Tag Archives: Bricqueville-sur-Mer

Monday 11th November 2019 – WE ALMOST HAD …

… another day like yesterday.

No alarm of course so I was banking on a good sleep. Especially as it was about 04:00 when I finally wandered off to bed, such is the exciting life that I lead here.

And so awakening at 08:30 was no part of the plan whatsoever.

Just like yesterday I turned over to go back to sleep by by 09:30 I gave it up and raised myself from the dead.

Somewhere during the night I’d been off on my travels too. And it all had a very familiar ring when I compare it with what usually happens in my life too.

I was up getting things ready for a party and this involved doing all of the organising, the paperwork and the tickets and so on. I’d folded up a pile of tickets to put in my pocket and so on – my pockets were full of stuff and now I had to sit down and start to do the paperwork. First thing I needed to do was to find my pen – a highlighter pen – and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I emptied out all of my pockets and put the tickets in a nice pile and they all fell over and fell on the floor. I had a really good hunt around and in the end I found my pen – my highlighter pen – and then I had to go and get the letter to pick it up and highlight it and I couldn’t find the letter and I’d only had it in my hand a minute ago and I had to hunt around for this letter and I couldn’t find it and I could hear all people outside and I don’t know whether they had started to ocme to the party early or something like that but I was nowhere near ready at all and I still couldn’t find this paper and I’d only had it just that minute before.

Doesn’t all of that sound familiar?

We had the usual medication and breakfast, and then I spent an hour or two updating some pages on the website. I’m now somewhere on the north-west coast of Newfoundland in 2010 which means that I’m about a third of the way through – and that’s just doing the active pages too. When I look at all of the pages in the queue, it makes me shudder.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is working on my little project. This involves the help of Youtube and the Allman Brothers Band and a considerable amount of research. And I’m still at it even now.

There has also been some considerable excitement here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the strap on my fitbit broke a few weeks ago and I ordered a new one.

It never arrived, so I complained. And it turned out that according to the supplier “it was delivered and signed for on 29th October”.

Well, not here it wasn’t, so I complained again. This morning they sent be a copy of the delivery receipt from the carriage company, and asked me about the signature.

My reply was that it certainly was not mine, and I could say that with confidence because the address on the delivery receipt is wrong. For some unknown reason about which I know absolutely nothing at all, they seem to have sent the bracelet to an address in Italy.

Nevertheless, we now have to go through some stupid claims procedure with the freighter, when the reason is there right before everyone’s eyes.

What will inevitably happen will be that it will take a year to sort out, by which time they will tell me that the product is now out of stock and I can’t get one anyway.

So in the meantime, I’ve found a generic one on eBay at a quarter of the price, and that should be on its way here now even as we speak. I can’t be doing with all of this.

With a late start I had a late lunch, and then I went out for another long walk – and then had to come back because I’d forgotten to put the memory card back in the camera.

And, even more strangely, there are 25 steps from the ground floor up to my apartment – and I ran all the way up. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there have been days when i couldn’t even crawl up.

So armed with a memory card, it was back out into the howling gale (when is it ever going to stop?) and along the rue du Nord.

There was another really rough sea rolling in from the Atlantic and the waves breaking on the beach were quite impressive.

The tide is still quite far out right now.

And with the tide being quite far out right now, there was a large crowd out there on the Plat Gousset looking as if they were waiting for something.

Not that I might know what it would be, but if it’s waiting for the waves to come in and crash over the sea wall, I reckon that they have about another hour.

They could have gone for a coffee or two and come back with plenty of time rather than waiting out there in the wind.

My route this afternoon was longer than usual seeing how I’d missed my morning walk.

Instead of the habitual route I went down the steps, through the lower town and out to the port de plaisance – the yacht harbour – to see if there was anything exciting going on there.

And here tied up at one of the pontoons is one of our old favourites, the Lys Noir. I’ve no idea what she’s doing moored up out here, but she’s not doing very much right now.

Something else that I will have to do is to check her itinerary for the near future and see where I can go.

She wasn’t the only one of our old favourites in port today either.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Pecheur de Lys was taken out of storage earlier this year and put afloat in the harbour. And she’s still there too, riding out the waves.

But I wonder if she’ll ever get to see the open sea?

It was busy in there too. One of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey had just come in and it was disgorging its passengers and cargo out onto the quay.

However, my attention was elsewhere. Right now we were in the middle of one of these flash rainstorms that we have ever now and again. And a heavy one too.

And right there over the town we were being blessed with one of the most beautiful rainbows that I have seen in a long time.

We’ve had a few just recently and I’ve photographed a couple, but this one this afternoon takes the cake. And look how black the sky was too.

Meanwhile returning à nos moutons as they say down there, the inner harbour was very busy too.

The harbour gates can’t have been open for all that long because there was a regular procession of trawlers coming in to tie up at the fish-processing plant.

And also smaller trawlers too, with all of their family and friends lined up at the quayside ready to catch the catch as it’s thrown up by those down below in the boat.

There are two of our regular boats that weren’t in the water today.

Here up on blocks in the Chantier Navale is our old friend Aztec Lady that appeared in port the other week. There didn’t seem to be much evidence about the work that might be being undertaken and there was no-one with her to ask.

Mind you, I doubt that they would tell me anyway. Commercial charter companies are very reticent to talk about defects in their equipment.

Next to her up on more blocks is our other old friend Spirit of Conrad. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been for a birthday party on board about 2 years ago.

