Tag Archives: ship shower

Monday 31st July 2017 – THAT WAS A NICE …

… tea tonight. Another aubergine and kidney bean whatsit, with enough left over to last the rest of the week.

And it would have been even nicer had I remembered the olives. And the peanuts. Ahhh well!

But it wouldn’t have made much of a difference because I couldn’t find a small aubergine at the weekend. The one that I bought was the smallest in the shop, but “small” in this case is purely relative. In any other place it would have been “enormous”.

It all makes up for my extremely bad night. Still awake and kicking at 03:30 this morning, and although I do remember stretching out to switch off the alarm at 07:00 I remember nothing else until the repeater at 07:15. And then it was a slow crawl out of bed.

But I’d been on my travels though. And it involved a flock of sheep, some of which were wandering around freely and others in a tightly-grouped flock. One of the sheep in this flock was quite a vicious sheep but the shepherd replied that he was a good defender of the others and so they kept him with the flock for precisely that purpose. Any monkey business and the vicious sheep would sort it all out.

Down at the magasin de presse I solved the issue of the water sprayer from yesterday. Yes – if you want to know the answer to a question, you have to ask the question, don’t you?

Once every year there’s an open-air mass on the quayside and all of the cliffs around here are good vantage points for the crowd to congregate.

And then a priest blesses some water which is taken by a ship to a point just off the headland which is significant as being the site of a marine tragedy when a lifeboat was lost in a storm.

The Holy Water is then ceremonially jettisoned into the sea at the site of the tragedy and boats sail by through the spray hoping that they too might be blessed.

Lunch on the wall again, watching Grima come a-dieseling in.

And doing a couple of laps of the harbour because some stern trawler had pinched her spec underneath the crane and had to be moved, otherwise she would not have been able to unload her cargo of scrap.

45 years of age, and looking every day of it.

But there was some excitement up there at lunchtime. A big family-size car with Dutch plates pulled up and a large family disgorged itself to take a photo.

After much hoo-ing and haa-ing they decided that a selfie wouldn’t work so they looked around for a suitable volunteer. And there I was tucking into my hummus salad butty.

The matriarch came over to me and asked in very faltering French if I would oblige – so I replied that I would – in very good Dutch – something that took her completely by surprise.

I was going for a walk tonight but I was distracted. There’s been an “issue” at the tyre place in Canada, and as a result I ended up being on the phone across the Atlantic for half an hour instead. It was nice to talk to people over there, even if the circumstances could be better.

And, despite my bad night, I’ve managed to avoid not crashing out today. But this won’t last. An early night is beckoning, I reckon.

Sunday 30th July 2017 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I had a proper Sunday?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in the Good Old Days Sunday was a Day Of Rest. And not only that, but a lie-in too. And there were some Sundays when I didn’t show before midday too.

Those days seemed to be long-gone, didn’t they? Several times just recently I’ve been wide away on a Sunday long before my usual rising time of 07:00.

So what happened today that I was asleep until … errr … 10:13?

And a good sleep too. I was away on my travels too – carrying on from yesterday round here somewhere outside, with with three other people. All of them pseudo-priests, and were in fact three young lads whom I knew when I worked in Brussels.

10:15 in here, breakfast over by 10:45, and then a sit-down for an hour or so. Far too late to go for the baguette at the magasin de presse so I reckoned a quick stroll down the hill.

ship blowing off water granville manche normandy franceBut what the …! What’s going on here?

Hordes of people clinging to various vantage points looking at what looks like a ship blowing off thousands of gallons of water for some reason or another.

I had to go and check that out. Maybe it was a shipwreck or something (I’d seen a ship on the horizon in the dark last night);

military vehicle exhibition granville manche normandy franceBut I didn’t get too far down the hill though.

The Marité might not have been at home (she’s been gone for a few days now) but lots of other people were there on her quayside.

Some kind of military vehicle display I reckon.

So cancel the baguette I nipped down to the fritkot for a bag of chips and threw all of my plans into the air.

granville manche normandy franceSome kind of military vehicle display it was indeed.

Probably about 20 wartime vehicles all told, of all shapes, sizes and descriptions. Tanks, jeeps, lorries and motorcycles, and so I had a good wander around.

Quite a lot of stuff that I would have happily taken home in a heartbeat.

welbike villiers engine granville manche normandy franceBut pride of place anywhere, anyhow and on any occasion has to go to the magnificent Welbike.

Designed to fold to fit into a parachute supply container, these were used by paratroopers and resistance fighters all over Occupied Europe.

A brilliant idea, but the Villiers 98cc two-stroke engine was hopelessly underpowered for the rough terrain and many were abandoned by the paratroopers as an unnecessary encumbrance once the War opened out.

Naturally, this part of France, not too far from the D-Day beaches, would be where you might expect the odd one or two to surface every now and again.

ile de chausey granville manche normandy franceFrom there I wandered off down the quayside and onto the harbour mole to see if I could see anything that was going on where that ship might have been.

It had cleared off, so it can’t have been a shipwreck, but nevertheless I had a superb view of the Iles de Chausey and so I gave the new zoom lens a run-out.

And the verdict? Not as good as I would have liked, but I’ve had much worse than this. And it IS automatic focus.

port de granville manche normandy franceBut it did occur to me that I’ve not taken a photograph of the port of Granville from this vantage point yet.

I was over there where that black triangle was the other day, and you can see one of the boats that go to the Iles de Chausey in the bay next to it.

To the left of centre are the lock gates for the commercial port. It’s a tidal basin so when the tide is going out they close the gates so that the water stays in and the big ships like Pluto and Victress can stay afloat.

shipyard coastal path granville manche normandy franceI waled all the way back to here via the Coastal Path. First time that I’d done that.

There’s a good view right back across the port and the town from up here, and you can see the ship repairer’s yard too. They have a novel way of hoisting ships out of the water.

So I carried on back here but couldn’t see anything to suggest what that ship or whatever it was might have been doing.

And had a rest when I arrived. It was a long walk back here – 4.8 kilomtres in fact according to the Fitbit.

Tea was pizza tonight (well, it IS Sunday) and I had a chat with Liz on the internet. Now another walk and an early night. Start again at 07:00 tomorrow.

We have church bells going off and a choir singing in the vicinity tonight.