Tag Archives: railway station

Thursday 27th June 2019 – HERE I AM …

… in sweltering Brussels, sitting in my bedroom which is fitted with one of the noisiest air conditioning units in the world. So at least I’m reasonably cool and comfortable, even if I probably won’t have much sleep tonight.

Last night was another lively night where I drifted in and out of sleep, on several nocturnal rambles the details of which I’ll upload in due course when I have a moment.

Surprisingly, I was out of bed quite soon after the alarm, repacked everything, found some room for the Nikon 1, made my sandwiches, tidied up, took out the rubbish, washed up, vacuumed up the apartment, cleaned all of the sinks and washed the floors.

That took me up to just abut 08:05 when I left the apartment with my rucksack, dragging my great big suitcase behind me.

When I went out with the rubbish at about 06:30 it was cool and windy. Back out at 08:05, it was scorching.By the time I made it to the station (and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either with everything that I have to take with me) the perspiration was running off me in rivers.

The train was in so I put the case on the luggage rack and sat down to eat my breakfast. Some crackers, some bananas and the rest of the orange juice that I had brought with me from the apartment.

On the journey into Paris I alternated between sleep and reading a book on the internet.

We pulled into a sweltering Paris bang on time and I struggled down to the Metro. It wasn’t quite as difficult as I was expecting, but still much more difficult than I liked.

Luck was on my side too. There was a seat free right by the door so I could sit down in comfort as we hurtled through the bowels of the city.

At the Gare du Nord I found a seat where I could eat my butties, and where I was entertained by the antics of a little 16-month old girl.

For a change I was one of the first on the TGV so I stuck my suitcase in the rack and took my seat. Although the train was quite full, there was no-one sitting next to me so I could doze in peace, except when the ticket collector awoke me.

In Brussels it was even hotter. I Went to the Pensions Office in the Tur du Midi and dropped off a letter, and then to the bank with my cards to unblock the Cirrus network facility.

And then to the hotel. The Midi-Zuid Hotel again where I always stay when I’m here. It’s convenient – only 5 minutes away from the Gare du Midi – clean, modern and cheap for where it’s situated.

A little later I popped out for some water, and later still for a meal – lentil and chips with bread.

There was football on the internet later. Barry Town v Cliftonville in the Europa League. Cliftonville were streets better than Barry but despite that, rarely threatened the Barry goal. On the other hand, Barry looked rather clueless and played without a plan at all. I don’t recall the Cliftonville keeper actually making a save.

Barry willhave todo far better than this in the away leg, and they desperately need a striker up front.

Now it’s bed-time. I’m going to watch a film while I slip gracefully into sleep. It’s hospital tomorrow.

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Tuesday 25th June 2019 – WOO HOOOO!

Today I’ve had a really profitable day out and I’ve really hit the jackpot.

Although it’s far too soon to say that all of my worries are over, a huge weight has been lifted off my mind and I feel so much better for it.

With having to make an early start in the morning, I couldn’t get off to sleep. I was still wide awake at 03:00, but I must have gone to sleep at one point because I awoke with a start at 05:30.

Despite only two and a half hours sleep, there was plenty of time to go off on a little voyage.

I have absolutely no idea who I was with, but it was female and definitely my partner. We’d been on holiday to an island. I’d taken a coach there a week or so earlier and I’d come back with this girl for a break. We were sitting at a table somewhere at an outside restaurant where we made the acquaintance of a guy. He was very domineering about his girlfriend, certainly in charge and she didn’t get much say in the matter. We were sitting at this table wiht them and it came to pay. The bill came so I took out my wallet and took out a bank card. But he snatched another bank card out of my wallet and snarled “what kind of stunt are you trying to pull?” I looked at him with an air of shock “what do you mean? What are you talking about?” “You know very well” he replied. “No I don’t”. After much discussion it ended up that the card I wanted to use was marked with an X which meant that there was a daily limit of uses which meant that I can only use it half a dozen times and the other one didn’t. In the end I paid with the other card to keep him happy. I said to him that I didn’t want to cause any upset and I don’t mean this in any bad way but he must have been hurt really badly at one time in his life. He looked at me open-mouthed and somehow it made him warm up a bit and he became much more friendly after that. The discussion drifted on and he asked “do you have a gun? Give me your gun”. I had a revolver in my pocket, don’t ask me why, and I passed it under the table to him. He said “someone in a two-tone Ford van is watching us” I took out my gun and held it under the table. Suddenly this van, an old Ford Anglia van two-tone yellow, squealed out of the car park and shot off. I’d seen someone with a high-powered rifle and it hadn’t really rung a bell with me before and so I said “there’s someone on this car park with a high-powered rifle” He said “it doesn’t surprise me”. We had another lengthy chat and in the end he said “could I drop you anywhere?” I said to this girl basically “your place or mine?”. She wanted to go to her place so I asked if he could drop us down at the south end of the island if it’s not too much trouble. He got us into his car and set off down to the south end of the island. It was then that his girlfriend opened her mouth and said something for the very first time. “Here’s a bit of a rhyme that I always find great and I always remember this occasion by thinking of this rhyme”. But is was really doggerel, a piece of nonsense and meant nothing at all to me. We were driving down this road where I had been with a coach the week before. I remembered driving over the verge on the windy bends on a few occasions and flattening the grass, but there was no trace of that. I was trying to point out the road that we had taken to the western end of it, but I kept on pointing out the wrong road even though I knew which one it ought to be. But it was obvious, all these tiny little lanes that the coach could never possibly have gone down even though there was a signpost indicating the village down at the end.

For a change, I was up and about doing things long before the first alarm went off. and at 06:15 I hit the streets.

My train was already in the station but not yet ready to go out, so I grabbed a coffee and had a chat with my cleaner friend.

We set off bang on time and we arrived at St-Lô just before 08:00. I had a little walk around part of the walls and arrived at the Prefecture at about 08:15.

Four people in front of me, and by the time the door opened at about 08:30, we were about 20 strong. I had to take a ticket and then I waited.

For some reason they seemed to be dealing with all of the “demands for papers” and “driving licences” first regardless of the order in which we arrived. It wasn’t until 09:30 that another window opened for people like me.

The two people whose numbers were before mine in this series had cleared off by then, fed up of waiting, and so I was the first to be called. It didn’t take long at all and by 09:35 I was outside, clutching to my chest my Permanent Carte de Séjour, giving me (almost) unlimited leave to remain in France regardless of the Brexit issues.

And it’s a card for “all professional activities” too, not “inactive”, so in theory I could go out and find a job if I ever feel the need.

And so as far as I am concerned, the UK and everyone in it can now go to Hell in a handcart. I’m alright, Jacques.

It’s not that I feel that I’m abandoning the UK, it’s that by denying me the right to vote on my own future and everyone else voting to destroy my life, the UK has abandoned me.

My train back wasn’t until 12:59 (only 4 trains a day and none of them at a convenient time) so I had a good walk around the the walls, around the town and in the church, where I had a chat with the sacristan.

Back at Granville, I bought a bottle of wine at Carrefour and took it to the Mairie. They contacted the Préfecture a couple of times on my behalf which was very kind of them, and it deserved its reward.

Back here I scanned my carte de sejour (I always scan my important documents like this), chased up a form that I’d been awaiting, found it and printed it out, pushed on with doing a mega-backup and then scanning a year’s worth of medical receipts all the way up to the end of May 2019, with a phone call from Rosemary in between.

No lunch, and only a packet of nuts and raisins for tea followed by one of my desserts.

A walk around the walls this evening took me up to 11.0 kms – 148% of my daily target. And my knee, although a little sore, is much better than it has been.

Tomorrow I’m off to the shops and then the afternoon will be spend tidying up ready to go away.

And do you know what? I’ve no idea at all when I shall be back. And ask me if I care.

Friday 21st June 2019 – YET ANOTHER …

… day where I’ve not been able to do anything like as much as I would have liked.

I had an exciting night though. And what a night it was! I started off in the Free French infantry or Resistance or something, trying to track down something that had gone on at a certain crossroads. I’d been out there in Caliburn a few times but I’d never managed to see the mayor or never managed to find out very much about any of this. So there I was on a Saturday morning, there was a train at 08:58. It was 08:48 and I was just getting to the station. I had all these plans to go to see whatever it was at these crossroads. I had to walk on foot from the station at the other end, hope that the mayor would be in on a Saturday morning and I could get some answers and have a physical visit of the spot. I felt that it was going to be a really long walk for me at all.