Her owner, one of my neighbours, was down there so I had a chat to him. Apparently she has a hole in the hull caused by some kind of impact damage and she’s going to be patched up.

He showed me the hole and it wasn’t really all that big and it seemed to be above the waterline too. So it won’t take long to fix.

On the way back, I walked all around the headland, in the teeth of a howling gale.

Out at the Pointe du Roc where we turn into the English Channel, the seas were quite heavy and this little trawler here was having something of a rough time of it turning her beam to the wind.

It’s the kind of thing that makes you think about the real cost of the lump of fish that goes onto your plate on a Friday. How would you like to work out there in conditions like that?

Coming into port in a storm like this is one thing, but how about going out to work in it?

When the other trawlers were coming in, there was one just setting out. And here she is ploughing her way out through the waves in the doom and gloom on her way to her fishing station somewhere off the coast of the Channel Islands.

It’s not something that I mind doing once in a while, but to be out there in weather like that all the time is not for me.

My mega-walk is now one hour or so later than when I started and the tide is now well in.

The waves are giving the sea wall at the Plat Gousset a real pounding and as you will probably notice, the crowd has diminished considerably.

And seeing as it’s rather late, I shan’t be joining them either. I’m going inside for a coffee, some warmth and to do a little more work.

In fact, I’m going to make tea. Stuffed pepper with rice followed by the last of the rice pudding. Bearing in mind last week’s problem, I gave the pepper an extra two minutes (one minute on medium and one minute on high) and it was done to a turn.

Delicious.

Back outside for my evening walk around the walls and I was all on my own, which was no surpise given the wind.

The tide was on its way out too so the crowds on the Plat Gousset have dispersed. I carried on with my walk and to my surprise not only did I run all the way up the ramp at the end, I ran on a few more paces.

What with running up the steps, and running here like this, I’ve no idea what is happening. But I’m going to make the most of it while I can.

And my fitbit tells me that I’ve done 104% of my daily activity too.

If I’m not very careful, I’ll be getting myself fit, and where will I be then?

Rather like the guy who decided that he was going to run 4 miles every night. By the end of the week he had to run 28 miles back home again.

I’ll get my coat.

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Sunday 14th May 2017 – THIS NEW MICROWAVE THING …

… has its uses, and I’m sure that I’ll be able to make the most of them once I work them out.

A cooked a pizza today using the grill function as well as the microwave and while it wasn’t all that good, it was better than some that I’ve had. The grill bit seemed to do its stuff but the base wasn’t cooked properly. What i’ll have to try to do next time is to microwave it first, and then give it 5 minutes under the grill and see what that does. It’ll be a case of trial and error, by which time I’ll probably have a real oven.

Seeing as how it was Sunday and a lie-in, what was I doing up and about at 06:15? The answer to that is the reason that any man of my age will understand. And I wasn’t up long either. Back in bed where I slept right through until 08:30.

And that was nice for a change, in my comfortable bed. And I didn’t fall asleep watching a film either last night because the battery went flat in the laptop while I was in bed. And I couldn’t be bothered to haul myself out of bed to find the charger.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go out and about during the night. I was in some kind of house with a couple of other people, including someone – a girl – whom I knew very well (and I just can’t think who it was now) and we were visited by some kind of loud-mouthed man who insisted on trying to force his opinions on us. It all became rather heated and in the end we had to use force to evict him from the premises. We thought that that would be that but I’d forgotten that there was an entrance down the side of the house and I had to dash quickly across the house to barricade the door just as he and another woman were trying to gain entrance.
A little later I was back in my own house – the one in the Auvergne to be precise although it wasn’t, if you know what I mean – and there had been some issue with the electricity. The electricity had been connected since the Friday and my consumption had been extremely negligible, which is hardly surprising seeing as I was using solar power and wind turbines. However wind turbines and solar panels weren’t authorised and everyone had to have a mains connection. These people came to visit me to inspect my premises and they were surprised by the low consumption of energy but I explained that I was quite happy to live without it and didn’t need it – that was the reason. So after much discussion they left the premises. But just as they left, I forgot myself and switched on a light – and I reckoned that they would be bound to notice that. As an aside, I wasn’t on my own here in the house but I had a girl with me – a girl whom, if I am not mistaken, is making her debut in my nocturnal ramblings so hello to you, Sue G.

After breakfast I mooched around for quite a while. I was planning to go out to the football but sometime during the night I must have pulled a muscle in my leg and I couldn’t walk very far.

But the weather cleared up later on in the afternoon. The sun disappeared, the clouds disappeared and we had a beautiful blue sky. Despite the aches in my leg, I decided that I ought to go outside for a walk after all. It would do me good.

And this is the view from where I sometimes eat my lunch – looking along the coast towards Donville les Bains. I wasn’t the only one enjoying the weather either because there was a small family sitting down there among the rocks.

Further along the cliffs there was a really good view of the building where my apartment is.

There are two entrances to the building, one nearest the cliffs and hidden by the bush and the second, nearest the road is the door to my half of the building. My apartment is on the first floor at the back.

But you can see how close we are to the cliffs and the sea, can’t you?

There’s a public footpath along the top of the cliff right out to the headland down there. It’s about half a mile down there and so regardless of the pain in my leg I decided to set out for a walk.

As you know, I have a thing about lighthouses and it’s nice to think that I’m living within a short stroll of one such. I’ll have to go out one night and see if it actually works.

In the past, you’ve seen quite a few photographs of the Ile de Chausey away in the distance at the entrance of the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But here on the edge of the cliff, the view here is even more impressive. And this is just the normal camera lens,
not the telephoto lens. That gives you an idea of how high up we are just here on the cliffs.

I imagine that the marker buoy here is to warn shipping of the rocks here. Like I said, i’ll have to go out at night and see what is lit up.

But while we’re on the subject of good views and height, there was a very good view of this motor boat out there in the distance. But it wasn’t that that caught my eye.

Right out there in the far distance you can see land on the horizon. That is actually the island of Jersey, and it’s all of 60 kilometres – 35 miles – away. That’s the kind of view that we were having today. The conditions were perfect.

As I said – conditions were perfect.

Away over there in the distance is the town of Bricqueville sur Mer where I stayed for a couple of weeks a while ago. Its church is famous for its magnificent spire and you can clearly see that in the distance on the top of the ridge in the background.

You can also see the oyster beds there in the bay.

This area was heavily fortified by the Germans in World War II. The fortifications of the Atlantic Wall extended down as far as here and they were so well-built that they have resisted all attempts to remove them.

There are several gun emplacements here on the cliffs overlooking the entrance to the bay and you can see what happened when they tried to dynamite one of them.

In fact they tried to dynamite a couple of them and merely succeeded in scattering lumps of concrete about the place. What they could move easily, they moved it. But the remainder, they just left here and incorporated them into a public garden.

After all of that, they gave up trying to remove all of the rest of them.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have something of an issue with bad and inconsiderate parking.

Here’s a beautiful example of an old XK Jag that isn’t even parked, it’s abandoned, right acrossthe entrance to the lighthouse and in the zone that should be kept clear for the fire brigade.

But as we know, Parisians consider that laws in the Provinces don’t apply to them as they are some kind of superior being.

Round the corner of the headland and overlooking the Baie de Mont St Michel. Across there is the town of Jullouville where I spent a couple of days immediately after returning from Leuven, with its chateau d’eauup there at the back of town.

In the foreground is a marker light for the entrance to the harbour here in Granville. I would imagine that if anything around here is going to be illuminated at night, then that light would be the one.

A little bit further around along the coast is the town of Carolles and the seaside resort of Carolles-Plage.

If you cast your mind back a few weeks, we went for a walk one morning all along the beach from Jullouville to the headland at Carolles-Plage and stopped for a coffee.

And that over there to the right across the bay, that’s Brittany.

Around the headland, I doubled back on my route, but of course on the other – south – side.

Here we have not only a splendid view of the lower town and the edge of the harbour here, but also an excellent view of the fortifications of the old medieval city walls.

The church that is over there is the one that I can see from my living room window and slightly to the left of centre is that beautiful turretted building that we saw from close up the other day.

Now who’s he when he’s at home – if he ever is?

Ahh yes, Georges Pleville le Pelley. Born in Granville in 1726 and died in Paris in 1805. His claim to fame is that apart from many high offices that he held later in life (such as Governor of the Port of Marseille) he was a corsair who preyed on the British during many of the wars of the 18th Century.

Not only that, he’s one of those people conveniently forgotten by the uSA without whom the USA would never have had its independence from Britain. The British imposed a naval blockade on the 13 States during the War of Independence,
and this cut them off from a supply of all manufactured goods which they needed to sustain the war. The French navy engaged the British blockade ships on countless occasions, allowing blockade runners carrying munitions to slip into American harbours. Pleville le Pelley was one of the most intrepid of these blockade runners.

The Americans have completely forgotten about the huge debt that they owe to the French for safeguarding their borders during their fight for independence.

From here, I went back home again. I have some strawberry sorbet in the freezer, just the thing for a very warm Spring evening. And now it is pizza time. So I’ll attack the aforementioned and leave you to read this … errr … 1720 words.

And serve you all right too!

Sunday 30th April 2017 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was!

I went to bed early and fell asleep after just about 10 minutes of a film that I’ve tried to watch on several occasions. But it didn’t do me much good because I was awake again at about 01:30, really uncomfortably, and I couldn’t go back to sleep again.

Not only that, there was some kind of incident early in the morning. I thought at first that the cat had caught a seagull or something, but apparently the landlady’s dog had had a fit – and I bet that it was a tight one too.

Mind you, I must have gone to sleep at some time or other during the night because I had been on my travels. I was with Roxanne and Laurence, trying to negotiate Roxanne’s entry into a different school. But the negotiations were extremely complex and I discovered that you had to pay for the lessons – including the basic ones like English (which surprised me – by the way, it was English as a first language too). In the end I turned to Laurence and suggested that Roxanne stay at home and Laurence teach her – after all, Laurence is a qualified teacher (which she wasn’t, but never mind).
We ended up being on a coach going down a steep hill – I wasn’t driving but the man who was driving it was having a few difficulties. trying to negotiate his way between a couple of parked lorries he ripped the right-hand side mirror out of its housing. No amount of fiddling about could get it to go back into position.

After breakfast I had a shower and a good clean-up, tidied up my room, packed up everything and then spent an hour or so catching up with some stuff on the internet. Once I’d finished organising myself I got my motor running and headed out on the highway.

There’s no electricity in my new place until Friday morning and so Liz and Terry had told me that if I didn’t mind sleeping in the middle of a building site, I could stay at their new place for a few nights. Of course, it’s not where you are and what you are doing, it’s who you are with that counts and so I headed off through the rainstorm (the first real rain that we have had since I’ve been up here) to Roncey.

