Tag Archives: ile des landes

Friday 10th July 2020 – I’M WHACKED!

beautiful sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallAnd while you admire the photos of this evening’s sunset I’ll tell you why.

This afternoon I went out for a little walk. And by the time that I returned I’d walked 11.0 kilometres and 142% of my daily activity.

And that’s BEFORE I go out for my evening run.

This morning started off though as it ought to have done – with me having a decent lie-in until almost 08:00. And I’d earned it too after yesterday’s efforts.

beautiful sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallAfter the meds I had a listen to the dictaphone. We were on board the yacht last night and the discussion turned round to Brexit. My opinion of it that it was a mass of sewage met with great approval. I said things like they made all this mess and now they have to clean it up. There was a lot of symbolism there that I don’t remember now and there was a lot more to this that I can’t remember at all.

But I awoke all drenched in sweat again – it was another one of those nights, wasn’t it? I have to make a note of these because it’s a symptom of my illness, although they didn’t ask me about that the other day.

beautiful sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallWhen I’d finished today’s dictaphone entry I had a session transcribing a couple of others that were awaiting processing.

Rather too many of those, although nothing like as many as there were while I was on my transatlantic sail last year and which took a good while to transcribe.

The rest of the morning was spent dealing with the photos from my voyage on the Spirit of Conrad last week. A good few hundred of those and so far I’ve probably done about 40 of them. I’m not doing too well with those, am I?

beautiful sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallThere’s no bread in the house at the moment because I used it all up before I went to sea.

So instead I had taco rolls for lunch, filled with salad. It’s quite a useful thing to have hanging around here, a couple of packs of those. But I can see Sunday being a Day of Baking)

After lunch I set off on my mega-ramble. I need to go to pick up the estimate for Caliburn’s bodywork and the garage is shut on Saturdays. With trying to use Caliburn as little as possible, I decided to walk there. it was a lovely day for it too.

film crew place d'armes granville manche normandy france eric hallAnd I didn’t get too far out of the house before I was interrupted.

This morning I was awoken by an infernal racket coming from underneath my bedroom window. There’s a film being made in the old medieval town for the next couple of weeks and it looks as if the film crew has arrived with all of the equipment.

There are probably half a dozen large vans and lorries parked all around here with all kinds of stuff inside them (I did have a crafty peek).

unloading freight from lorry port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallMore excitement down at the docks too this afternoon.

having lived here long enough, I’m starting to recognise the signs. There’s a lorry down there loaded up with wooden beams which are being unloaded by the fork lift truck.

It’s a sure sign, if ever there was one, that one of the Jersey freighters, Thora or Normandy Trader or maybe even both are due to pay us a visit in early course.

Normandy Trader was in last night as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but she didn’t hang around for long and was soon back at sea again. But a quick turn-round at St Helier will bring her back soon enough.

clock with no hands tourist information office cours jonville granville manche normandy france eric hallRegular readers of this rubbish will likewise recall that yesterday they had a cherry-picker with a couple of men in it working on the broken clock by the old tourist information office.

Being keen to see if they had finally repaired it after all these years I went for a quick look.

And isn’t this a disappointment? They seem to have taken the hands away from the clock rather than actually fixing the mechanism. The mechanism must be beyond repair.

But why remove the hands? At least the time was correct twice a day as it was before. Now it isn’t right at all and that’s rather a backward step.

coccinelle express rue couraye granville manche normandy france eric hallThere’s a new grocery shop opened in town in the old kids’ clothes shop.

We had a Coccinelle here before but it changed its franchise to Super U so someone has decided to open another Coccinelle franchise here.

And just look at the opening hours! This is really dragging Granville kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, isn’t it? It’s high time that a few places around here actually started to respond to the needs of the clients

water tower rue fontaine jolie granville manche normandy france eric hallIt’s quite a long walk out to Espace Autos on the edge of town.

It takes me past the water tower on its little eminence on the edge of town. Quite a few times I’ve driven past here and seen the paintings on the side but I’ve never actually stopped for a closer look.

It’s certainly impressive, the way that it’s been painted. So much better than just a whitish-grey concrete eyesore despoiling the countryside. Up there it can be seen for miles so it needs to be a good advertisement for the town

At the garage they gave me the estimate for Caliburn’s bodywork. And when I recovered from the shock I set off again for home.

On the way back I called in at a couple of shops to see what was going on but there was nothing there that impressed me so I returned empty-handed.

Only as far as the Plat Gousset where I treated myself to a vegan banana sorbet. I reckoned that I had earned it.

