing a circuit with its net out taking a catch.

But now it’s after midnight, and I don’t feel at all tired, which is a surprise. I can see me heading for a little crisis tomorrow when the lack of sleep catches up with me.

Thursday 11th April 2019 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… day when I haven’t been all that productive.

It didn’t help by not being out of bed until 07:30. I really need to get a grip these days before I miss a train or something.

Plenty of time during the night to go on a little voyage though. I was with Alvin last night and we were going through a pile of LPs that he had left. He wanted some of them copied, which meant playing and recording on blank records. I had a look through some of the stuff but there wasn’t anything there of any interest or importance as far as I was concerned, but he insisted on having it done. He told me that when it had been done the original records had to be taken to a certain place where I would get some money for it but the duplicates would be retained here. I shouldn’t take those as they would hand them back and cut down on his money. I said fair enough but it was a strange way to go about it. I couldn’t get the thing organised properly and made loads of mistakes trying to copy these albums but I carried on. While this was doing he was doing some calculations so I went to see what he was doing – “working 11 hours at $8:10 per hour”. I asked what it was and he replied that he was trying to work out if he could afford to be a policeman in Los Angeles. I said “not at $8:10 per hour! No-one could work for that”. He told me about all of the advantages he would receive and there was a fund to help out people who moved from a high-paid job to a low-paid job to make sure that their mortgages were paid. It all sounded quite precarious to me. But somewhere along the line, up in Neston I had an old house, on the roadside with newer houses build behind it. I was trying to find out how old it was but I wasn’t being very serious with my enquiries but I don’t remember very much about this.

After breakfast I had a shower and prettied myself up, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle. One of the things that I did was to put new bedding on the bed and wash the previous bedding. The stuff that was on it was on the verge of walking into the washing machine all on its own.

And then I headed off into town for the shopping.

And I was surprised to see, amongst the boats that were waiting to leave the harbour when the gates open, this particular boat.

I’m almost certain that it’s the boat that was up on blocks in the chantier navale for a couple of weeks being resprayed and painted. She looks as if she’s off on her travels now.

And despite having all of this massive array of scaffolding erected on the wall higher up, they are still working away at the base of the walls moving away all of the loose rock.

The machine that they are using is quite impressive. It’s a little mini-digger with a hydraulic breaker on the jib of it.

It’s breaking off all of the loose rock which is then being shovelled up into a skip which you can see in the foreground.

It’s quite busy down in the harbour this morning too.

We have La Granvillaise moored up at the quay where Marité usually hangs out, and Thora is still there too, but she’s moved berth over to where the gravel boats tie up.

That’s because Normandy Trader has come into port, presumably on the early morning tide. They are already loading her up too, so clearly they don’t intend to hang about.

On the way up the hill in the rue Couraye I noticed a really old man with a very interesting machine.

In there is a grinding wheel worked by a foot treadle rather like an old-fashioned sewing machine in the pre-electric days, and he seems to be sharpening knives with it.

It’s really nice to see a good old-fashioned artisan peddling … “groan” – ed … his craft on the streets even today. There ought to be more of it, I reckon.

LIDL didn’t come up with much so I headed off for home, picking up a baguette on the way.

The gates of the harbour were now open and boats were leaving the port, including this fishing boat. Quite a few had already left, including Thora and Normandy Trader.

While Thora was in and out in 24 hours, the latter had an even quicker turn-round. I was right about her not intending to hang about in the harbour. They must be really busy just now.

It makes me wonder when I was saying last year that I hadn’t seen them for quite a while. I just reckon that their turn-round must have been so quick that I must have missed it.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the harbour, the men were out there again on their pontoon.

It’s quite a mystery to me what they are doing out there. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that about 18 months ago they drained the harbour completely and dredged it out. So there can’t be much in there that needs checking.

I shall have to make enquiries at the port office next time I’m down there. Maybe they will tell me.

Back here I had a drink and a sit down, and then hung out the washing to dry. Once that was done I made a start on the dictaphone notes, but had to knock off for lunch.

Even though it was rather windy out there, it was such a beautiful warm afternoon. And so i took my butties outside and sat on my wall overlooking the harbour.