Liz had cooked a gorgeous soup for lunch, and then I had a little surprise. Liz and Terry had bought two really nice sofas for the living room at their house in the Auvergne but there wasn’t room for both of them in the living room in the place that they have just bought. And so in thanks for a service that I had rendered to them a few months ago, we heaved the redundant sofa into the back of Caliburn and drove off to Granville.

Once we had dropped off the sofa, we went for a walk around the area where my new place is. It’s an old town full of beautiful stone buildings, narrow alleyways and city walls. And we found a café that looked like something out of the 19th Century, with live music too.

Back through the rainstorm and the roadworks for another one of Liz’s special meals followed by home-made vegan cake and a nice wood fire. Here I can sit and watch the rain falling outside while I am in the warmth.

And I have some furniture now. I’ve slept on that sofa before and I’ll be sleeping on it again until I can organise myself a bed. It’s only a sofa, but it’s a start.

Friday 27th April 2017 – HAVING SEEN TWO …

… more ruins this morning, I have made an Executive Decision (and an Executive Decision is, as we all know, a decision that if it goes all wrong, the person making it is executed.

I’d seen an interesting apartment not long after I came here and started to have a look around.

The building is out on the headland right by the old walled city and was formerly an army barracks. There are three of these buildings here and after having stood empty for many years they are being restored and converted into apartments.

And tastefully converted by people who clearly had a good idea about how a multi-occupancy building should be arranged.

The apartment was 38m² and on the first floor, at the back unfortunately.

It’s those two windows just there, the right-hand one of which is just above the signs on the signpost there, and the small window around the side.

No balcony or terrace though, although there is private parking for Caliburn.

There’s a modern, heavy front door with al kinds of security fittings and an entryphone, which is really good.

But the steps up to the apartment itself are really impressive. Not very tall (of course people were much smaller in the 17th Century), very wide and made of solid stone. There are even carvings in them from the days when it was the French Army that was billeted here.

That’s my apartment from door right up there, on the first floor. There’s really two flights of stairs and a half-landing. There’s a lift too, but that goes from half-landing to half-landing and so that’s no good to me, is it?

There are two rooms here. One is a really big room that’s about 25m and tons of room to do just about anything I like in it. Within limits, of course, because it’s only to be used as a residential property.

It faces east and so it catches the sun in the morning, but not unfortunately in the afternoon. And that can’t be helped. And I do like the wooden floor

The kitchen is total rubbish, just like almost every apartment kitchen that I have seen in Granville. But it did manage to fire my imagination and I can do something with this for not very much money.

And look at the real stone facings on the wall. It’s a proper stone wall with insulation and plasterboard faced over the top. It reminds me of home and that’s another reason why it appealed to me.

There’s a small bedroom, which is fine by me. I don’t want a bedroom except for sleeping in, and there’s only going to be me anyway so it doesn’t really matter all that much.

and I’m rather disappointed by the floor. I thought at first that it was a wooden floor but in actual fact it’s a false lamitate, and a cheap laminate at that too. But you can’t have everything (and believe me, I’ve tried)

However, another advantage of this place is that there’s a built-in wardrobe here, complete with shelves and a few hanging rails.

There isn’t much in the way of storage facilities, but I only have a few clothes these days anyway, so there is plenty of room left over to stock whatever else needs stocking and for which I’m not able to find any other place to keep it.

The bathroom is the right size too, not too big and not too small. And it’s been refurbished quite nicely too.

I’m not impressed by the bath though. I would much rather have a shower so that I can use the extra space for something else, but I’m not prepared to argue about it.

There is plumbing for a washing machine though, and that’s quite useful.

The toilet is separate too, but then that’s not going to be very much of an issue because of course there’s only going to be me in here.

But anyway, chatting to the estate agent, she told me that this place was still unlet although someone else had been to see it and quite liked it.

And it is I suppose the best that I’ve seen to date and the rental is within my budget, and being totally fed up of seeing more ruins, and living out of a suitcase in depressing surroundings, I took a decision and signed on the dotted line.

After all, it is right in the shadow of the city walls by one of the gates. And I do love the building – it really has the right kind of impressive style that I want.

I could move in straight away too, except that there’s no electric. And for that, I’ll have to wait until Friday next week for that. and that’s dismayed me.

But not as much as the question of the internet. There’s a two-week delay for that, and that’s going to be difficult for me.

However, I set to work and managed to unload half of Caliburn today, as well as going around the shops in town.

There is in fact a sea view from the apartment if you are prepared to do a little bit of contortionism, but just around the corner 50 yards away is a very lovely public garden right at the top of the wall overlooking the harbour.

This looks like the ideal place for me to go and have my picnic every day when the weather is good, and being in the lee of the buildings it’s actually quite sheltered from the wind.

There are a variety of ways down to the modern town and shopping facilities. Apart from the three roads, there are several sets of stairs and ramps that lead you off in all kinds of directions

I took one set of stairs only to discover that this seems to be the longest way round. There are several ways that are much shorter than this.

And if I’m feeling the strain of the climb back up the road with my shopping, there’s a bus service and the fare is €1:00

While you admire the view from the top of the stairs, i climbed down to the bottom and went into town.

I organised the internet, changed my bank over to the branch here, and went to the Post Office to complete a redirection service for all of my post.

Hopefully that will end all of this confusion that has taken place over the past 18 months with my mail. What with one thing and another I’ve not been getting it.

The whole of Granville seems to be built on cliffs and rocks, and while I was out on the promenade speaking to the guy at the Electricity Company, this person came flying by overhead.

It’s not something that I would recommend around here with the roofs and chimneys and rocky outcrops either, and luckily he didn’t have an “unfortunate encounter” – at least, while I was there watching him.

