Tag Archives: Nantporth

Sunday 24th May 2020 – JUST FOR A …

… change I had a really nice day today.

Not that I did very much work of course, but there again, isn’t that what Sundays are for? Everyone should have one day of the week where they can do whatever they like – even nothing at all if they want – and not feel guilty about it.

As for me, I was in bed at about 00:15 this morning and slept though, with just a couple of awakenings, until about 09:30. Mind you, it was round about 10:00 when I finally saw the light of day and I don’t have any issues at all with that.

Plenty of time therefore to go on my travels. I was in a van driving down Middlewich Street last night. Middlewich Street was a wide 6-lane highway and as I was driving down there, there was a little Tesco’s delivery van in front of me. I went to overtake it and he swerved out across me so I went to overtake it on the inside and he swerved back. he kept this up all the way down Middlewich Street. There was another car as well that was involved in this. When we got to the traffic lights under the Cumberland Bridge these guys got out of their van to park it up and go home so we had an “exchange of pleasantries”. I had to be at a certain venue like a church or something like that as there was a service starting at 09:00 and the radio was broadcasting it. I turned up at the church with half an hour to go but I couldn’t get in to put my microphone between the walls – there were too many people there. I heard one of my colleagues start up the broadcast and I still hadn’t put my microphone in between the walls. It was important that we had been there for this service – it was something to do with the war I think. Anyway I awoke at that particular time in a sweaty panic.
later on I was round at my niece’s and I’d been for a run with someone else, the two of us. When we came back everyone else had started their meal. I had my meal and when it came to dessert there was some vegan sorbet. I got a bowl, put some fruit on it and went to look for the vegan sorbet. It wasn’t in the freezer at all – it was just sitting on the worktop somewhere. I noticed that one of her daughters had had some sorbet so I made some remark about it. My niece was annoyed and told me off for making this remark but I said “seriously, the girl had had the sorbet but didn’t put the bowl back in the freezer – it invited some kind of remark didn’t it?”

Breakfast was consequently rather late, which is not of course of any importance. And then I finished off the web page that I’d half-done yesterday.

TOTGA was on line too, and as we hadn’t spoken for a while (and she hasn’t accompanied me on a voyage during the night since I can’t remember when) we had a good lengthy chat.

Feeling rather brave, I attacked another web page afterwards and rewrote that one too.

After lunch I went for a nice long walk . Not to Durham to care for my children like anyone else defying the best scientific advice in order to be a caring father but all the way around the headland, down onto the harbour, all around the harbour, everywhere, and checked over quite a few things that I wanted to see.

All in all, I took about 30 photographs and they will take some anotation so you aren’t going to get to see them this evening unfortunately.

But everything that we’ve been asking ourselves about things down there has been pretty much cleared up as much as it can be, so keep on checking back to this page over the course of the coming week to see where I am with them

And I did something that I haven’t done for about a year. And that is that I bought myself an ice-cream. The cafés are now open for take-aways and there’s the one in the Rue Lecampion that has vegan sorbet scoops.

It was such a beautiful day today, actually feeling like summer. I was in my shirt sleeves with my jumper tied around my waist and had I had a hanky I would have knotted the corners and stuck it on my head. An ice cream just set it all off perfectly.

Back here, I peeled and diced half of the carrots that I’d bought on Saturday, blanched them and drained them. They are now in the freezer happily freezing themselves. And I’ll do the rest tomorrow.

While I was doing that, there was football on the TV. The Welsh Cup Final of 2016-17 between Bala Town and TNS.

Compared to some of the matches that we have been watching from years gone by, the leap in quality of the players and the facilities was evident. We saw a few weeks ago one match played at Bangor City’s old ramshackle tumbledown Farrar Road a few weeks ago. This one was played at Bangor City’s new state-of-the-art ground at Nantporth and it was light years ahead.

The football was excellent too and it was really nice to see someone other than TNS win something for a change. Quality football is so much better when it’s played on a decent pitch than encourages ball control and skill rather than aimless hoofs upfield out of the mud and divots.

For tea tonight, I was brave. I had a spare shop-bought pizza base and decided that as I was now comfortable with my own pastry and bases, I would use it and get it out of the way.

It didn’t turn out as well as it ought to have done, and it wasn’t until I’d almost finished it that I realised that I’d had the oven turned down for the bread and hadn’t turned it back up.

rabbit pointe du roc granville manche normandy france eric hallLater on I went for my evening walk and runs.

