… has its uses, and I’m sure that I’ll be able to make the most of them once I work them out.

A cooked a pizza today using the grill function as well as the microwave and while it wasn’t all that good, it was better than some that I’ve had. The grill bit seemed to do its stuff but the base wasn’t cooked properly. What i’ll have to try to do next time is to microwave it first, and then give it 5 minutes under the grill and see what that does. It’ll be a case of trial and error, by which time I’ll probably have a real oven.

Seeing as how it was Sunday and a lie-in, what was I doing up and about at 06:15? The answer to that is the reason that any man of my age will understand. And I wasn’t up long either. Back in bed where I slept right through until 08:30.

And that was nice for a change, in my comfortable bed. And I didn’t fall asleep watching a film either last night because the battery went flat in the laptop while I was in bed. And I couldn’t be bothered to haul myself out of bed to find the charger.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go out and about during the night. I was in some kind of house with a couple of other people, including someone – a girl – whom I knew very well (and I just can’t think who it was now) and we were visited by some kind of loud-mouthed man who insisted on trying to force his opinions on us. It all became rather heated and in the end we had to use force to evict him from the premises. We thought that that would be that but I’d forgotten that there was an entrance down the side of the house and I had to dash quickly across the house to barricade the door just as he and another woman were trying to gain entrance.
A little later I was back in my own house – the one in the Auvergne to be precise although it wasn’t, if you know what I mean – and there had been some issue with the electricity. The electricity had been connected since the Friday and my consumption had been extremely negligible, which is hardly surprising seeing as I was using solar power and wind turbines. However wind turbines and solar panels weren’t authorised and everyone had to have a mains connection. These people came to visit me to inspect my premises and they were surprised by the low consumption of energy but I explained that I was quite happy to live without it and didn’t need it – that was the reason. So after much discussion they left the premises. But just as they left, I forgot myself and switched on a light – and I reckoned that they would be bound to notice that. As an aside, I wasn’t on my own here in the house but I had a girl with me – a girl whom, if I am not mistaken, is making her debut in my nocturnal ramblings so hello to you, Sue G.

After breakfast I mooched around for quite a while. I was planning to go out to the football but sometime during the night I must have pulled a muscle in my leg and I couldn’t walk very far.

But the weather cleared up later on in the afternoon. The sun disappeared, the clouds disappeared and we had a beautiful blue sky. Despite the aches in my leg, I decided that I ought to go outside for a walk after all. It would do me good.

And this is the view from where I sometimes eat my lunch – looking along the coast towards Donville les Bains. I wasn’t the only one enjoying the weather either because there was a small family sitting down there among the rocks.

Further along the cliffs there was a really good view of the building where my apartment is.

There are two entrances to the building, one nearest the cliffs and hidden by the bush and the second, nearest the road is the door to my half of the building. My apartment is on the first floor at the back.

But you can see how close we are to the cliffs and the sea, can’t you?

There’s a public footpath along the top of the cliff right out to the headland down there. It’s about half a mile down there and so regardless of the pain in my leg I decided to set out for a walk.

As you know, I have a thing about lighthouses and it’s nice to think that I’m living within a short stroll of one such. I’ll have to go out one night and see if it actually works.

In the past, you’ve seen quite a few photographs of the Ile de Chausey away in the distance at the entrance of the Baie de Mont St Michel.

But here on the edge of the cliff, the view here is even more impressive. And this is just the normal camera lens,
not the telephoto lens. That gives you an idea of how high up we are just here on the cliffs.

I imagine that the marker buoy here is to warn shipping of the rocks here. Like I said, i’ll have to go out at night and see what is lit up.

But while we’re on the subject of good views and height, there was a very good view of this motor boat out there in the distance. But it wasn’t that that caught my eye.

Right out there in the far distance you can see land on the horizon. That is actually the island of Jersey, and it’s all of 60 kilometres – 35 miles – away. That’s the kind of view that we were having today. The conditions were perfect.

As I said – conditions were perfect.

Away over there in the distance is the town of Bricqueville sur Mer where I stayed for a couple of weeks a while ago. Its church is famous for its magnificent spire and you can clearly see that in the distance on the top of the ridge in the background.

You can also see the oyster beds there in the bay.

This area was heavily fortified by the Germans in World War II. The fortifications of the Atlantic Wall extended down as far as here and they were so well-built that they have resisted all attempts to remove them.

There are several gun emplacements here on the cliffs overlooking the entrance to the bay and you can see what happened when they tried to dynamite one of them.

In fact they tried to dynamite a couple of them and merely succeeded in scattering lumps of concrete about the place. What they could move easily, they moved it. But the remainder, they just left here and incorporated them into a public garden.

After all of that, they gave up trying to remove all of the rest of them.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have something of an issue with bad and inconsiderate parking.

Here’s a beautiful example of an old XK Jag that isn’t even parked, it’s abandoned, right acrossthe entrance to the lighthouse and in the zone that should be kept clear for the fire brigade.

But as we know, Parisians consider that laws in the Provinces don’t apply to them as they are some kind of superior being.

Round the corner of the headland and overlooking the Baie de Mont St Michel. Across there is the town of Jullouville where I spent a couple of days immediately after returning from Leuven, with its chateau d’eauup there at the back of town.

In the foreground is a marker light for the entrance to the harbour here in Granville. I would imagine that if anything around here is going to be illuminated at night, then that light would be the one.

A little bit further around along the coast is the town of Carolles and the seaside resort of Carolles-Plage.

If you cast your mind back a few weeks, we went for a walk one morning all along the beach from Jullouville to the headland at Carolles-Plage and stopped for a coffee.

And that over there to the right across the bay, that’s Brittany.

Around the headland, I doubled back on my route, but of course on the other – south – side.

Here we have not only a splendid view of the lower town and the edge of the harbour here, but also an excellent view of the fortifications of the old medieval city walls.

The church that is over there is the one that I can see from my living room window and slightly to the left of centre is that beautiful turretted building that we saw from close up the other day.

Now who’s he when he’s at home – if he ever is?

Ahh yes, Georges Pleville le Pelley. Born in Granville in 1726 and died in Paris in 1805. His claim to fame is that apart from many high offices that he held later in life (such as Governor of the Port of Marseille) he was a corsair who preyed on the British during many of the wars of the 18th Century.

Not only that, he’s one of those people conveniently forgotten by the uSA without whom the USA would never have had its independence from Britain. The British imposed a naval blockade on the 13 States during the War of Independence,
and this cut them off from a supply of all manufactured goods which they needed to sustain the war. The French navy engaged the British blockade ships on countless occasions, allowing blockade runners carrying munitions to slip into American harbours. Pleville le Pelley was one of the most intrepid of these blockade runners.

The Americans have completely forgotten about the huge debt that they owe to the French for safeguarding their borders during their fight for independence.

From here, I went back home again. I have some strawberry sorbet in the freezer, just the thing for a very warm Spring evening. And now it is pizza time. So I’ll attack the aforementioned and leave you to read this … errr … 1720 words.

And serve you all right too!

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