The walk back up the hill to the old down took me along the walls that surround the place, and there I encountered a drawbridge, or pont lévis as they are called around here.

But as for me, I can well imagine that with my reputation they will start pulling up the drawbridge and running down the portcullis now that they know that I’m moving in to the vicinity. Sentries patrolling the walls too, I reckon.

So having worked myself to a frazzle with half of Caliburn unloaded I came back here for a coffee and to relax before tea.

and now it’s bedtime. And I’ll probably sleep for a week.

Thursday 27th April 2017 – I HAD A …

… day off house-hunting today. I wasn’t in the mood.

In fact, I’ve not had a very good day at all today.

Just by way of a change I managed to watch all of a film last night and even stayed awake for a while afterwards. But I did eventually go off to sleep and despite some fitful tossing and turning, slept until the alarm went off.

After breakfast I had a shower and a good clean-up, and herein lay a minor tragedy. I had had a jar of jam in my suitcase since Belgium the other week, and it’s somehow managed to be smashed. As a result there was jam everywhere and all over everything.

This led to an impromptu tidying up and sorting out session, and to a good wash of the suitcase with plenty of soap and hot water, before rinsing it off with the hosepipe. Luckily it was a reasonably sunny but very windy day so it had dried by the time that I returned.

Having done a few things on the laptop I set out for the shops. Bent Tin Ci … errr … Netto at Brehal was the port of call, where I bought my baguette and some salad stuff as well as a few other bits and pieces that I might need. and then off to Coudeville-Plage to pass the rest of the day.

Just for a very rare change, weather and lighting conditions at midday were absolutely ideal for photography.

Not only that but I managed (having tidied up Caliburn quite a lot recently) to put my hands on the big telephoto lens so I was able to take a few shots out across the water.

There, many miles away, right out in the far distance on a rock is what I reckon might be a lighthouse. And I love the way that the haze on the water makes it look as if the lighthouse is floating in the air above the sea.

And with the light being so good, I was finally able to take a decent shot of the Ile de Chausey out there, with the colours actually being a little more true to life.

Once I’m actually settled (whenever that might or might not be) I’m determined to take a little trip out there to see what the island is really like, and I hope that I’m not going to be disappointed.

But me disappointed with a sailing across the ocean? Not on your life!

While I was making my butties (I stayed inside Caliburn with this wicked wind today) this strange machine pedalled past.

We’ve seen loads of things similar to this along the Costa Stella in Belgium, but this particular multi-person pedal machine is quite different in that it appears to be articulated. That’s a first for me anyway.

I bet that the kids would have loads of fun sitting in the front of it though.

I wasn’t feeling good today, as I may already have mentioned, and I crashed out for a couple of hours. When I came to, all of the car parks were jam-packed with people.

Today is apparently what they call the marée. One of the days when the tide is at its lowest and so everyone has the right to go down to the low water mark and scratch around for cockles and mussels alive, alive-oh!

The beach was crowded with people, each havng his own little patch. And there were people carrying buckets that were pretty well filled with them. It must have been a good catch today.

And I do hope that they remember to share them with all of their friends and neighbours. For as I have said before … "and you’ll certainly say again" – ed … you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

It was a struggle to come home from the beach but I made it in the end, and I sat in the verandah to drink my coffee and read my book seeing as how it was really windy outside.

Tea was once again made in the kitchen in the garage, I’ve had a good chat with Rosemary and now I’m ready for bed.

And quite right too. I have a couple more ruins to see tomorrow.

Wednesday 26th April 2017 – THAT’S TWO MORE …

… ruins crossed off the list this morning.

Two new constructions of which I would have been the first inhabitant.

The first one was a nice apartment but the finishing was terrible. They had installed the kitchen unit and then painted the walls with the result that half of the paint was on the unit. And they hadn’t painted behind the unit either, which gave me a good chance to look at the plasterboard. It wasn’t “hydro” plasterboard but cheap 10mm stuff that wouldn’t last five minutes once it became wet (which is an odds-on certainty behind a kitchen unit). It wouldn’t have been so bad had they tiled it, or even painted it, but that was a load of rubbish and I’m not becoming involved with those kinds of issues.

The second one was a studio, nice and big, but with the black damp already rising out of the floor – and in a new untenanted studio too.

So no danger of me moving into anywhere here.

But I was disappointed about these apartments anyway, because there is someone living just across the road from here that has a similar kind of sense of humour as me, and that’s something quite rare in France, isn’t it?

This isn’t all that was on display either. The whole garden front, sides and back, was covered in garden ornaments. And I have to be honest and say that the idea of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, a pile of sprouting mushrooms and half a dozen tuinkabouwters living in the immediate vicinity is one that would appeal to me.

That’s not the only exciting thing here in the vicinity either. This building is actually just across the car park from the building that I was visiting, and regular readers of this rubbish will recognise this for what it is.

It is of course a railway station.

Brehal did once have a railway service, on the line between Granville and Conde sur Vire. Opened in 1909, it was another one of these ephemeral local lines – a tacot with a narrow gauge of one metre.

Ephemeral it certainly was. Not quite matching the 8 years of railway line between Pionsat and Gouttieres, it struggled on for a grand total of 32 years, closing officially in 1941 due to “wartime conditions” and never reopening.

However, I have seen in someone’s memoirs a story that it closed in the mid-1930s and that the rails were removed some time round about 1937-38

I’d had a bad night again – not comfortable in my new bed. And far too much noise for my liking. Despite switching off the film early last night, I couldn’t go to sleep and that’s the thing that always puts me in a bad mood.