Later on, I was on the Ocean Endeavour talking to some people about the possibility of hiring it. We discussed the ship – that it was old and not luxurious and needed one or two little things to make it better like a coat of paint and de-rusting, things like that. They were saying that it was free on December and January and how to get in touch. Here’s the number – it’s this company here on the internet that you need to contact. They asked what I had in mind for it, but I didn’t want to tell them because what I had in mind was something that they might not like – it’s up to the people who wanted to hire it to negotiate. This company who owned it looked extremely interesting because they owned all kinds of car ferries, with routes going across the South Atlantic and South Pacific, car ferries. And if that’s the case I was hoping to get down there with Caliburn and see where we could all go.

And later on yet, I was out with a patrol of cowboys kind of people and we were hunting down some Indians. We came across where these were and they threatened to attack us. So we dug ourselves into firepits or trenches. There was one guy there who wouldn’t dig himself in. he was the officer of the troop we had come out to relieve. His excuse was that he had no shovel so someone gave him one, a short blue one, but he wouldn’t dig, coming out with something else, clearly not interested in digging, wanting someone else to dig it for him I imagine. We were quickly in these firepits and disporting ourselves around, a case of who was going to defend what, who would fire at what? What happened if they got in behind us? But that wasn’t too much of a problem because there was a little cave facing behind us and in there they had secreted a guy with a Maxim gun so if they came behind us he could take care of them and the noise of the Maxim would alert us.

There was much more too, including a trip to the library somewhere along the line.

All of this led to a rather late start. I’d heard the alarms go off but it was more like 06:45 when I crawled out of bed.

After breakfast I had a go at transcribing the dictaphone notes – the stuff from last night and then some stuff out of the backlog. And the backlog is now down to just 34. Doing 7 per day will give me just enough time before I leave, although I’ll be pushed to do that, as I will explain in due course.

Some of these files were quite large and what with various interruptions that took me right up until lunchtime, which was taken indoors because as I was making my sandwiches, they all fell apart and I ended up with a mixed salad.

This afternoon was a paper-chase looking for all of the bits and pieces relating to my medical examinations, and then I set out.

Firstly to the estate agent’s to give them a copy of my insurance certificate and to check that I was up-to-date with everything before I leave (I am).

Next was the railway station to check train times because I’ve had some good news, to wit that I need to present myself at the Préfecture at St-Lô on Tuesday morning between 08:30 and 12:00.

That means a train at … gulp … 06:57, something to which I am not looking forward at all.

Then to the laboratory for all of my test results. I’ve no idea what they might mean, so I telephoned the doctor and arranged an appointment for Monday at 08:45 to have them interpreted.

I’ve no idea what the outcome would be, but if it requires any action after Wednesday it will be rather a shame, won’t it?

Back into town and the library book sale. No books that interested me unfortunately, but there was a copy of Humble Pie’s “Live at the Whisky a-Go-Go” for just €2:50. A magnificent live album including a 21:25 version of “I Walk On Gilded Splinters”.

Seeing as how beautiful it was today, I treated myself to a sorbet while I was out – a coconut and mint one. I felt that I deserved it.

Rosemary rang me up when I returned and we had a lengthy chat that took me right up to tea-time. A vegan burger on a bap with oven chips and the rest of the baked beans from the other day.

Later on, when it was going dark, I went out for a walk.

It’s the musical evening tonight with groups set up all over the town in various corners.

I made a few interesting discoveries – a bassist playing with a very rare acoustic dobro bass, and another bassist playing with a Rickenbacker 4003.

In the darkening evening I had a good wander round, experimenting with the low ISO settings on the new camera.

It’s not too bad down to about ISO51200 but beyond there the quality drops off quite rapidly. At H2.0 it’s unusable.

But it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to take photos at 1/640 in the dark with a 18/300 zoom lens. I’m itching to get out and about with the 50mm f1.8 lens in the dark.

When I went back to see the group with the Rickenbacker, they were just finishing, which was rather a disappointment because I was intending to stick out and hear the rest of the set.

But I did manage to have a chat with the guy with the Rickenbacker. He was quite sociable, unlike the last Rickenbacker player who I had met at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

They are still making them apparently, but I don’t imagine that they would be as good as those of the 1960s.

So despite wanting a early night, I was editing the photos until i don’t know what time. That’s going to set me up for a good day tomorrow, isn’t it?

Tuesday 18th June 2019 – IT’S NOT BEEN …

… as productive a day as I would have liked today. Full of all kinds of petty interruptions and so on that prevented me from cracking on.

It started well enough though. Up and about long before the third alarm had gone off. I’d been on my travels too, although this was all very confusing. It concerned someone who was allegedly running a taxi, driving around with music playing pretty loud but he didn’t have any taxi plates. He was summoned to talk to a couple of people about all of this and it turned out that the message had come from the Taxi Owners’ Association. He went very begrudgingly to the meeting but came out much happier. Apparently it was just two neighbours from somewhere or other who had written, so he just bought them a drink and the matter had been brushed under the carpet and he was quite happy about that because obviously he didn’t fancy going up against all these taxi drivers because they could all turn nasty and there were so many of them. His wife said something along the lines that they were all pussies anyway and that he would just sweep them aside. She turned to me and said “you’ve had enough confrontation with them and you were relatively unscathed from that point of view” (which was true). And that was that. But then it turned onto trains and we were working with coal trains. I was bragging that we had dealt with every coal train that came out of Crewe. There was that Keith Morris there and he asked “how do you know that you do?”. I said that I was sure. We ended up talking about one particular one that went out early in the morning at about 05:00 and was pulled by two Class 27 locos with 40 wagons. I looked at Margaret for confirmation and she didn’t really say very much. he wanted to know how I knew that they were class 27s. Of course you can tell by the number but I replied “well, I ask! If I want to know something, I ask because I take photos and edit the photos and write about them so if I want to know something about the photos I’ll ask someone locally and they will tell me the answer”.
From there we moved on. I had an old Ford Escort van like I have and we were all going somewhere. There were two seats in the front and a settee in the back but facing backwards rather than forwards. People were clambering in there. I was back in the house getting things ready to leave these people. I had a mattress that I was going to put down in the van for me to sleep on and al old blanket because there was insulation in part of the Escort but not down the left-hand side. So I put the blanket in and used it to fill in the gaps in the walls. They were all looking at it and I explained about condensation and how I was going to sleep in there and then I went to fetch the mattress.

With an early start I had an early breakfast and then cracked on with some work.

First task was to deal with all of the photos from yesterday, and then to attack the dictaphone notes. Another 5 have now disappeared and we are down to just 55. I’ll have to push on and deal with those pretty quickly if I can.

But I was interrupted by trying to arrange another blood test. Eventually, after much binding in the marsh I managed to arrange it for 11:30 tomorrow.

But even as we speak, I had a phone call from the nurse to say that she will be here at about 08:30 tomorrow morning.

After that, I went for another experimental run with Caliburn. But I didn’t get very far, for there was a police road block.

It seems that there was a Fete de dix-huit juin according to the policewoman holding up the traffic.

Whatever the Fete de dix-huit juin is, I really have no idea but the place was swarming with anciens combattants decorated in medals and the like, so it’s quite possibly something to do with the liberation of the town, although that didn’t take place until 31st July 1944.

Whatever it was, we were held up for half an hour – me in a queue of vehicles held up by the police and no controle technique on Caliburn

One thing that I can say is that I could drive reasonably comfortably all things considered. Seeing that I could move hi about, that prompted me to ring up about his annual service and controle technique.

But to my dismay there are no vacancies until the beginning of July and I won’t be here then. So I’ll have to sort out my flights and book him in for as soon as I return.

That took me up to lunchtime, taken once more indoors because it was raining yet again.

It had cleared up by the time I had finished, so i hit the streets for the laboratory.

The men were still working on the medieval walls, but the workmen on the house extension in the rue du Port were likewise working.

They are now working on the rendering on the second wall of the lift shaft – assuming that that there is indeed the lift shaft.

Only one more wall to go, and then I’ll be wondering what they are going to be working on next. There’s such a lot of rebuilding going on in the town right now.

Not much further along, I came to another stop.

There are some remains of an old Jeep dumped on the roundabout at the end of the Place Godal. Presumably that’s something to do with the fete too.

At the Laboratory I handed over the stuff that was extracted from my knee, and found to my surprise that they do blood tests there – and without an appointment too.

If only I had known!

Across the road is the station so I went to pick up my rail tickets for next week, which I had forgotten to do yesterday.

The sun was on the way out as i walked back, and that cheered me up somewhat.

A cold drink followed by a start on adding the photos to yesterday’s blog. But I was surprised at just how quickly the time passed.

For tea I had a stuffed pepper with spicy rice, gollowed by one of the cocount dessert things that I had made earlier. Liz had told me not to mut as much milk in, so I put about 350 ml of milk and 50ml of that coconut soya stuff in, mixed it up, and poured it into four bowls into which I had previously put a couple of pineapple rings.

After a couple of hours in the fridge it had set really well and it was delicious.

later on I went out for my walk.

First stop was to the monument at the Rond-Point des Francais Libres to see if I could see anything that might give me a hint of what was happening.

There were a couple of wreaths out there, but nothing that gave me any indication.

I shall have to make enquiries.

Down on the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs was a youth standing there, cut off from the mainland by the rising tide.

I gesticulated at him, but he didn’t reply and didn’t seem to be in any distress whatsoever.

He clearly didn’t seem to need any help, and so I left him to it and continued my walk

But had he really be stranded, it wouldn’t have mattered to me because not only would I have been unable to do anything, there was a speedboat loitering around just offshore

They would have been much better-placed to give him assistance.

But they didn’t hang aroudn long after I moved on. They roared past me like their boat was on fire.

Excuse the rather blurred photo but I was taken by surprise by these kids (of course, it’s very bad form for any photographer to be taken by surprise, but that’s neither here nor there).

Just as I was looking at them wondering what was going on, one of them stood up and dived off the sea wall straight into the sea.

I reckon that I was lucky enough to catch it, but what wouldn’t I have given to have had a faster shutter speed?

Meanwhile, as all this was going on, the roar of a couple of diesel engines told me that something large was coming ino port.

It’s our old friend Granville, the new Channel Islands ferry that has been suffering a load of problems just recently.

That’s twice now this week that I’ve seen her in the harbour here. Probably more than I ever saw her in the whole of last year.

She wasn’t the only visitor in the harbour either.

Charles-Marie is down there too, moored up in the inner harbour. She might be preparing for her summer season of voyages.

And while I was admiring her, I overheard some squealing coming from further down the road. Some young girl and her boyfriend were trying to walk along the top of the railings like some kind of tightrope walkers.

The girl wasn’t all that good, and after about four steps and a loud squeal, she fell off, right at my feet.

So now I’m back home and I’m ready for bed. I’m hoping to have a better day tomorrow.

speedboat pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

channel islands ferry granville manche normandy france

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 25th April 2019 – THAT WAS A …

… really difficult today today.

What went wrong was the fact that having had a long sleep during the afternoon, I wasn’t all that tired when I went to bed.

Nevertheless I went to sleep pretty quickly and even managed to go on something of a nocturnal ramble. But I’ll spare you the details because you are probably eating your tea right now.

However, I awoke at about 01:30 and that was that. I lay awake tossing and turning until the alarm went off at 06:00.

Just for a change I was up early this morning and after the usual performance and a shower, I set the washing machine off doing a load of washing.

Once that was on its way I went into town. But I didn’t get very far before I had to stop.

A few weeks ago I photographed them digging up the pavement in the rue des Juifs for the fibre-optic cable. But they had filled in the trenches and sealed it all over a good while ago.

But today, the fibre-optic people were there digging it all up again. I asked why but the guy to whom I spoke just shrugged his shoulders

Down at the quayside in the harbour Normandy Trader was there unloading.

I imagine that she had come in on the morning tide,and having missed to opportunity to photograph Thora yesterday, I took a quick photo of here while I was going into town.

After all, the speed in which these ships are turning round these days, she may well not be here by the time that I return.

And so I continued on my way to the Mairie for the Certificate that I needed. But there was no-one there to sign it so I had to go back later.

Next stop was the bank to change the standing order for my rent. The rental goes up at the beginning of next month so I had to do that.

Third stop was the railway station to pick up my tickets for my next trip to Leuven in May. I’m spinning my appointments out now to every 5 weeks so as to fit into a new revised plan.

Just then Rosemary telephoned me. So instead of going to LIDL (I don’t really need anything) I headed for home.

And I was almost right about Normandy Trader.

She had by now left her berth, and I just managed to catch her stern disappearing out of the harbour. Another quick turnround.

And I need to make the most of my sightings of her and of Thora and quite possibly the gravel boats too.

There’s no Customs Post here in Granville so when Brexit inevitably happens, these ships will need to go to a port that has a customs post – like St Malo. No wonder everyone here is so upset.

Rosemary and I had a really good chat for quite a considerable time as usual, and we put the world to rights while we were on the line. Ingrid came onto the internet too and we we had a chat too;

That took me nicely up to lunchtime, which was taken inside because by now the weather had broken and we were having a storm.

Once the weather eased off I went back into town, only to find that the Mairie here doesn’t issue the Certificates. They seem to think that it’s something that only applies to small communes where the mayor knows personally all of his inhabitants.

Anyway, I left them fighting with the prefecture over the issue and came home, being caught in yet another rainstorm;

I had a few things to do, but by 17:30 I was off with the fairies. Back in bed for a good 100 minutes fast asleep.

Tea was a stuffed pepper followed by rice pudding, and then my walk around the headland. Away on the horizon I noticed something moving so the horizon out in the English Channel so I photographed it.

I was right about one thing – that it was indeed a huge ship.

No idea which one though because it was too far out, but I thought that it might be Pont Aven, the Brittany Ferries flagship heading to St Malo.

However, when I looked on live ships database later on in the evening, the recorded position at the time I took the photo seemed to correspond with the known position of Bretagne.

She’s one of the oldest ferries working the Channel, having been launched in 1989, and has a gross tonnage of about 24500 tonnes.

She’s actually living on borrowed time, having been taken out of service in 2016, but the contract for her replacement was cancelled and so she’s back on duty for now.

My perambulations took me round the Pointe du Roc and along the path at the top looking over the chantier navale.

There have been a few changes there today. The old trawler that’s been undergoing major reconstruction down at the bottom of the yard has now been brought up to the top end and put on chocs here. It’s weather protection has been removed too.

It’s been joined by another trawler too, the big pink and blue one on the left. No idea what they are doing with that one.

But I couldn’t go back into my building without taking a photo of probably the most beautiful sunset that I have ever seen.

It’s not very often that I produce a remarkable photograph but this one actually worked in spades. The sun was just peeking through the heavy clouds and was illuminating the buildings on the Ile de Chausey just like the spotlights might do on a stage set.

It’s really come out well and I’m very proud of this very dramatic photo.

So I’ll try for an early night tonight. I’m not going anywhere tomorrow, but I still have plenty of things that need doing. it’s going to be a long day.

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.

Sunday 14th April – LUCKY ME!

I’ve had a free upgrade at the place where I stay when I’m in Leuven. Usually I’m in a small single room (with kitchenette and all facilities of course) but for some reason that I don’t understand, I’ve been given a comfortable duplex apartment and it’s very nice.

I shall have to come here more often.

Last night was a pretty bad night for some reason. I was very late going to bed and once more, I spent most of my night tossing and turning. This isn’t a very good sign for my day tomorrow.

Nevertheless I was out of bed very smartly and attacked the tasks necessary for my trip today to Leuven. Making sandwiches, packing, all these kinds of things. Even a little cleaning. There was still 20 minutes to go before I needed to leave to I took my shower – the one that I missed yesterday.

08:10, I left the apartment and a brisk stroll saw me at the station by 08:35. And I do have to say that “brisk” was the word. Despite having had a really short, bad night, I was feeling quite sprightly for a change.

And even in sprightly mode I made several stops along the way.

The first stop was in the Boulevard des 2ème et 202ème de Ligne to see how the repairs to the old medieval walls are getting on.

And they seem to be making really good progress and the new stone blocks that they are blending into the existing walls really look quite the part.

They have several sections to go at and it will all be looking quite good when it’s done.

And despite it being early, I wasn’t alone in the street either.

I was being stalked all the way up the rue Couraye by the Sunday morning street cleaner. He was heading on quite nicely, making U-turns and going the wrong way down the one-way street to brush the other side, whether there was another car coming or not.

At least he was useful as some kind of pacemaker to help me on my way.

My cleaner was there at the station so I said “hello”, and then purchased a coffee from the machine. And then waited for the train because it wasn’t in the platform.

And fortune smiled on me too on the train. I had a very charming young companion next to me and although she didn’t have too much to say for herself, it’s the kind of thing that does my ego a great deal of good.

Surprisingly, I stayed awake for most of the trip. I ate my breakfast (crackers and mandarins) and settled down to read Carl Rafn’s Antiquities Americanae.

Written in 1837, its claim to fame is that Rafn was the very first person to take seriously the prospect that the Norse Sagas about the voyages to “Vinland” were actually based on fact and not mere fireside fiction, and he actually set in motion some kind of technical research and calculations to back up his theories.

His theories and calculations were dismissed by later hisotians, most notably by Arthur Reeves who wrote in 1914 “… If less effort had been applied to the dissemination and defence of fantastic speculations, and more to the determination of the exact nature of the facts …” and then proceeded on after 200 or so pages in his book “The Finding of Wineland the Good” to reach almost the same conclusions as those of Rafn.

But today, as we all know because we’ve been there and seen it, tangible evidence of Norse occupation has been discovered in the New World and although it’s not where Rafn expected it to be, my opinion is that the site at L’Anse aux Meadows isn’t Vinland at all but another unrecorded Norse settlement, and Vinland remains to be discovered.

We pulled into Paris Montparnasse-Vaugirard more-or-less bang on time and I strode off through the massed ranks of travellers down to the heaving metro station. There’s a change on the metro there too, because they have now put up crowd control gates on the platform.

The train was crammed to capacity and I had to wait a while before I could find a seat. I sat next to an African woman and her little daughter Adela who proudly told me that she was two years and three months old.

The two of them sang all the way to where I alighted, and I had the pleasure of telling mummy that it made my day to see a little kid so happy.

Although it was cold and windy, it was so nice outside that I went for a good walk around outside for a look at what goes on in the vicinity of the station.

And now I know that if ever I forget my butties I won’t be short of something to eat because there were plenty of fast-food shops right in the immediate vicinity.

But seeing as I hadn’t forgotten them, I sat on a bench in the station, surrounded by a group of schoolkids and ate them (the butties, not the kids) and then went for my train.

My train was another one of the Paris-Brussels-Koln-Amsterdam “PBKA” trainsets.

And as I boarded it, fatigue caught up with me and I travelled all the way to Brussels in a state of blissful subconsciousness, to the strains of Traffic’s On The Road” – one of the top-ten best live albums ever.

My neighbour had boarded the train carrying, of all things a rolled-up carpet. I asked him whether it had run out of fuel, or else why he didn’t just unroll it and travel to Brussels on that.

However, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once famously remarked, “it’s a waste of time trying to tell jokes to foreigners”.

At Brussels my train to Leuven was already in the station so I was able to reap the benefits of having pre-purchased my ticket on the internet. No waiting in a queue for a ticket or finding that the machines are out of order. I just leapt on board.

It was our old friend 1861, and that was crowded too for some reason. There seems to be an awful lot of people travelling today.

I suppose it’s with it being Easter weekend next weekend and everyone is off for their holidays.

I’ve already explained about my change of room, and once I was settled in I had a lengthy talk with Rosemary on the telephone.

That took me up to the time to go out and meet Alison. We went off for a vegan burger at the Greenway

Our route there took us through the St Donatus Park where we could admire the Toren Oude Stadsomwalling – the Tower of the Old City Wall.

This wall was started to be built in 1160. It had 31 towers, 11 street gates and 3 water gates. 2740 metres long, it enclosed 40 hectares.

It was superseded in 1360 by another wall roughly where the ring-road is now, and demolition began towards the end of the 18th Century.

There’s still a fair bit remaining, and on our travels we’ve seen quite a bit of it.

After our burger we went for our usual coffee at Kloosters Hotel.

And on our way back to the car, weaving our weary way through the side streets, we came across this really beautiful mural in what I think is the Jozef Vounckplein.

I don’t recall having seen this before.

And good old Alison. While she was at the English Shop yesterday she found some vegan hot cross buns. So now I’m properly prepared for my Good Friday anyway.

On that note, I’ll go upstairs and try out my new bed. I hope that it’s as comfortable as it looks.

gare du nord paris france

Thursday 4th April 2019 – REMEMBER YESTERDAY …

… when I told you that winter had returned to Normandy?

Well, it’s here and with a vengeance too. The storm is blowing up right across the bay and churning up the sea something wicked.

This little trawler, with its lifeboat in tow, is making heavy weather of leaving port this morning and struggling out into the wind.

By the time the evening came round, the wind had dropped slightly.

Ever so slightly, and as it was high tide when I went out for my evening walk, the waves were crashing down over the top of the Plat Gousset in an impressive fury.

All in all, it’s been quite a spectacle today with the weather the way that it has been.

Despite a night that was rather later than I wanted, I had a decent sleep up until about 05:30 when I awoke. There was a little bit of awakening during the night but nothing much to worry about.

There had been plenty of time to go on a little voyage or two though. I was at a meal last night and sitting at the table were a couple of people whom I know – Zero being one of them. She at one time was a regular feature in my nocturnal rambles and who seems to be making something of a comeback just now). She was saying to the man who was with her – probably her father – that if only she had said something different to … (a former school-friend of mine) … he might be alive today. My ears pricked up at this news. “Is … (so-and-so) dead then?” “Ohh yes” said the reply. “Died last night”. There was another friend of ours working in the same place so I dashed down to tell him the news. He wasn’t there so I left a note on his desk. But on reflection I reckoned that the note wasn’t very clear and should have been written in a different way to clarify it.)

A little later I was caught in something of a no-man’s-land between here and the Auvergne. I had a piece of land down there and there was a wooden chalet-type thing there but it was just a shell, no inner lining and no inner dividing walls. I’d had it up for sale and people had been looking at it. A princess had liked one version of it and someone else liked another version of it, and all in all I was becoming confused about what I was going to do. The land down there was full of stuff including a Honda 500cc twin motorbike – a really nice parallel twin from the 1980s, a few cars and a couple of those were nice too, and an alsatian dog that stayed down there and guarded the place when I was away for months on end. I went back there with a former friend from Stoke on Trent. He was saying how he liked one particular style in which the chalet could be arranged. He started to pick up the wardrobes, even those full of clothes, and carry them about to put them in other places. I was wondering about all of the work that needed doing to organise everything so that I could sell it on but it’s not even worth thinking about. He had a drive around the field on this Honda and said how he thought that it was beautiful. He asked what I was going to do with it, and I replied that I was going to take it to Brussels. Getting it into the van won’t be a problem but getting it out at the other end might be because I’m on my own there. He’d let this dog loose. It was sniffing around everything. There was a Ford Anglia estate and the tailgate was open. We were having a look inside it and this dog came and jumped inside. I was saying “get the dog out. It has no business being in there”. I was worried that it was going to disgrace itself and ruin the interior.

And for a change, I was up quite early too and I’d quickly dealt with the morning procedures. I’d even managed a shower too.

It’s shopping day today but before I went out I transcribed a few notes from the dictaphone.

Terry turned up to say hello too. One of my neighbours wanted some DiY work doing and he’d been signed up to do it.

Once I had Terry settled in, I headed out to the shops, braving the howling wind. But again, I didn’t get very far at all.

I’ve mentioned before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … that large, heavy vehicles are not allowed into the interior of the city walls. They have to park up outside and the goods trans-shipped to a smaller vehicle.

We’ve seen that happen a few times already, and there was another occurrence this morning.

The fish dock by the Fish Processing plant was busy too.

They must have just opened the harbour gates because there are three trawlers down there unloading their catch, and a whole fleet of vans and lorries waiting to take away the produce.

It must have been a really impressive sight down there 40 or 50 years ago when the cod-fishing on the Grand Banks was at its height.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that every so often we are treated to the presence of a rather large crane on the quayside.

The last one was in April last year, and here sure enough almost exactly a year later, there’s another one here today.

From up here, I couldn’t see what it was doing down there, and in view of the weather I didn’t fancy the idea of going down there to make further enquiries. I’ll save that for a better day.

That’s not all of the excitement down in the harbour either.

We now have a huge load of gravel accumulating on the quayside, and a digger moving it around so that it’s by the conveyors.

That can only mean one thing, and that is that Neptune or one of her sisters will be here in early course. She’s actually in London right now, but Shetland Trader is at large in the English Channel a mere cockstride from here.

From here I strolled up through the town on the way to the railway station. There, I collected my tickets for my next trip to Leuven. I like to have them in my possession well in advance because the ticket machines aren’t always reliable and the ticket office is closed when I arrive for my train.

Next stop was at LIDL for the midweek shopping. Apart from the usual stuff and a packet of brazil nuts, I bought one of these shower hanger trays. I’m fed up of my soap and shampoo floating around all over the place and I’ve been looking for one of these.

Today, LIDL was having a bathroom equipment sale and these shower hanger trays were one of the articles on offer.

On my way back home I went down via the rue Saint Paul into the rue Sainte Genevieve to check up on the new house-building.

As I suspected the other day, they are now rendering it with crépi.

And it’s quite interesting to see how they do it. They have a mixing machine that makes it come out like a rather wet clay and the spray it onto the breeze blocks and then smooth it over with some large floats.

Back here, I made myself a nice hot chocolate and then set down to work.

All of the blog entries as far back as 12th July 2018 are now up-to-date. But I’ve run aground temporarily because I’m back to when I was prowling around the Somme front line.

The searchable text database is done back to there too and, as it happens, so are the dictaphone notes for that period.

So one of the projects on hand is to tie them all together and make up a couple of web pages about the whole voyage. But when I’ll do that I really don’t know right now.

Terry came round for lunch and a chat, and after he had left I had another session indexing the photos from my trip to the High Arctic. I’ve probably done another 100 or so and I shall be glad when they are all done and dusted, because then I can add them to the blog entries for those dates.

That’s a task that is long-overdue.

While all that was going on, there was a terrific rainstorm going on outside, but by the time that I was due to go for my walk it had stopped.

Once outside, I didn’t bother to loiter in the wind.

A brisk walk around the headland and a quick look at the chantier navale. They weren’t spraying today, which is hardly a surprise given the wind.

But I did notice that there seems to be a layer of colour in a stripe low down on the hull, so it looks as if they are getting close to putting on the final coat.

Back here, I whacked another pile of notes off the dictaphone list, in the middle of which I was roused by Terry telephoning me to say that he’d been banging on my door for 10 minutes. I must have … errr … had a litle relax.

We had a chat and after he had gone home (and I had forgotten to give him some stuff for Liz) I carried on with the dictaphone.

So engrossed was I with what I was doing that I was late for tea. So i did a quick plate of mixed veg and pasta tossed in powdered garlic and olice oil followed by pineapple and coconut soya cream.

After the washing-up, I headed out for my evening walk.

The wind had dropped slightly so I could actually walk, but there’s an incredible amount of force in the sea, as I have said before.

It’s all stored up in some incredible reserve of force and with a 3,000-odd mile uninterrupted journey across the Atlantic, the force can remain in the mass of the sea for quite a considerable time.

By the time that I made it round to the view overlooking the Plat Gousset, it was not far off high tide.

I could see that the waves were crashing over the sea wall with an incredible amount of violence. I stood there and watched it for quite a while.

It’s really quite a spectacle when it’s going full steam ahead, as you can ses.

After a while, I headed back home, giving a little kitten a stroke on the way

With being a little late this evening, it’s rather last now so i won’t be having my early night tonight. But I’ll do the best that I can.

But I’ve had two lots of news today. And both concern little projects that I’ve had on the go for a while. Things have no accelerated and one of them is now complete and the other one, I’m now locked into.

And so there’s no turning back now, and I have an awful lot of work to do before I’m very much older. I wish I had been more selective and brought more books back from the Auvergne.

I need a good sleep tonight.

crane port de granville harbour manche normandy france

“night high winds storm waves over plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Thursday 21st March 2019 – AS REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall, today has been a difficult day.

It always is the day after I return from hospital, but today was rather different from the others.

Margaret Thatcher (and how we miss her, with this shower in charge) once said “anyone could do a good day’s work when they felt like it, but the key to success is to be able to do a good day’s work when you don’t feel like it”.

And that’s what happened today. I didn’t feel very much like it at all, but I did do a very good day’s work all things considering.

Admittedly, when the alarm went off at 06:00 (and 06:10 and 06:20) I didn’t take much notice. I turned over and went back to sleep. And that’s no surprise either. Despite being tired it took me ages to go to sleep last night and I thought that I would never drop off. But I did, and was awoken by the alarms. No chance of leaving the bed at that time though. I turned over and went back to sleep and that was how I stayed until 07:22

Last night I was in London with some other guy and we were looking for a place to stay on a long-term basis. There were student flats available and we were sent to see one near the Thames on the north bank somewhere Fulham way, in a modern block of flats. It was the tiniest room that you have ever seen, with two beds in it and there was already one person in it, so we didn’t know if this person was to leave or whether we would end up with three sharing this tiny room. I was fitted with some kind of arm bracelet, for a reason that I didn’t know at the time. There was a large ginger cat roaming around the area so I picked it up and stroked it, and took it outside with me, to the horror of everyone else who explained to me that the arm bracelet meant that I wasn’t allowed to hold a cat outside the building. Someone mentioned that my Aunt Mary lived in London so why don’t I telephone her. So I did. She told me that she now had a bike so I asked her why she didn’t cycle down the Embankment to meet me. So off she set and we – by now Cecile was with me – went down to meet her. She came out of the subway in the wrong direction as if she had been riding east, and then we lost sight of her. But there she was, a few levels down at street level so we waved and she came up. By now she had transformed into Marianne, and she came over to give me a great big hug and said how much she had missed me. But strangely she had another guy with her too.

07:50 was when I left the bed. So it was rather a late breakfast this morning.

Never mind though. Off into town.

I didn’t gte very far though. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there are some very low gates into the old medieval walled town and the streets are very narrow, so large vehicles are not permitted in there.

Everything has to be off-loaded and trans-shipped, including ready-mixed concrete.

We saw Normandy Trader in port yesterday afternoon, loading up with a cargo.

She’s now gone from the port, but there’s plenty of cargo left on the quayside. This means that we might well be expecting a visit from Thora.

On the other hand, it could be that Normandy Trader was actually unloading, and we are waiting for the cargo to be taken away.

First stop was at the Railway Station. My old fogey’s railcard is on the verge of expiring so I need a new one. And it’s a good job that I went early because the lady in front of me looked as if she wanted to be there for the Duration.

So armed with my new railcard, I headed off (on foot, not on the train) to LIDL.

We’ve talked in the past about recycling and waste here in Granville, and I was lucky enough to see one of the waste lorries emptying one of the town’s waste containers in the avenue des Matignon.

I hope that they will be emptying the paper bin near me so that I can dispose of some more of the European Paper Mountain.

Although I didn’t buy anything special in LIDL, I did treat myself to a bag of brazil nuts. Two people – one of whom is a doctor and the other one is a patient – have told me now that brazil nuts contain plenty of vital vitamins and minerals, one of which is selenium, a deficiency of which is said by some to be one of the possible causes of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Back here, I did a little (only a little) tidying up and then did the filing of all of the mail that had built up while I was away. And there was a lot of it too.

There were four letters that needed my attention and so after lunch I set down to work. One of the letters was unnecessary because over lunch I had received a mail to say that the issue was resolved, but I managed the other three without any problem.

And then, I … errr … crashed out on the chair for 20 minutes.

On recovering, I headed off back into town and the Post office and dispatched the three letters. That’s another task out of the way. We’ll have to see what comes of those.

on the way back, I took a little sight-seeing diversion to push my daily fitness target up to 100%.

Round by the harbour now we have a lorry just pulling in. So is he going to be delivering more supplies for the next freighter, or is he going to be taking away the supplies that are already here?

Watch this space.

At the moment we are experiencing one of the lowest tides of the year, and for a town that already has the highest tidal range in Europe, a low tide is pretty exceptional.

With all of the fruits de mer around here, the peche à pied or fishing on foot by scavenging in the rock pools and the sand for oysters and mussels is very popular.

The situation basically (it’s much more complicated than this in fact, but this will give you a basic idea) is that the accessible fishing rights between the high tide and the low tide are leased out to people and companies and are thus private.

But the fishing rights for the beach beyond the low tide limits aren’t leased out because they aren’t usually accessible. They are public access fishing areas.

So when we have exceptionally low tides, about a dozen or so times a year, everyone floods out to the public access areas to try their luck.

They are still quite busy at the Chantier Navale.

It seems that Armor has cleared off, but Charles_Marie and la Granvillaise are still here.

We have a new boat too. I’m not sure if she’s one of the ferries for the Ile de Chausey, or whether in fact she’s something else.

I Shall have to go out and check at some point.

Back here I attacked the mountain of photos that have built up while I was away – fighting hard the temptation to go and lie down for half an hour. But I survived up until teatime. Pasta and a burger, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert.

This evening it was dark when I went out for a walk, and spent much of the time out there watching a trawler coming out of the English Channel towards the harbour.

I took a pile of photos of it at different speeds, apertures and ISO settings and you can compare them all by looking at them here and also below.

But I’ve done 118% of my daily activity today, which is good news. I’ve been at or over 100% for almost every day since last Thursday. It’s hardly a surprise that I’m feeling the pressure just now.

So on that note, I’m going to bed. And it’s not even 21:45 yet. I’ve had a hard day.

night trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night trawler tying up port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Wednesday 20th March 2019 – AND HERE I AM …

… back in the comfort and safety and privacy and warmth of my own home.

And how much I like being here too. i’m glad to be back.

However, as seems to be usual these days I had yet another bad night. I always seem to whenever I’m travelling. Going to bed early doesn’t help, especially when you have found the radio alarm clock and set it to work, so that you can watch it tick on past 03:35.

But at some point I must have gone off to sleep because I was awoken by the alarm. and I’d even been on something of a voyage too – doing something with the Wales football team from last night.

Once I was awake, I didn’t hang about. I was up (almost) immediately and with everything already packed, I was on the road even before the alarm at 06:20 went off.

And to such an extent that never mind the 06:42 train – I was on the 06:32 to Oostende.

You can see it pulling in, 2 minutes late, being pulled by one of the Class 18 electric locomotives from 2011

As a result, I was in Bruxelles-Midi station even earlier than normal. I had plenty of time to go to Carrefour for my raisin buns for breakfast.

Surprisingly I didn’t have too long to wait at Bruxelles-Midi even though I was in early.

We were called up to the platform somewhat earlier than usual, and when we arrived on the platform we found that our TGV was already in.

It’s another one of the Reseau 38000 “PBA” (Paris Brussels Amsterdam) transets, number 4538

My neighbour was a nice young lady but she was extremely taciturn. She just sat gazing out of the window all the way to Paris Gare du Nord and I had a little relax.

At Paris, I dashed down into the Metro and leapt aboard the train, only for it to be held up at almost every station. In fact, the journey that usually takes me about 45 minutes took just about 65 minutes. It’s a good job that the TGV arrived on time.

My train to Granville was on time too. My neighbour was an elderly lady who needed quite a lot of attention which meant that I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to do.

But in my reading of “Wineland the Good” by Arthur Reeves, I came across something quite interesting. Reeves refers to some documents relating to the discovery and voyages to Vinland – the ‘Breve Chronicon Norvegiae’ – that were discovered in the files of the Earl of Dalhousie and which dated to the mid 15th Century.

Dalhousie is of course not too far away from Roslin and the presence of these documents up the road may well provide some kind of link that led to the voyages of Henry Sinclair and their relation to the strange carvings at Roslin Chapel.

Despite almost everything, our train pulled in at Granville bang on time.

Here it is in the station, parked up next to the train to Rennes – one of the Bombardier X76500 series of multiple-units.

As an aside, I’ve discovered that I can actually catch a train from Granville to St Malo if I change at Dol de Bretagne. And there’s talk about laying on a direct train some time in the future.

This time I managed to walk all the way back home, admiring Normandy Trader being loaded up at the quayside as I did so.

There seems to be an enormous amount of goods down there waiting to be loaded up on board. That should keep them out of mischief for quite a while with all of that.

Seeing as there were some men around there today, I should really have gone down to talk to them.

Further up the hill, I noticed that they were working on the city walls.

Part of the pavement has been closed off for as long as I have been there due to some loose stones that have been falling out of the wall, and I had heard some story that they might be doing some work on it.

So it looks as if they have already started. Probably hammering the loose stones back in and repointing the walls.

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I spent a couple of summers doing that on my house and it’s a long, heavy, difficult job.

Back here I had a really good relax for a couple of hours before attempting the unpacking. Definitely feeling the strain.

Tea was easy too. One of the portions of shepherd’s pie out of the freezer with veg and gravy. However, the slice of chocolate cake that i’d left out of the freezer had turned. But those in an airtight container in the fridge were fine and there was some soya dessert left.

later on, I went for my walk around the headland. It was quite pleasant out there but yet again I was the only one out there.

There was still a touch of light left – enough to take a few photographs of the coastline, like this one of St Martin de Brehal.

It’s come out really well, all told and I’m quite pleased with it.

So now I’ll go to bed. There’s not much food in here so it’s a shopping day tomorrow. A nice walk up to LIDL I reckon.

I’ll see how I feel.

night donville les bains rue du nord granville manche normandy france

night st malo brittany baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night cancale brittany baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night baie de mont st michel jullouville granville manche normandy france

night trawler baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 19th March 2019 – I’VE HAD SOME …

… good news today. Lots of it too. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

But first of all, let’s talk about last night.

Last night I was the tour manager on board a ship such as the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. Two male passengers, family men, had been caught fighting. I had had them in before me and without taking sides, I’d cautioned them as to their further conduct on board. Some time later, they had been caught fighting yet again, with the victim of the first attack trying to stab the other man with a pencil. It was all completely out of hand. so in the end I had to invoke a formal hearing about it. Whilst I sympathised with the victim of the affair, you can’t attack someone with a weapon, no matter what weapon it is, and expect to get away with it. So in the end my verdict was that they should be confined to their cabins until we reached the next port and then I would put them ashore to fend for themselves. At some point though, and I don’t know exactly where, I awoke in the middle of all of this at about 04:00 and although I was awake, this voyage carried on in my subconscious and it was certainly interesting.
Later on, I was back on my travels again, in the south-east USA near the coast, examining the map of the Carolina coast and wondering how come on my various travels there in the past, I’d missed so much of he coastline according to this map. By now I was in the company of some young girl and we were visiting some kind of suburban area of apartment buildings of the type built in Europe in the 1980s, side-on to the road and sloping down to a forest in the background. We were on our way to a school because it was the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of a girl aged 6 and they were having some kind of “thoughts and prayers” vigil. You could tell what kind of school it was because in North America, the more exclusive the school, the more plaid the girls wear. And while these girls were in a British-type of uniform, there was plenty of it. And I counted, amongst all of the children assembled there, not even a handful of children from any ethnic minority, and this of course is the “Deep South”. There were several policemen there and several male assistants folding flags and the like, and they were mainly of ethnic minority. I was chatting to a couple of them about a few things to do with the service, because after all it’s the first of its type that I had ever attended. But in the end we took out place right at the top end of the assembly hall, and the service began.

This morning I didn’t quite leap out of bed with alacrity, but it was something like. And after the usual performance I had a few things to do.

By 10:00 I went for a walk into town for a baguette for lunch and also to have a wander around a few shops.

In the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein there was a huge marquee erected where the market had been the other day, so I went over to have a look to see what it was.

Apparently there is a big drive for blood donor volunteers in Belgium right now and that’s good news for me because it’s blood donors who are helping to keep me alive right now.

I’ve spoken … “at great length and on many occasions” – ed … about the destruction that was inflicted on the city during the German invasion of August 1914.

It was practically burnt to the ground as part of the deliberate German policy of “frightfulness” and the famous library and all of its contents going back to the Dark Ages were totally destroyed.

It wasn’t until after the end of the war that the rebuilding of the city began.

You can tell the buildings that were destroyed during the occupation.

They all bear this kind of plaque, with the date of 1914 on it, with some kind of symbolic emblem displaying a sword and a conflagration.