There has been a lot of talk about wildlife reclaiming the streets of the world since the virus condemned us (except high-ranking Tory hypocrites) to detention à domicile. We had a deer in the harbour a couple of weeks ago (I missed it) but I’ve seen a couple of rabbits scampering around. Today I actually managed to photograph one.

In all the time that I’ve been here I hadn’t seen any until all of this started. Will we see any more now that everyone is out and about? Or is it a case of hare today and gone tomorrow?

zodiac baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallOne thing that regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing on several occasions is the bright yellow zodiac that appeared here a few days ago and has been circulating around since then.

Here it is again. As I walked around the headland it came out of the haze and followed me around the corner.

One of these days I’m hoping to catch some of the people who belong to it in order to find out what they are doing. It’s something of a mystery to me why they should be here. They don’t look like the ordinary run-of-the-mill maritime employees.

joly france ferry terminal trawler port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallThere was plenty of activity in the port too.

Earlier in the day I’d been over to the Ferry terminal and it was deserted. This evening though, both of the Joly France ferries were tied back up so they must have been out at the Ile de Chausey during the day.

And the fishing boats were leaving port too. There were three or four in line astern heading out into the sunset for the evening catch. One of these days I’m determined to go out for a shift on one of them

sunset ile de chausey english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallHaving exchanged pleasantries with a neighbour running past, I carried on with my runs and ended up at the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

The sun still had a good 15 minutes to set so I just took an evening photo and ran on home again.

So I’ve plenty of work to do over the next few days because in my misguided enthusiasm I also signed up for a free music course, reckoning that I’d have the usual four weeks to prepare – only to find that it started on Friday so I’m already falling behind.

Interestingly, the organisation running the course wanted to know my e-mail address. So they sent me a mail to ask me for it.

You might want to think about that for a moment.

There’s my Welsh homework to do too for Tuesday, as my tutor politely reminded me this afternoon, so that’s a job for first thing tomorrow.

My accountancy course starts this week too so that’s something else to worry about as well.

It’s all go here, isn’t it?

Saturday 17th May 2014 – TOTALLY ASTONISHING!

Yes, Pionsat go to Lapeyrouse, 3rd in the table, to continue their desperate struggle against relegation whereas Lapeyrouse desperately need 3 points to keep their slim promotion hopes alive.

First things first, though. It was nice to see Matthieu finally back where he belongs – between the posts of Pionsat’s goal. Two years, is it, since he broke his leg?

fcpsh football club de foot Pionsat St Hilaire nico defaye goal us lapeyrouse puy de dome ligue une france, Lapeyrouse scored three times, but even more astonishingly, Pionsat scored 4 times. Two of them were throroughly excellent goals and Nico’s will be goal of the season I reckon.

Frederic’s opener was another superb opportunist effort out of nothing and the fourth goal (I didn’t see who scored it) was down to Frederic’s perseverence on the goal line chasing after what looked like a hopeless cause.

Had St Priest lost this evening, Pionsat would have been safe but they managed a surprise draw at St Gervais. This means that Pionsat need 1 point next weekend (against Lempdes who have already achieved promotion) to be totally safe, unless St Priest drop points at home to Beauregard.

But Pionsat can look at 2 totally silly, needless goals that they conceded the other week – that has what has made them suffer. Had they won that match instead of lost it, they would have been home and dry a few weeks ago. It’s the story of the last couple of seasons.

So I had another disturbed night in which I was very active on my travels, but it was all wiped away as soon as I woke up so I can’t remember where I was. But I did another rock programme for Radio Anglais this morning to put myself out in front a little.

I went shopping in St Eloy and bought nothing special except some tomato plants seeing as I have just one that seems to have run aground now and stopped growing. But back home with solar water temperature at 30°C, I chucked 5 litres of water out of the dump load (for that was a healthy 62°C) into the tank and had a most delicious shower. Now I’m all clean and smelling of coconut.

I’ve also continued my play around with Audacity and I’m making progress. Trouble is that large files are taking so long to load and are thus so slow to edit. I need to work on something that has a built-in DVD drive rather than an external drive. Maybe that might speed things up.

Finally a word for Bangor City who progress into Europe next season after their victory over hated local rivals Rhyl at Nantporth this afternoon. Let’s all hope that they can find the consistency that they need to make some progress in the Europa Cup. it’ll be nice if they can make it to round Two.B