After breakfast I hit the streets to Brehal to see these ruins, and then wandered off to the bank for some money. And found myself passing a launderette. I was having a free morning, and I had a pile of dirty clothes in Caliburn and having found the washing soap when I had Caliburn stripped out the other day, I spend a pleasant hour in the launderette with a good book while my washing was going round.

Having picked up a baguette, I headed for the beach. Far too windy and hailstormy to sit outside but I did profit by pulling about 6 months worth of rubbish out of Caliburn and dumping it in a waste bin.

And having a good look at the oyster beds out here too. With the tide being quite low right now, you can actually see them.

While I was eating my butty I had an interesting exchange of text messages –
“Why didn’t you say hello to me?”
“What?”
“When you walked past me just now”
“Did I just walk past you?”
“Yes you did!”
“Where was that?”
“On the car park”
“Which one?”
“The one right outside the sous-prefecture“.
“But I wasn’t there”
“Where are you?”
“Sitting by the seaside in Brehal in Normandy”
“Ohh dear – I’ve texted the wrong number! Sorry”.

Back here, I sat outside in the verandah with a good book and a coffee for a while. And then I made my tea in the kitchen in the garage.

But I’m really fed up with this. Not only do I have the landlady sitting watching me while I eat my breakfast, she came to watch over me while I cooked and ate my tea. And I’m not comfortable in my new quarters either.

I can’t be doing with this. It’s the cheapest place in the whole of Normandy and it’s easy to see why. I’m moving on on Sunday morning – and I don’t care where to – and it will be a cold day in hell before I ever come back here.

Tuesday 25th April 2017 – I HAD ONE OF THOSE DAYS …

… where I did nothing at all of any note.

After my early night (and falling asleep yet again in the middle of a film) I had an early morning – like 05:40. And I was up and about by 06:20. This really is becoming ridiculous.

Once breakfast was out of the way I didn’t do very much at all – just took it easy and lazed about.

There was a reason for that too – in that it was raining. First rain that we have had since I can’t remember when. Several weeks, at least. maybe even when i was exploring in Verdun a month or so ago. I really can’t remember.

However the sun did come out eventually and I plucked up the courage to go off and buy a baguette in Brehal. I could even sit and eat my butty and drink my coffee outside here, fighting off the cat who insisted to try to push the tray off my lap and climb on instead.

This afternoon though, I had things to do.

As you know, I’ve packed Caliburn upside-down. The things that were easy to hand went in first and the more difficult things went in last. That meant that my cheque book (which I shall need at the weekend) was right at the bottom.

Consequently, I unpacked Caliburn and eventually retrieved it. It really was right at the bottom too and took some finding. But tidying up in there has made much more space and I even found a few other things that will come in handy in the immediate future. I did forget to look for my nail scissors though.

Tea was more of the kidney bean whatsit that I made last night, and now I have to pack.

Yes, I’m moving, but not very far. I’m in a little apartment here that has two bedrooms, a kitchen/diner and bathroom. But it’s let until the end of the week to people who need both of the bedrooms.

But there’s a bedroom in the main part of the house with a sink and so on, and the landlady has rigged me up a kettle and so on in there. And there’s a kitchen in the garage space which is used by people who camp here in summer (there isn’t anyone at the moment) and I can use that.

It’s only until Saturday night, and then I have to move on. I really do hope that one of these ruins that I’m seeing tomorrow is up to the task. I’m totally fed up of having to keep on moving house like this – one day here, two days there.

Friday 2&st April 2017 – HAVING FALLEN …

… asleep early last night in the middle of the film that I was watching, I was wide-awake at 05:30 and up and about drinking a coffee at 06:20, long before breakfast.

Breakfast was another one of those discussion mornings and I’m really not up to that at all so early in the morning. I cleared off rather quickly into my little room where I had a few things to do, including to write a letter (and I’ll have to hope that the printer that I have brought with me in Caliburn is up to the job).

What with one thing and another, it was almost midday when I managed to leave here, and by the time I reached Bent-Tin Ci … errr … Netto at Brehal, all of the bread had gone.

But never mind. The Super U was around the corner and I bought a baguette there. 2 minutes to choose my baguette and about an hour to pay for it. And I’d probably still be there now had a woman not let me pass in front of her at the check-out queue.

Having organised lunch, I headed off for the tidal road and the sand dunes at les Salines by Bricqueville sur Mer where I went the other day.

There were quite a few people there today and several children, all of whom were having loads of fun in the sun and wind. I made my butties and I can now understand why they are called SANDwiches.

at least I had some more vegan cheese that I had bought in Leuven. Spreading paste or hummus here would have been interesting.

Having eaten my butties and fruit I lay down out of the wind as much as I could to have a nice doze in the sun, because it really was a warm day.

However, my little doze didn’t last too long, and it wasn’t the kids who awoke me either. We had a big tractor that turned up on the slipway in mid-afternoon, and it was towing a rather large cabin-cruiser-type of boat

And that wasn’t the only excitement either.

Coming up from the southern direction from Saint-Martin-le-Vieux was another tractor that was towing another boat.

This wasn’t a cabin cruiser or anything like that but it seemed to be a small fishing boat. We’ve seen plenty of them out there fishing but I wouldn’t have expected them to have gone into the water at a place like this

The larger cabin cruiser was however first in the queue to be launched, and the procedure gathered quite a crowd because it was really was quite a complicated procedure.