And I was in luck this afternoon too. One of the ferry boats that does the run to the Ile de Chausey was coming into harbour. She’d obviously been on a little outing earlier this morning as there was quite a crowd of people.

She pulled up at her mooring at the ferry terminal and then unloaded all of her passengers.

And then much to my surprise, she collected up another load of passengers, and then headed off out again into the Baie de Mont St Michel.

And with her having her back turned towards me, I could see that she’s the Joly France. Her sister is tied up in the harbour.

Of course, it shouldn’t really be any surprise that she’s busy. It’s school holidays in Granville of course and all of the kids are at a loose end and will be for next week too.

And so we can can expect to see much more of the Ile de Chausey ferries out and about then while the kids are off school.

The Ile de Chausey ferries aren’t the only things out there right now.

There’s an old sailing ship or, rather, a large yacht out there too. From what I could see of her, I think that she’s the Lys Noir.

We haven’t seen all that much of her just recently, so it’s nice to see her back. In fact, I’m wondering whether she might have been the sailing boat out there the other day that I thought was the Charles-Marie

Butties having been eaten, I came back and had another marathon session on the dictaphone notes.

Now I’m back into my notes for my trip around Labrador in 2017 which is good news. That’s good news because when that’s finished I can tie up the photos to the text and make a start on those web pages too.

Later on, I went out for my afternoon walk as usual. Today, it was around the Pointe-du Roc.

It was such a beautiful day and the haze was farther out than it has been just recently, so i could tke a really good photograph of the Baie de Mont St Michel and St Pair sur Mer just across on the other side.

And I was really impressed today with the colour of the sea today. Fr the last few weeks it’s been a murky grey colour, but today we have a nice proper blue sea.

And with it being rather windy out there today, I could see the flag that they were putting up yesterday.

It’s actually the flag of Granville and that’s new to me because I didn’t realise that Granville actually had its own flag.

The red one with the two golden lions on it is the flag of the Duchy of Normandy, and I’m sure that you don’t need me to explain the other two.

On that note, I came back for a hot chocolate and, shame as it is to say it, a little … errr … relax on the office chair.

There was still enough time to do something else before tea, so seeing as I wasn’t in a particularly enthusiastic mood, I made a start on the searchable text database for the photos for June 2018.

For tea, I founf a lentil and mushroom curry in the freezer. It was one that I had made on 7th November … errr … 2017 and it tasted just as delicious as it did back then.

It seems that I’m getting right down to the bottom of the pile of curries now. I’m not sure how many ancient ones there might be still in there, but there can’t be many.

In a short while I’ll have to make a start on making some more.

later on I went for my evening walk around the city walls.

There were still a few people out there enjoying the evening sunshine, and also a dozen or so fishing boats loitering around just outside the harbour.

It must be that the tide isn’t in enough for them to reach the Fish Processing Plant and tie up to unload. But I don’t imagine that they will have long to wait.

And so I carried on and came home.

Tonight I’m hoping for another early night and a good sleep. Tomorrow I’m planning on having something of a tidy-up in the kitchen and living room.

Things are getting a little untidy in there so I need to apply myself. After all, I’m off on my travels again early on Sunday.

scaffolding medieval wall granville manche normandy france

“boats ready to leave port de granville harbour manche normandy france

joly france ferry ile de chausey port de granville harbour manche normandy france

lys noir baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: trawler

Monday 17th June 2019 – I’VE HAD A NICE …

Thursday 13th June 2019 – THIS PHOTO …

Wednesday 15th May 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

Tuesday 14th May 2019 – I HAD A …

Monday 13th May 2019 – I DON’T KNOW …

Wednesday 8th May 2019 – THE BIG ADVANTAGE …

Tuesday 7th May 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Sunday 5th May 2019 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Saturday 4th May 2019 – WONDERS WILL NEVER CEASE!

Friday 3rd May 2019 – I’VE DONE …

Tuesday 30th April 2019 – I’VE NOT HAD …

Monday 22nd April 2019 – WITH IT BEING …

Thursday 18th April 2019 – BANE OF BRITAIN …

Wednesday 17th April 2019 – REGULAR READERS …

Thursday 11th April 2019 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …