… 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