If you look very closely at the image, you’ll notice that the tractor that pulled the boat down the slipway has cleared off and we’ve acquired another, different type, something like the tractors that have big wheels and are high off the ground for working in the vinyards.

And so eventually the trailer with the cabin cruiser was shunted into the water and the cabin cruiser floated free and cleared off.

It really looked as if the fishing boat was to be next, but the tractor pulled it up the slipway and they cleared off into the sunset.

It wasn’t long before I cleared off in the sunset too. The sun started to go lower in the sky and the wind was going colder and colder. You can only stick it out for so long, as the bishop said to the actress, and I came back here.

It’s hard to read a book and drink a coffee when a cat wants to sit on your knee, and it goes without saying that the cat won in the end. But then I came back in here.

Tea was the last of the stuff that I had made the other night, lengthened with a tin of green beans. And now I’m ready for yet another early night.

And it goes without saying that the two phone calls from estate agents that I was expecting today – not one of them called me back.

What a shower!

Thursday 20th April 2017 – SO THAT’S THREE …

… more ruins visited today. One at Carolles-Plage, one at St Pair sur Mer, and the third God-knows where out in the sticks somewhere and I’ve no idea where.

The first was right on the beach in a former hotel, but the building was falling down and the apartment was on the ground floor alongside a public car park in what had been clearly, despite the Estate Agent’s denials, a former shop premises. And badly converted too.

The one at St Pair sur Mer was also a former hotel, and there were several rooms combined to make an apartment. but it was filthy, disgusting in fact, and there had been a water leak (“the Insurance will fix this” so the Estate agent assured me, but we’ve all heard that before, haven’t we?).

But two things, apart from the disgusting dirt, turned me right off this place.

the bedroom was right underneath the stairs going up to the next floor. I’m a light sleeper as you know.
How much sleep would I have?
The building was so badly converted that the waste pipe from the next-door toilet passed through into the kitchen of this apartment. That would make for a lively situation if ever there would be a problem.

We shan’t mention the dreadful tiling (or lack thereof), the abysmal plumbing, the damp stains underneath the windows – all of that.

It was a disgrace.

As for the one out in the sticks, that really was out in the sticks. and the yappy dog barking in the garden underneath told me straight away that this was a waste of time. The building was falling down too and there was no co-propriété – repairs to the building would be “by negotiation” and we’ve heard all of this before.

The kitchen was nice in this place, but the finishing was appalling (open chipboard on the worktop by the sink) and the tiling was even worse than I can manage to do.

Strangely enough, leaving aside the question of the estate agent leaving me waiting for 15 minutes, I mentioned to him that I didn’t want to see any ruins, any falling-down buildings, any dirty apartments and any where the vendors couldn’t even be bothered to remove the furniture. And so I got the lot today.

Mind you, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. I had spoken about my plans to my landlady here, and see took me to Bréhal today. There’s a new development of apartments there and several are still empty, either for sale or to let. One of her friends is the President of the co-propriété and she arranged to let me look round.

It’s not what I want and not where I want it to be, but it’s the best possibility yet, especially if I can make friends with the President. And so she arranged for the managing agents to contact me.

And as you might expect, I’m still waiting.

After my early night falling asleep during the film yet again, I was awake at 05:30 and had another early breakfast in the company of my landlady. a shower brought me back to my feet and then we went off to look at this place.

I’d forgotten my salad stuff and my knife and so on, so I ended up with a bag of crisps for lunch, sitting on the promenade at Jullouville (which I really do like). And then we had the estate agent.

I had to drop off some papers in Granville on my way back, and then came back here to sit in the sun and read a book for a while, with my mate sitting on my knee having a stroke.

Tea was more of what I had made yesterday, and now it’s an early night. I was too busy to crash out today, so I’ll sleep like a log tonight, I reckon.

Wednesday 19th April 2017 – I HAD A …

… spectator while I was making my tea tonight.

Old, creaking, grey around the edges and more than just a little mangy.

But that’s enough about me – let’s talk about the cat. He’s seen better days of course (but then, haven’t we all) but he is friendly and enjoys his little cuddles. It takes a lot to move him from his comfy seat in the verandah, but then any kind of activity in the kitchen usually works for any animal.

Last night I was asleep long before the end of the film that I was watching (I can’t even remember what it was now … "it was Fantomas Contre Scotland Yard with Louis de Funes" – ed …) and slept right through without awakening until about 06:30.

Breakfast was quite a simple affair – exactly what I had specified – but I couldn’t do with the landlady insisting on engaging me with conversation at some silly time of the morning. I don’t do mornings, as you know.

This morning I cracked on with a few things that needed doing and then I wandered off to buy a baguette for lunch. And good luck in Bent Tin City … errrr … I mean Netto. Not only was the baguette cooked properly, I managed to find some vegan salad dressing. I forgot to mention yesterday that every salad dressing in the LeClerc yesterday had milk in it, and I just don’t understand that at all. Mind you, Netto is renowned for catering to the … errr … budget-conscious, so that’s where you’ll find the basest products.

And the basest customers too – especially after this morning.

It was pretty windy on the seafront at Bricqueville sur Mer and so I headed off down the coast. Eventually, I ended up at St martin le Vieux.

Here on the promenade, I managed to find a little spec out of the wind where I could sit on a bench and make my butties, as well as read my book for a while.

I know that I’m supposed to be working but I’m not as young (or as fit) as I used to be and I need to take things carefully

All in all, I was there for an hour or so and I would have been there even now, except that the sun went in and it started to become quite cold. I didn’t fancy staying out there much longer.

