… afternoon it was today.

Beautiful and sunny, not too windy, not too cold. And hordes of people wandering around outside. Round about 15:00 I joined them and went for a good walk. I didn’t make it back until 17:30.

All around the headland, down into town, around the harbour, back into town and then back here. And had the ice-cream stall that sells vegan sorbets been open, I would have treated myself to the first ice-cream of the year.

Now, with having an early night last night, and nice fresh bedding too, that I would have had a deep, relaxing sleep. But unfortunately not. Round about 02:40 I had another massive attack of cramp and I was in total agony. I just couldn’t ease it off and ended by standing up and trying to stretch my leg.

All in all, it took about half an hour until the pain would ease up enough that I could go back to bed. But any chance of going back to sleep was long-gone. I was awake for hours until I finally slipped away.

But I must have gone to sleep at some time, because I was off on my travels.

I was in a some kind of weird pub last night – some pub not too dissimilar to the one next to the old Town Hall in Crewe. All dirty, run-down and very basic. And I was waiting for someone there. I’d actually booked a room in a hotel a couple of miles outside the town. But a couple came in to the pub and said that they had a room booked there, so the landlord showed them up. As this couple looked quite respectable, I wondered what the rooms were like so I asked the landlord to show me a room. He took me upstairs, and the room was dreadful. A really bad 1960s-type of room with about 10 beds crammed in any old how, with heavy plush bed coverings and really looking in the worst possible taste. I didn’t even hang around to see if it was clean and damp-free. I just made an excuse about it obviously being out of my price range and walked out.
Later on, I was on board the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again. We were going to have a meeting about our journey and to sum everything up, but it was postponed. A very short while later, I was reading a newspaper on board ship, and it gave an “account” of this meeting, clearly written in advance of the meeting in anticipation of it taking place. To my surprise, the person who had written it was an old comrade of mine at the Open University and he had written quite a lot about my role in the voyage, blowing it up to well beyond what it really was, and putting a link in to my blog where readers could read so much more about it. However, the editor had edited out the url of the blog which disappointed me greatly.

08.40 when I finally awoke, but that’s not the same as saying that I was up and about. Much more like 09:30, or even 10:00 when I put my sooty foot on the floor.

Breakfast was even later. Much later too.More like an early lunch. I wasn’t in any hurry. I had a nice relaxing morning doing the usual Sunday task of badger all.

Feeling a little peckish later, I made some cheese on toast. And that reminded me about my pie. I must do something about that later.

When I went out for my walk, I had a good look around, and saw a couple of things that I hadn’t noticed before.

There were four or five of these floats bobbing up and down just offshore, and each float was different. I’ve no idea what they are doing out there, and I’m convinced that I have never seen them before.

While I was photographing the floats, I was distracted by an aeroplane flying overhead.

This aeroplane is a Bolkow Bo-208C Junior apparently, a type that I haven’t noticed before. And it’s quite interesting because the Bolkow company was the successor to the legendary Messerschmitt aircraft company of Luftwaffe fame.

It’s amazing what is out there once you start to look for it.

Talking of things being out there if only you look for them, the air was so clear that there was an excellent view of Jersey today.

So cropping out a selection of an image, blowing it up, which I can do despite modern anti-terrorist legislation, and enhancing the colours, you can see some of the houses and other buildings dotted along the coastline of the island.

It’s hard to believe that that’s almost 60 kms (35 miles) away. But then that’s all thanks to the big zoom lens that I bought in October.

In the other direction, looking down the Baie de Mont St Michel, the view was just as good.

Going as far out as I could, I still couldn’t see the Mont itself and the buildings thereupon. But the big hotel complex just a few hundred yards away from the Mont is clearly visible.

To give you some idea of perspective, that’s about 30 kms (18 miles) away as the crow flies.

And so back from my walk, I started by making another rice pudding.

While that was cooking, I fried a couple of leeks and onions with a few mushrooms and a tin of flageolet beans. When it was all thoroughly cooked, I added the tofu mix from yesterday, thoroughly stirred it in and heated it all through.

While I was waiting for the mixture to cool down, I prepared a pizza and stuck that in the oven to cook;

While the pizza was cooking, I took out a roll of pastry from the oven. It had dried and cracked so I had to wet it slightly and roll it. Good job that I had bought my rolling pin a while ago.

After it had been rolled, I greased a pie dish and put the pastry in. Added the pie filling and then folded over the excess pastry.

The pizza came out of the oven and the pie went in. I also added the rice pudding so that it would cook further.

The pizza was delicious, although it could have benefited from a longer period in the oven, and so was the rice pudding. The pie looks really good and I can’t wait to try it.

There was just me outside tonight for my evening walk. It wasn’t really cold and wasn’t really windy. It sounds very good after the beautiful day but I bet that there’s more winter to come.

The tide was still on its way out by the looks of things but nevertheless there was a good photo of the wves rolling up and down the beach at the Plat Gousset just by the Casino

So now I’ll try yet again for an early night. And hopefully a good sleep, without an attack of cramp. I need it.

And I’ve just found out that we are going to have a visitor tomorrow. Neptune has just turned into the bay up by Cherbourg and there’s only one place where she will be going.

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floats granville manche normandy france

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st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

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cabanon vauban pointe de carolles mont st michel granville manche normandy france

old military buildings pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

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trawler undergoing repair chantier navale granville manche normandy france

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speedboat st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

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