So much that I wanted to do during the early part of the evening but instead I crashed right out. And for a good 90 minutes-worth of deep sleep.

That was a deep disappointment but I can’t say that I was surprised after all of the effort. It’s not every day that I walk that kind of distance without a break.

So a rather late tea. A curry from out of the freezer with rice and veg, followed by the last slice of apple pie and some soya coconut dessert. There’s an apple turnover for tomorrow and then on Sunday I’ll bake an apple crumble. It’s been a while since I made one of those.

cap frehel brittany granville manche normandy france eric hallThe weather out there tonight was beautiful.

Plenty of wind but very bright and clear and I could see for miles. All the way down to Cap Fréhel and its famous lighthouse in fact, as you can see right over on the extreme right-hand edge of this enlarged photo here.

And I’ll show you the photo of what it looks like close-to when I finally finish editing the photos that I took when I was aboard Spirit of Conrad

cap frehel brittany coast granville manche normandy france eric hallHere it is again only a more distant shot.

The lighthouse is again on the extreme right and just to the left of it is the Fort la Latte. Immediately to the left of that where there is nothing on the horizon is the bay where St Cast le Guildo is.

That was where we moored up one evening during our voyage the other week. I really must crack on and deal with the photos that I took. It’s a shame that it was difficult to work on board the boat.

Phare de la Pierre-de-Herpin pointe de grouin brittany granville manche normandy france eric hallThis is something a little closer to home that I also had an opportunity to inspect when I was aboard Spirit of Conrad

That’s the Ile des Landes and in front of it is Phare de la Pierre-de-Herpin, the Pierre de Herpin lighhouse off the Pointe de Grouin on the Brittany coast.

It marks the entrance to the Baie de Mont St Michel and was opened on 1st October 1882, a light having been requested some 30 years previously. Since 1970 its light has been electrified and these days, like most lighthouses, it’s probably automated

people on beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france eric hallMy run was something of a disappointment. My two longest runs were cut short. It’s amazing how just two weeks of not exercising has affected me.

But I made it round to the viewpoint at the rue du Nord all the same. And while there was no-one picnicking on the beach, there were still crowds of people hanging around down there.

But one thing that I haven’t noticed so far is an fishermen. Before I went away there was a fisherman on every rock, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. Where have they all gone?

children's garden college malraux granville manche normandy france eric hallBy now I was on 191% of my day’s activity and being keen to make it 200% I carried on for another lap around.

This extra route took me past the College Malraux and here the kids have made themselves some kind of soft fruit garden. There are all kinds of soft fruits here with a sign “let’s protect them so that we can eat them – the fruit presumably.

Soft fruit? I’m all in favour of that! I’m going to restart my home food production next week now that i’m back in the saddle. It’s high time that I organised myself.

beautiful sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallFrom there I continued on to the cliff edge in time to catch the sunset.

We’ve seen plenty of sunsets just recently but not with the sun actually sinking below the horizon. But here I was at the right time and the right place so I stayed to enjoy the view.

There were a few other people loitering around here too admiring the sunset and I can’t say that I blame them either. Everything was just about perfect for a change.

beautiful sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallAs the sun slowly sank below the horizon I took a few photos and then scuttled off back to my apartment. I had a few things to do.

Firstly there was to reset the language on the portable laptop that I bought in the USA. It’s in “American English” which I detest so I’d ordered some French keyboard stickers.

While I was tidying up a little yesterday I came across them again so I changed the language settings to “French” at applied the stickers in the appropriate place.

beautiful sunset english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallThen there is the journal to write up for today. And to be proud of course of my 202% of my daily activity. If that’s not a success i don’t know what is.

There was an interruption as “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart came onto the playlist. I had a quick strum with that and worked out the chords while I was at it.

But now it’s bedtime, just like the sun that has now sunk below the horizon. Shopping tomorrow, and there’s quite a bit of stuff that I need too. I’ve not done much for this last couple of weeks.

So I’ll set the alarm tomorrow. It’ll do me good.

Friday 29th November 2019 – IT’S A LIE!

I don’t care what Percy Penguin has to say about it. I do NOT snore in my sleep. Not that she would ever know because whenever we were together late at night, sleep was not the subject that was ever on my mind.

But how do I know that I don’t snore? The answer is that this morning I spent four hours listening to myself sleeping.

Well, okay. Not exactly listening, but examining a voice file with the aid of a graphic sound analyser program, and I could see three minutes of dictation, a thump when I fell asleep in mid-dictate, and then four hours of silence apart from the odd turning-over in my sleep and the odd banging of the headboard.