But at least there’s a good view of the rock of Granville away down there, and you can see Donville le Bains in at the head of the bay down there. I’m still lamenting on that dreadful studio that I saw there, with one foot in the sea, but I do have my pride and I haven’t come here to live in a slum.

I headed back up the coast to the seafront at Bricqueville but was interrupted by a herd of sheep moving about. It’s a tidal road like the one that we encountered in New Brunswick in 2011 and apparently the sheep know when the tide is turning, for they head off to the high ground.

Once they had cleared off I drove down to the parking area where I … errr … closed my eyes for a short while. This is getting to be rather too much of a habit, isn’t it?

When I awoke, the wind had dropped and so I went off to sit on the beach amongst the dunes for a while – with my book. No-one was more surprised than me to see that I was still there at 16:40. I was quite comfortable there.

Back here, I had a good search through Caliburn for some papers. I didn’t find the ones that I wanted but I found some others of equal importance which is just as well. And I found some stuff for tea too. Lentils and veg in a tomato sauce with pasta – and piles of it too, enough for the next few days. My spectator enjoyed the scene anyway.

So I’ll have another early night, and try to watch the rest of my film tonight. See how far I get, hey?

Tuesday 18th April 2017 – IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME …

… since we’ve featured an old car in this rubbish, so here’s one to be going on with.

Parked on the car park of the LeClerc supermarket at Granville at lunchtime is this rather nice Morris 1000 Traveller. It’s a left-hand drive one too, so how rare is that? (Not quite as rare as my left-hand drive Vanden Plas of course) but it’s still a beautiful vehicle.

And thinking about it, I never owned a Morris 1000, or even a Morris Minor come to that. I must have been slipping.

So despite everything that I said last night, I didn’t have a very good night. Not only did I manage to watch the film all the way through, I had a great deal of difficulty dropping off to sleep afterwards. At one point I did remember it being 00:45.

And I was awake early too – at 06:30 to be precise. That gave me plenty of time to have a good shower, a shave and a tidy up of my room. Then at 09:30 I cleared off.

It’s market day in Jullouville today so I went for a prowl around. And while the market might be better than that at Pionsat, that’s about all that cam be said for it. Rather disappointing.

I went to see an Estate Agent about the possibility of buying a place. Let’s assume for the sake of this discussion that my budget is €70,000 (which it isn’t, but it will do). So I told him that – and he immediately sorted out the properties at €68,000, €70,000 and (of course) €75,000.

“What about that one?” I said, pointing to one at €45,000.
“Do you want to see that one too?” he asked.

Yes, I knew exactly what I was going to get with this estate agent. They are all the same, the whole world over.

So he showed me various photos of various piles of ruins, one with damp clearly visible streaming down the wall underneath the window.

“There’s nothing here that really tempts me” I said.
“You won’t find many where you want at your price range” he said
“I don’t want many” I answered. “I only want one”.

I had a pile of phone calls to make after that, and so I headed off to Granville. Apart from those, I needed some stuff for butties for lunch too. That’s where I saw the Morris 1000.

I found the Centrakor which cheered me up. For the benefit of UK readers, it’s rather like a Wilkinsons but slightly better quality. Lots of nice stuff in there for when I (eventually) find somewhere to live.

Now here’s a sight that should gladden your hearts. Here we are, the day after Easter Monday, and there’s Christmas items already in the shops.

Actually, this is rather a cheat. There’s also a NOZ here in the town. Not as big as the one in Montlucon but it’s here just the same and worth noting. Stuff in here is, well, end of lines, end of series, all of that, and hence the Christmas items, left over from last year I suppose.

Still, it’s a good photo to cheer you up. Only 250 days to go, you know.

I went up on the headland above the harbour to eat my butties this afternoon. It was beautiful up there, even if the wind was blowing a gale, and I … errr … had a relax for a couple of hours.

Later on, I drove out to where I’m staying for the next two weeks. There’s an old saying that “you can’t win a coconut every time” and given the good luck that I’ve had when I’ve been hotel-hunting, I’m bound to come a cropper every now and again.

I’m in a place called Bricqueville sur Mer which, despite its name, is about 4 miles from the coast, one of two bedrooms and I share a kitchen and bathroom with the people in the other room (it’s empty at the moment). It’s a farmhouse-type of place and it could be so nice if they tried, but it’s furnished in the worst of the 1950s bad taste and it has that horrible, damp, musty, unaired smell that I hate so much.

Still, it’s the cheapest place that had a vacancy for all of that time (so I’m not really complaining), breakfast is included and there is a cat. Old, creaking and grey around the edges and loves his cuddles – but that’s enough about me for now, let’s talk about the cat.

So I’ll have an early night, watch a film and see how I feel in the morning. I hope that I can cheer myself up.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: Bricqueville-sur-Mer

Monday 11th November 2019 – WE ALMOST HAD …

Sunday 14th May 2017 – THIS NEW MICROWAVE THING …

Sunday 30th April 2017 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Friday 27th April 2017 – HAVING SEEN TWO …

Thursday 27th April 2017 – I HAD A …

Wednesday 26th April 2017 – THAT’S TWO MORE …

Tuesday 25th April 2017 – I HAD ONE OF THOSE DAYS …

Friday 2&st April 2017 – HAVING FALLEN …

Thursday 20th April 2017 – SO THAT’S THREE …

Wednesday 19th April 2017 – I HAD A …

Tuesday 18th April 2017 – IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME …

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