This is presumably representing the Biblical “fire and sword” of Chapter 66:16 of the Book of Isaiah – he who was so-called because he had two eyes and one Isaiah than the other.

On the way back to my little apartment I walked up the Tiensestraat.

When I was on my way into town yesterday I noticed that they were working on the pavement here so I went for a closer look.

They seem to be relaying the paving stones here. Judging by the raised manhole covers, it looks as if they had dug it up for the relaying of pipes and cables.

Further on down the street they’ve been doing some renovations on a couple of the buildings.

Today there was a lorry here delivering a pile of wooden hardboard or plywood sheets and I was lucky enough to be there when they were passing them up to someone on the first floor using a crane.

It’s certainly better than taking them one at a time up the stairs.

Back home I made my butties and then I headed off back to the railway station.

My train was the AM 96 number 933 going to the south-west of the city, passing by Brussels Schuman station where I was intending to alight.

The other one is a Siemens “Desiro”, one of the single-current examples that came into service about 10 years ago and which became rather notorious for their unreliability.

We had a really friendly, cheerful chatty ticket collector on our train, which is always nice to see. But apart from that, I sat quietly and ate my butties.

Out of the station and up the road to the Post Office. And much to my dismay, the Post Office there has closed down and it’s now the Polish Embassy. GRRRRR!

Back on another train and round to Bruxelles-Midi.

First stop was the Tour du Midi and after queueing for quite a while, I was eventually seen by the receptionist who sent me off to see someone else. And, much to my surprise, I am indeed entitled to a Belgian State pension and the guy whom I saw helped me start things off.

Next was round the corner to the Avenue Fonsny and the main Post Office there. But that’s closed down too.

Eventually someone in a hotel pointed me in the direction of another Post Office and I even managed to find it too. And here there is yet more good news. Not only do I have a deposit account there, I also have a current account, and I’d forgotten about that too.

Unfortunately that matter couldn’t be resolved then and there. The accounts are classed as dormant so I need to write to the Head Office.

The counter clerk gave me the address so I’ll do that when I’m back home. And how long it’s going to take is anyone’s guess but if you don’t start, you don’t finish.

Back to the Bruxelles-Midi railway station, and I didn’t have to wait too long for a train to come in.

It’s one of the push-me pull-you class 19 electrics and with it being the start of rush hour, it was pretty crowded too.

I went right up to the front because that’s usually where most of the empty seats may be found. I don’t fancy fighting my way through the crowds.

I’d noticed the other day that there was a funfair setting up on the Martelarenplein outside the railway station.

It’s now operational so I had a little bit of a wander around to see what was going on.

The answer was “nothing much” because there were only half a dozen or so stalls there. Nothing at all like the big one that we had in Leuven the other week.

Back to here, to find that an appointment that I have been desperate to arrange since the summer has finally come through. I’ll know my destiny on April 24th at long last.

Tonight there was football on the internet and I watched what I could on my creaking laptop, which actually did much better than I was expecting.

The Welsh Premier League representative team played a representative team from the National Conference in England. The English team scored two – a goalkeeping howler and an own goal, but the Welsh team scored two of the best goals that you would ever be likely to see at this level of football.

It was a great advert for the Welsh Premier league, that’s for sure.

So now I’m off to bed. I need to be up early in the morning for my trip home. And I’ll be glad to be back.

paving tiensestraat leuven belgium

war damage architect tiensevest belgium

Saturday 16th March 2019 – I’VE SPENT …

… the afternoon in Gestapo headquarters in Koln. And all that I can say is that these 17.4 million racist xenophobes who voted to kick out the foreigners from their country ought to go along and visit it too.

We’ve seen the Biffers and UKRAP and Nigel Garbage doing things like refusing to shop in places run by Muslems, boycotting shops selling halal food, defacing mosques and the like, and no-one bats an eyelid.

You only have to compare what’s going on in the Fascist Paradise that is the UK today and compare it with what happened in Germany 1933-1945 to see some alarming similarities.

Everyone stood by and watched back then, and we had stupid, naive politicians waving pieces of paper about. And look how it all ended up because of this inaction. It’s getting to the stage where the ordinary citizens need to rise up and take matters into their own hands otherwise we’ll all be back here again.

Who will ever forget Martin Niemoller’s famous words?

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Last night I had, for a change, a reasonably good sleep last night. From about 22:45 to the alarm at 06:00 with a brief awakening at 03:45.

I’d been on my travels too, with a couple of people making their debuts. What we were doing was cutting up an onion into very fine particles whilesomeone else was preparing hot dogs or hamburgers. We had to remove all of the skin and everything else from the onion and that wasn’t easy although mine seemed to disappear quite quickly. And then wait.And I noticed that my onion was starting to congeal so I pointed this out to one of the women who was there. The conversation moved on and some guy joined in the discussion. He was a guy with whom I’d played guitar a couple of times in the Auvergne but with blond hair and this chat developed into some kind of problematic discussion about how he was going to join the Good Ship Ve… errr … Ocean Endeavour somewhere out between the Faroe islands and Iceland given the really poor weather. he then started to talk about his period in the Swedish Army which might explain his blond hair and strange accent. Mantime someone came down the corridor between the office desks shouting for someone – someone I knew on the Wirral. A girl piped up that “he sits here next to me, but he’s not at his desk right now. You can tell that it’s his desk because of the stuff on it.”.

There was the usual medication and breakfast and then I headed off to the station. Alison was already there so we headed off together to our platform for the train.

It was the 08:28 to Eupen, but we were only going as far as Liège.

There at Liège Guillemins railway station we alighted and waited for the German Inter-City Express to come in from Brussels.

And we made a slight miscalculation in that the train was a lot shorted than the one from which we had alighted.

We had to run (and you’ve no idea how difficult it is for me to run these days, but at least I managed it) half-way down the platform to leap aboard it.

We were 10 minutes late arriving in Köln, so I imagine that there’s a few more railway employees sent off to the Ostfront. But it didn’t really matter because the train was just so comfortable – even compared to the best of the TGVs.

Alison and I went for a coffee and then walked round the cathedral to check on the Roman paving that I had seen last time that I was here. We then continued up to the Hohenzollernbrucke.

By now the rain had stopped so we stood on the bridge to admire the barges passing by underneath.

And then up-river on the eastern bank to see a few things that I had noticed last time.

Back across the river on the Deutzerbrucke, stopping to take a few more photos of a few more barges, then Alison went for a wander around a few shops while I disappeared into the bowels of the Heumarkt metro station to look at the church tower that I saw last time.

While I was down there I stumbled over the ruins of a Roman temple from round about 100BC. This was uncovered during the construction of the Metro here

Unfortunately they haven’t been able to discover to which god the temple was dedicated

A couple more shops and then back to the Hauptbahnhof to meet Jackie.

We ended up at Mama’s Trattoria, an Italian restaurant that I had found on the internet. It advertised vegan and gluten-free meals. And what an inspired choice it was because there was plenty of choice and my penne al arrabiata was totally delicious.

From there, round to the Gestapo museum, and what a frightful place that was. It’s hard to imagine a series of prison cells about 1.5 metres by 3 metres and 30 people at a time crammed in each one there for a couple of weeks on end.

The only time they would ever be allowed out would be for a good round of torture and, eventually, being hanged or beheaded in the courtyard.

As I said, the idea that 17.4 million people have voted for a return to those unspeakable times is something that fills me full of dread.

A nice walk, another coffee and a few more shops saw us back at the railway station in time for another drink and then our trains home.

We had to change trains at Liège Guillemins station again for our train back to Leuven.

There was a 10-minute wait for our train and so that gave me plenty of opportunity to have a look round and take a few photographs.

The station is certainly out-of-the-ordinary and looks even better at night when it’s all illiminated.

Back finally at leuven Alison caught the bus home and I grabbed a falafel durum to eat on the way home.

167% of my daily activity and it feels like it too. So I’m off to bed where I intend to sleep until I wake up.

Thursday 14th March 2019 – HERE I AM …

… back in a little room in my hostel place here in Leuven. All settled down nicely and ready for bed even though it’s only 20:30. I’ve had a very busy day today.

With having had a reasonable day yesterday and a reasonably early night, I was awake again at about 04:30. However I must have wandered off back to sleep at some point because the alarms awoke me at 06:00.