Yes, I’ve finally reached the marathon four-hour dictaphone *.mp3 file and it is indeed, just as I suspected, a mistake.

We almost had a mistake this morning too. I was positive that I had dictated the details of a nocturnal ramble into the dictaphone, but something made me check, even though it was the middle of the night, and I found that I hadn’t. Dreaming that I was dreaming again.

But luckily I could remember a lot of it and so I dictated it on the spot. And I’m really curious now to know what else I have been missing, that I dreamt that I had dictated.

But anyway, last night we were in the High Arctic last night on a ship that might or might not have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. We were doing some kind of research project and our group was involved in doing some kind of research project in respect of birds. So we were being pretty serious about this and some of us were out on the pontoon and they were looking at all these birds like crows and raven in the water with their beaks open and studying them. It was obvious that there were a few people not intent on doing anything and were just lounging around. of course we were pretty serious and after I had been onto the pontoon to see what was going on I had to get back on board the ship and there were a load of people queueing trying to get on so I mimed as if I was whipping them on which made everyone laugh, those who were lounging around. Eventually I got back on board and had to start to work, and remembered saying “come on, let the dog see the rabbit” when I was trying to get on board the ship. And what I remember was that there were loads of weeds around floating in the water , it was pretty close to shore. Someone was counting the animals and one of our group said that she had seen a moose or something. And she had also seen a Clayton diesel locomotive. I asked “where did you see that?” so she said that it was just after we had left Hvalsey to head down here. I thought that I can’t remember seeing this, or even hearing about it. But I decided that I would leave it to stand anyway

So whatever that was all about, I really don’t know.

The alarm went off at 06:00 as usual and this morning I definitely heard the second alarm, no mistake. But instead of leaping out of bed I somehow managed to go back to sleep yet again and the third alarm awoke me.

Today though, I was out of bed rather smartish and had an early medication and breakfast. And then I set down to work on the dictaphone notes as I had been promising myself.

By the time that I stopped for lunch, I was down to just 47 left. That’s been some quite dramatic progress today.

However, the morning was not without its interruptions. Three more parcels of this mega-order that I mentioned the other week turned up today.

Two of them I have yet to unpack, but the third one I did.

harvey benton 5 string fretless bass granville manche normandy franceWhen I was In Montreal in September I was playing about on a five-string bass guitar and that pleased me greatly. A few weeks later, I was having another play about, only with a fretless bass. And that pleased me just as greatly.

So when I was browsing around on the internet a few weeks back I came across a vendor who was selling a new but shop-soiled (I reckon that it’s a product return) 5-string fretless bass for a price that can only be described as “democratic”.

It’s not very often that I treat myself to extravagant expenditure, but I did the other day and I don’t regret it for a moment.

Not a patch on the Gibson EB3 of course. That will always be a special machine, but this one will do nicely as a supplement.

cock port de granville harbour manche normandy franceOn that note, seeing as we are talking about music, I headed for town and my dejeunette for lunch. Down to the fish processing plant and across the path on top of the harbour gates.

Nothing much going on in there at all, but one thing that for all the time that I’ve been going in and out of the harbour, I have never noticed this cock before.

That’s not like me at all, is it?

On the way back I stormed up the hill like there was no tomorrow. I don’t understand that at all. Fighting fit for lunch, I was.

And after lunch, I made a start on the data files for my projects. That’s taking me longer than I thought die to having to redesign it a couple of times and also … ahem … editing the wrong base file. I wondered why all of these amendments that I was trying to make didn’t work.

As usual, I stopped round about 15:45 to go for my afternoon walk around the headland.

paimpol brittany granville manche normandy franceThe weather was astonishing though out there. There were a few clouds about but the sky was so clear that you could see for miles.

Over there that is the town of Paimpol I reckon, with the Phare de Paon and the Chapelle St Michel clearly visible. And all of that is about 80kms away, I reckon, from here.

The camera and the lens did well to pick up all of that.

plenevon brittany granville manche normandy franceMuch closer to home is the town of Plenevon. Over there to the far right near where that hill thing is.

That’s a mere 60 or so kms from there I’m standing, and you wouldn’t think so either but it’s amazing what a little “crop, enlarge and sharpen” can do.

The camera even managed to pick up a little fishing boat half-way across the water.

st malo pointe de grouin brittany granville manche normandy franceNow this is much more like it.

