{"id":9891,"date":"2017-10-30T22:35:35","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T22:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=9891"},"modified":"2017-10-30T22:35:35","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T22:35:35","slug":"monday-30th-october-2017-i-was-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=9891","title":{"rendered":"Monday 30th October 2017 – I WAS OFF …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… on my travels last night.<\/p>\n

I’d arrived at the airport, which might well have been Manchester, and caught the bus to Stoke on Trent. I had to move on yet again but by now it was snowing quite heavily and I didn’t fancy going over the moors in my car. There was however a bus that ran between the two and so I booked myself a seat on that. There weren’t very many people on there but I set next to a man in his 40s who turned out to be a musician and we had a long chat. Through the snow and through one of the towns (which we have visited in the past on a noctuenal ramble and which might have represented Congleton although we wouldn’t go that way of course) and into Sheffield, for all of \u00a36:90. And when I told a friend of mine about the prices, he was amazed at how cheap it was to travel by bus. From Sheffield I had to go onwards and for this stage of the journey I went on a pushbike. And I was surprised about how easy it was to go on a bike these days and how I ought to do this more often.
\nAt my destination I sorted out my suitcase and I was already starting to put aside stuff for my next journey in 12 months time, despite how absurd it was to begin to do this right now. I might need the suitcase well before then.<\/p>\n

And so when the alarm went off at 06:00 I awoke and was out of the bed, dressed and having my tablets when the second alarm went off.<\/p>\n

During the morning I had a few things to do, and I’ve seen a course on TV sceenwriting affered by the University of East Anglia. High time that I organised myself and gave myself something to do, I reckon.<\/p>\n

After lunch I went for a walk, and hadn’t gone more than a couple of hundred yards before I bumped into Brigitte, my neighbour. She had gone for a walk around the walls only in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

\"plage<\/a>It was a beautiful day so I walked down into town, picled up a sorbet from the ice cream stall, and had a nice stroll through the town.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of beaches in the town that I have yet to visit, the other side of the marina.<\/p>\n

My little walk today took me along the short promenade and up a blind alley, but it was a nice day and I was enjoying the sunshine. And the beach was beautiful too.
<\/p>\n

\"eglise<\/a>I crossed over the main road and wandered through a series of small alleys and side streets.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen the eglise St Paul from a distance – it stands out quite prominently on its promontory – but we’ve never seen it from close-to and this was my destination for this afternoon.<\/p>\n

But not from inside because it’s closed to the public, and has been for almost 15 years.
<\/p>\n

\"eglise<\/a>We mentioned previously that construction started as recently as 1894 and its claim to fame is that it was one of the first major buildings to be constructed of reinforced concrete.<\/p>\n

But modern reinforced concrete was in its infancy, and the absurdity of using (salty) sea-sand in conjunction with metal reinforcing rods was not realised at the time. <\/p>\n

However, by 1999 the state of the concrete was found to be quite alarming – not helped by a few other questionable building techniques. And when a lump of concrete fell down, narrowly missing a passer-by in 2003, that was effectively that for the church.
<\/p>\n

\"vieille<\/a>But I enjoyed the walk, and the view across to the old town from up here on the promontory was quite impressive.<\/p>\n

I live just to the left of the church over there, and the town centre is down there in the valley in between.<\/p>\n

A set of stirs led down to a little side street that took me back down into the town centre. It’s still quite crowded so the school holidays must still be continuing.
<\/p>\n

\"port<\/a>Back up the hill towards the old town, and there’s still no sign of the ships that I was expecting to arrive in the port.<\/p>\n

But there’s some kind of activity down on the gravel pile. A couple of lorries have called with another few loads of gravel, and there’s a digger down there moving the stuff about into a neater pile.<\/p>\n

It looks as if the arrival of one of the gravel boats is imminent.
<\/p>\n

Having had a little … errr … repose, I made a huge potato, chick pea and runner bean curry. One helping went with a plate of rice and was absolutely beautiful. There’s enough left for no fewer than four other meals, and they are in the freezer. I’m right about space developing as I start to work my way through the supplies.<\/p>\n

A walk around the headla,d this evening, and now I’m ready for bed. And a good sleep too, I hope.<\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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… on my travels last night. I’d arrived at the airport, which might well have been Manchester, and caught the bus to Stoke on Trent. I had to move on yet again but by now it was snowing quite heavily and I didn’t fancy going over the moors in my car. There was however a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,10670,4507,1616,8571,7876],"tags":[212,8748,2560,5565,8581,9404,8759,2316,7891,9221,10672,8749,4664,10671,8762],"class_list":["post-9891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream","category-eglise-st-paul","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-place-darmes","tag-dream","tag-eglise-st-paul","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-grima","tag-neighbour","tag-paul_h","tag-place-darmes","tag-pluto","tag-potato-chick-pea-curry","tag-reinforced-concrete","tag-sorbet","tag-university-of-east-anglia","tag-victress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9893,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9891\/revisions\/9893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}