I’d managed to go off on a voyage during the night too. I was driving a coach taking the nurses to and from the nurses’ home to the various hospitals in the Crewe area (just like I used to do with the taxis). There was one particular nurse on a particular run that I was told
finished an hour earlier than the others so she needed picking up
separately. And so I started to make enquiries. I was examining the route and discovered quite by chance that had I not had my “thinking head” on, I would have missed out a section of the route and missed a couple of nurses. But I was still at school and still in my school uniform and this girl, someone out of my class, came over to me and asked about the nurses’ bus. It turned out that she was the nurse concerned. In fact she finished at 13:30 and at the old cottage hospital at the back of the school so I could pick her up in my lunch break. When she found out that I was to drive the coach, school uniform and all, she looked at me with total surprise. But nevertheless she agreed to wait in the main hospital building (the “house”) for me to pick her up.

Just for a change, I was out of bed quite smartly, long before the third alarm went off. First task was to make my butties, and then to do the washing up.

The rubbish went outside too and then I came back to finish off the packing and to tidy up.

I’d finished much earlier than anticipated too so I could have a look at events around the world before I set out. And there’s the usual chaos in the UK too as they flounder around helplessly in the mire of their own making, the laughing stock of the whole of the world.

Braving the wind and the rain I headed off to the station. And there was a long wait for the train because I was early. So I treated myself to a very rare coffee.

Plenty of time to read the notices too. And it looks as if there’s a project to electrify the railway line and put high-speed trains on the line, cutting up to 30 minutes off the journey time to Paris.

And as well as that, there’s talk of restarting the railway service to St Malo, and that will be exciting too.

We only had a six-carriage train this morning so we were all hemmed in like sardines. But at least the voyage was uneventful and we were just three minutes late arriving at Vaugirard.

All of the excitement was reserved for the metro at Montparnasse. There was an abandoned suitcase in the long passageway down to Metro line 4 so we couldn’t travel that way.

At a quick glance (and I could maybe have done better with more time) the best way seemed to be Line 6 to Etoile and then Line 2 to La Chapelle, right past the Eiffel Tower.

There was far less walking at the Montparnasse end, but so much more at the other end. And with the longer journey time, it took me just about 55 minutes for the journey. Luckily there was plenty of time.

While I was waiting for my train to be called I ate my butties, and then joined the queue.

It’s one of the old Reseau 38000 PBA trainsets, number 4534, and we’ve travelled on this one before – and quite often too. It seems to be regularly rostered onto this journey.

The train was crowded too. I had the misfortune to have some kind of group of people in my carriage and they took ages to sort themselves out.

But that journey was pretty much uneventful and on time too – plenty of time to catch the 15:56 to Leuven.

I’m glad that I had purchased my rail ticket on line before I came because it’s much less stressful than rushing around trying to do it at the last minute.

Up the road to my little accommodation. There’s a nice room here for me, so I had a relax for a while and then went out to Delhaize for the shopping for breakfast tomorrow.

And much to my surprise I was feeling quite sprightly too – not like I have been feeling for a while

On the way back I sorted out some chips from the fritkot down the hill and then fight my way into the tin of beans because there’s no tin opener here.

Mango sorbet and pineapple for pudding, and now even though it’s only 20:30 I’m off to bed.

It’s all very well feeling sprightly, but it wears me out in the end.

Thursday 7th March 2019 – WE’RE IN THE …

… grip of another major storm here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the weather station by the lighthouse here recorded one of the strongest blasts of wind ever registered in France.

And while it’s not anything like that windy (it’s quite easy to move about) there must be a really strong wind blowing somewhere out to sea

Standing on the old medieval walls overlooking the Plat Gousset, it was a really impressive sight watching the waves go smashing over the sea wall and crashing down on the promenade over there.

The power and force that there must be in the sea could power the whole of the world many times over if it were properly harnessed, that’s for sure.

Just for a change I managed to sleep right the way through until the alarms went off. Although I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to leave the bed.

I’d been on a travel too during the night. Something to do with some kind of outrageous posting made to a group of which I am a member in a French Social network. It unravelled itself into a scenario where I hd various packets of flour and so on and some olives and I was having to put them into different jars, and becoming confused to such an extent that I ended up with the olives in the flour and wondering how I could separate them.

After the medication and breakfast I had a good shower, a clean-up and a change of clothes, and then headed off to town.

I didn’t actually get too far though.

Right outside the door the recycling lorry had just finished emptying one of the containers.

I loitered for a while to see if if was going to empty another container, but in the end I had to clear off.

On the city walls in the rue des Juifs, I had a look down into the harbour.

I thought that I detected some lights down there last night but I wasn’t sure, but sure enough, it looks as if Thora came in on the evening tide yesterday.

It was pretty quiet down there though today. They didn’t seem to be doing much working.

Through the town and up the rue Couraye, I headed for the station to pick up my tickets for Leuven next week.

ON the square outside the station though there’s another small fairground. I remembered this from last year as soon as I saw it.

A shame though that I hadn’t remembered it on Tuesday evening when I was around the town at night taking photographs.

At LIDL I spent €16:00, about half of which was spent on batteries. They are having another sale of AA and AAA batteries and I’m running low on them. Most of the ones here date from about 12 years ago when I had the old Pentax K100D and they are not performing as they should.

Seeing as I put coriander in my apple pie the other day, I looked around and found some cinnamon (and also some ground nutmeg) and so I’ve added them to the shopping basket ready for the next round of cooking. I fancy an apple crumble next.

On the way home, I went down the rue Sainte Genevieve.

There’s another house-building project going on down there and I’ve been keeping my eye on that over the last few months.

They aren’t far off finishing it now. A coat of rendering will make it look so much better.

Back here, I unpacked the shopping and put it away. Not very often that I feel like doing that straight away.

There were a few things that needed doing today. Firstly, to change the hit counter over on the web pages that I did yesterday. I’d put the wrong one on there.

And then there was the question of working back over the blog entries for the last few days and adding some of the photos.

In between all of this, there was lunch to arrange. And as I had forgotten to defrost the hummus in the freezer I ended up eating more cheese from the supplies. I’ll have to buy some more in Leuven.

Outside this afternoon, the wind had increased in velocity from this morning.

Not unpleasantly so, but there was an impressive sea building up with loads of whitecaps.

“Building up quite nicely for this evening” I mused. And I was right too, as you have seen.

Anyway, I carried on with my walk around the headland, and paused for a moment to see what was going on down in the chantier navale

Armor is still there, with her hull still in aluminium but the deck superstructure looks as if it’s been painted white now.

And La Granvillaise is stil there too, with a couple of the volunteers working on her. That’s going to be a big job, preparing her for the coming tourist season.

Further on round the headland, and over there down in the port Thora is still at her station alongside the quay.

She seems to have been loaded with some stuff since I saw her earlier this morning so I’ll be expecting her to move out at high tide later on this evening when the harbour gates open.

Back here I had a couple of mugs of hot chocolate to warm me up and then did a whole pile of shredding.

One huge load has gone out to the container and there’s a half-a-load now waiting, but the shredder seems not to be coping with the volume of work that I’m expecting it to do.

I’ve had to dismantle … “disPERSONtle” – ed …it a couple of times to clean out a paper jam.

But by about 17:00 I’d have enough and I was in bed asleep for a good 90 minutes, which was a complete surprise following the amount of sleep that i’d had.

Tea was a slice of the leek and tofu pie from a few weeks ago. And it really was delicious, with potatoes, vegetables and gravy. Followed by apple pie and the coconut-flavoured soya dessert stuff.

This evening, I was alone again on my walk around the walls. No-one else seems to be keen to go for a post-prandial somnambulation.

I stayed of a good 15 minutes watching the storm break on the Plat Gousset and took a pile of photos.

And then I came back and edited all of them.

On the way back though, I had a look over into the harbour.

There was a trawler up by the fish processing plant, busily unloading its catch.

And Thora was still in port too. It looks as if she’s going to be in here for a while then. There must be something going on.

So now, I’m off to bed, always assuming that I can go to sleep after my little repose earlier.

Tomorrow, now that I’m up-to-date, I can start back into my programme of revision of October’s blog entries and see where that takes me.

lifeboat memorial storm baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

night storm waves pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: railway station

Thursday 27th June 2019 – HERE I AM …

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