That’s the Pointe de Grouin just there and the Ile des Landes. Behind it is the entrance to the port of St Malo and on several occasions we’ve seen Pont Aven, the big Brittany Ferries ship, come sailing out of there.

It’s a shame that she’s not there right now though because it would have made a spectacular photo. You’ll have to make do with half a dozen small fih=shing boats instead.

sunlight cancale brittany granville manche normandy franceWe’ve had photos innumerable of Cancale across the bay, night as well as day. That’s about 25 kms away from me.

But what makes this one so special is that we’re having another one of those “sunlight streaming through a gap in the clouds” moments as we have done on a regular basis just recently.

It really is as good as floodlighting if you ask me, and probably better than some recent examples that we have seen.

sunlight windows beach jullouville granville manche normandy franceIt wasn’t just Cancale that was receiving the benefit of the sunlight either.

Down the coast at Jullouville about 10kms away the big building right on the shoreline was also receiving the benefit of the sun, right full-on into the windows

That must certainly have been something quite spectacular for those people in that large room there.

No change of visitor at the Chantier Navale so I came home. And I had a few things to do on the internet that took up a lot of my time.

But I did stop for tea – another frozen aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. Only 5 left now so soon I can start to think again about cooking mega-curries.

Outside for my evening walk, it was raining quite heavily. But I did press on nevertheless although I didn’t stop for photos. However, I did manage my run and made it halfway up the ramp at the end. I’m definitely geting fitter.

Football on the Internet tonight. Caernarfon v Cardiff Met in the Welsh Premier League. We had a brief discussion about the possible score and someone reckoned 2-1 to the Cofis. And at the end of the match I asked him if he had a recommendation for the 3:30 at Kempton Park.

Caernarfon did indeed win 2-1 and it was the correct result too. But it was a very quiet match with nothing much of any excitement, which is a surrpise where Caernarfon is concerned.

It was bogged down in midfield for much of the match with very few chances for either team. In fact all that really happened was that each side scored a breakaway goal from a loss of possession in midfield, and the winner was a tap-in following up a saved penalty.

The number of chances that they had, apart from those, you could count on one hand although Will Fuller in the Met’s goal was busier than Alex Ramsey up at the other end.

It’s very late now because I’ve been dawdling, so I’ll go to bed for the few hours of sleep that remains.

Shopping tomorrow plus dicaphone notes and project files. And then the cycle will start again.

Tuesday 21st August 2018 – I’VE BEEN OFF …

… on my travels yet again today.

And it started at about 04:00 when I had to leave my stinking pit for a ride on the porcelain horse, and fell AoT over something in the way, rattling the entire building. All in all it was another bad night.

mont st michel manche normandy franceAfter breakfast, I had a shower and then we headed off through the town and through all of the grockles admiring the seagulls.

The destination for today was, as you might expect, the Mont St Michel. Despite its reputation, it’s one of those places that everyone has to visit whenever they come to Brittany or Normandy just to say that they were there.

And it was another day when the visibility wasn’t up to much, unfortunately.

restaurant prices la mere poulard mont st michel manche normandy franceI mentioned the prices of the food in the restaurants on the island. And seeing as many people expressed their surprise I decided to take a photograph of a typical menu.

Vegetable soup is on offer at €16:00, and a basic omelette starts at €34:00. If you want a three-course meal you can have one here at €58:00.

A sandwich from the sandwich bar across the street will cost you at least €8:50. And so it’s no surprise that most of the tourists who visit the island bring their own picnic lunch

walking parties genets mont st michel manche normandy franceWe’d come here in Caliburn of course, prepared to pay the extortionate car-parking prices, but had I been in better health I would have come another way.

Today is another day when the tidal coefficient is so small that it’s possible to walk over the sands from Genets. And there were quite a few parties coming over the sands.

That is something that you can’t do on your own without a guide. Apart from the treacherous watercourses, there’s quite a lot of soft sand out there which yu can sink into if you aren’t careful.

helicopter carrying building materials mont st michel manche normandy franceWe went for a good walk around the walls again, our conversation being continually interrupted by a helicopter flying overhead.

There were building works going on somewhere on the island and they were conveying the material to the site by helicopter, in a basket slung underneath the machine.

We were having all kinds of flights of imagination, picturing the helicopter coming to a dead halt and the momentum of the basket underneath swinging into the walls of the Abbey and demolishing them.

technamm tracked fire engine granville manche normandy franceWhen I was here the other week with Alison I had seen an exciting tracked machine away in the distance. It had excited my curiosity and so today we went down to look at it.

It’s a fire engine apparently, and it’s tracked so that it can climb up and down the steps in the city.

It has a trailer too. That is also tracked, and is also driven, with a prop shaft off the power take-off on the rear of the tractor. All in all, an impressive piece of kit.

mont st michel manche normandy franceMost of the tourists when they arrive enter by the main gate, go in over the drawbridge and past all of the tourist traps.

But there is another way in which misses the queues and congestion and goes up to the pathway that leads up to the walls on the western side of the site.

The way in is underneath that beautiful gated building down there and then up the hill towards where I’m standing. But I do have to say that I wouldn’t object at all to a little apartment in the building down there, despite all of the tourists.

brittany gate mont st michel manche normandy franceAlthough the access to the site today is from the southern, or Normandy side, there’s also a gateway on the western side facing what was Brittany in medieval times prior to the rerouting of the river that passes around here.

I was told an exciting story about how, in 1424 during the Hundred Years War, the English besieged the island from the Normandy side but they were unable to starve the garrison out.

This was because the people on the Breton side would send food and weapons over to the Brittany gate and by the time that the tide had gone out sufficiently to enable the English to attack the gate here, the island had been supplied and the Bretons safely back on their shore.

We left the island early in the afternoon and set off on our way home.

cancale pointe de grouin ile des landes brittany franceWe went again to the Cabane Vauban to see the view now that the weather had cleared slightly, and I took a couple of photos.

One of the ones that I took was right across the Baie de Mont St Michel over to the town of Cancale, the Pointe de Grouin and the Ile des Landes right across the bay and into Brittany.

It’s hard to believe that it’s all about 12 miles away.

cancale pierre de herpin st malo brittany franceThis is the second half of the above photograph, that I had cropped in two.

This one shows another one of the islands off Cancale, which I thought at first might have been a ship, and the lighthouse on the Pierre de Herpin over on the extreme right of the photograph.

Right away in the background is the Brittany coast all the way down almost to St Malo and that’s probably about 25 miles away.

three masted sailing ship manche normandy franceYou might have noticed in the previous photograph that there was something on the horizon between the coast and the lighthouse.

I’d been having a good play with the telephoto lens and doing some photo manipulation, what with having plans for going on a holiday in the near future. And so I cropped, enlarged and enhanced that part of the image.

And I’ve managed to bring out what, in my opinion, is a three-masted sailing ship, something like the Marité. That’s actually quite impressive, seeing as it’s at least 20 miles away in my opinion.

mont st michel manche normandy franceThe view southwards however is much more banal.

Mont St Michel is about 10 miles away as the crow flies, and in contrast to the other day when I was here with Alison and you could hardly see 100 yards, a little bit of “crop and paste” and image enhancement can bring out the abbey at Mont St Michel quite nicely.

To the right of the island are the white buildings of the hotel complex on the mainland. And I’m sure that this is what we have seen on a couple of occasions from Granville.

granville manche normandy franceTalking of Granville, we can actually see that today from here.

There’s the Eglise Notre Dame de Cap Lihou on the far right, and to the left of it are the public rooms and the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs. To the left of that is the other block of apartments that they are renovating right now.

My building is out of sight behind there.

autogyro baie de mont st michel manche normandy franceBut that’s not all.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day I mentioned an autogyro, but I wasn’t able to take a photograph of it. Today however, while we were here, the aforementioned went a-flying by overhead.

Luckily I had the camera ready and I was able to shoot off a photograph of it. It’s a modern machine, not one of the early ones from the 1920s and 30s.

baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy franceSo while you admire another photo of Mont St Michel – the one that the copped image above was taken, I can tell you that there are plenty of photos that I took at Mont St Michel that haven’t made it onto this page.

That’s because it’s my intention, one of these days in early course, to put them all up on a web page of their own.

And then you can admire them at your own convenience.

On the way back here we went to LeClerc. I needed some new bootlaces and Hans wanted to look at the recycled bags that they use here instead of plastic bags, and he took a few to analyse with him later.

Tea tonight was some taco wraps with a stuffing made of this couscous powder that I bought, some tomatoes, olives, onions, garlic and kidney beans, all in tomato sauce. With some spice rice it was delicious.

Having seen Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday last night, we watched a few Bulldog Drummond films on the DVD tonight. That took us nicely up to about 23:30 and then we turned in.

Hans is leaving to head off back to Germany tomorrow. I have a pile of tidying up to do and then I can start packing for my voyage, wherever it might be.