Blog from Port Louis - Sunday 27th July 2008

In Concarneau it got hot. We had a swim. It was cold. There’s no Gulf Stream here.

We were also very busy trying to organise a few things. Up till Concarneau we’d been happily bumbling along from port to port enjoying not going to work, buying French food, just doing what we do when we’re on holiday, only this time we don’t have to go back home again. We got here and began to realise that we have to make plans to set off across Biscay at some point. We had bought charts for the French coast, but hadn’t seen any available in the chandlers for the north and west coasts of Spain. We assumed we’d be able to buy them in France. We find, after a lot of hot walking, that we can’t. A couple of hours Googling in the café Les Moutons , with free WiFi, but not free bière, some reading up in our Pilot Books and the Nautical Almanac, and we have eventually ordered some Admiralty charts from England to be sent to us. We had to choose a place to get them sent to, knowing they’d take about a week to arrive. We chose Port-Louis, just across the estuary from Lorient.

We were also doing interweb research to locate spokes for my bike. The shop we bought them from in Malmesbury said they’d send us some.

Concarneau is the biggest town we’ve been in since leaving Poole. It has an interesting “Ville Close”, which is a medieval fortified town on an island in the middle of the harbour, accessed by drawbridge. We had a wander round but found the number of tourists’ shops underwhelming. How many striped shirts did those ancient Breton fishermen need? Didn’t they realise that, after all those crèpes, moule frites, kouign amann and American-sized glacés, they really could never get away with horizontal stripes? Why would they want to have their photograph taken with a Johnny Depp look-alike pirate? Was he a Breton?

We were stopped in our tracks by the homme entertaining the crowd with his performing chickens. I say “performing”, if that’s what you call it when you tie a rooster to a small bicycle and push it along a mini high-wire. I couldn’t help wondering if they wouldn’t prefer being force-fed in an overcrowded battery? At least they are blessed with a quicker release when Bernard Matthews turns them into nuggets.

Wednesday night in Concarneau is a big market and we went ashore to listen to the blues duo playing outside Les Moutons. We played “name that tune” again and wandered off to look at the market. We saw our first (and probably last) traditional Breton dancing. It’s a cross between line-dancing and circle-dancing, with less aplomb, done to the plaintive strain of the Breton bagpipe. We didn’t join in. We went back to the blues duo and demonstrated to the natives how to shake a leg with our dazzling display of jiving on the pavement. (Particularly difficult to spin in all-terrain sandals.) Another British couple from the marina joined in. That showed them.

Next day we left Concarneau for Les Iles de Glénan. Only a three hour sail in the sun, but a world away. They are a nature reserve and mainly used for teaching kids to sail. The Pilot Book says they are “as close to the Caribbean as you can get in S Brittany”. Well, Mike and Gill Barron, you have evidently never been there. Although on a sunny day the shoal waters over the white sand are clear and turquoise, there the resemblance ends. There was a decided lack of tepid sea to swim in, palm trees for shade, rum reggae and mangoes. However, we didn’t expect any of that. We anchored there for a night and dinghyed ashore. It was lovely after the bustle of Concarneau to get away from it all, relax and gather our wits. No tarmac, no shops. Lots of birds and rabbits. Concarneau had been frazzling, not just the heat and bustle, traffic and shops, trying to sort out what, where and when we were going to go in Spain, finding we couldn’t get the charts we wanted, not having my bike meant that everything took ages to sort out: I found I was having a crisis of confidence. What are we doing? Why? Let’s go through the canals and forget Biscay and the inhospitable north Spanish coast. I don’t want to go all the way round Spain and Portugal. It’s too far, too expensive. We don’t know what we’re doing.

The Iles de Glénan put it all back into perspective. We stick to the original plan. We’ve got charts on their way. It’ll be fine. We weren’t even put off by waking up on Friday morning to see a yacht resting at an ungainly angle on the rocks about 500m away with the Lifeboat anchored nearby. We drank coffee and watched as the lifeboat men in a rib attached a rope to the yacht and waited for the tide to lift it enough for the big lifeboat to tow it off. After a bit of messing around with ropes and presumably checking that there were no big holes in the hull, they towed it back to the mainland. As other anchored yachtsmen around us woke up, they never knew what a near disaster they hadn’t witnessed.

We set sail for Port-Louis, which contains 5 marinas and the city of Lorient. We had a good sail for most of the way, with the wind on our beam. It died off for a bit, then got up again later as we sailed towards the Ile de Groix and a big bank of rain. The vis dropped as we got into the area where the big ships come in and out of Lorient and we had trouble spotting the navigational buoys. I was glad to drop the mainsail which had been shedding sheets of rainwater into the cockpit for the last hour or two, and we got safely into the harbour, wet through. It was much smaller than we’d thought and the most ramshackle place we’ve seen this side of the Atlantic. We peeled off wet oilies and put up the “tent” over the cockpit. Once the rain had eased off in the evening we went ashore to the Capitainerie to explain that we are awaiting some packages from England to arrive at their office. The Bureau du Port is a semi-derelict shed. The toilets and showers unspeakably old-fashioned (and smelly). We are surrounded by working fishing boats. I was trying to fill in the details of our boat on the form in the office but was too distracted by the some music. My entrails were stirred and my soul thrilled to a blues guitar solo which was streaming out of Youtube courtesy of the Bureau du Port’s internet connection. The charming young man behind the counter told me it was Paul Personne, the best blues guitarist ever. I can recommend it. We knew we were in the right place to spend a few days and await our post from Blighty. A quick explore of this little town confirmed it. It’s on a peninsula which is fortified all round with ramparts, built to defend Lorient from the British and Spanish invaders. There are occasional reinforced oaken doors through the fortifications and you find yourself on a lovely beach. The town is completely unspoiled and has narrow cobbled streets. To top it all, the Port has 4 vélos which they lend out for free, and the showers, grotty as they are, have as much hot water as you want without having to buy a jeton. (The big expensive marinas often charge 2€ just for a 5 minute shower.)

The sun is shining and we’re happy. I’m not going to think about Biscay. I’m putting my fingers in my ears and going la la la.

Up the River Odet.Sunday 20th July.

From Camaret to Audierne we had the best sail we’d had for ages, through the notorious Raz de Sein. We had a crucial tidal gate to meet to get through the Raz (pronounced Raah), and as the boat was going along better than expected, we were trying to slow down so as not to meet with what can be terrifying eddies (or Grundies, as we call them). However, the sea was calm, (mer belle, as the French meteo calls it) and we had the wind on our beam, and it presented no problems. In fact, it was lovely. We were able to eat lunch and have cups of tea without spilling them, while watching the coast slip past. We didn’t go right into Audierne, but hung off a buoy in the bay of St Evette, which was short bike ride to Audierne. The French supermarchés, just like the ones in England, are now out of town to suit the motorcar user. Now we no longer use the motorcar, we find they don’t suit us at all. We had to walk a very long way up a very steep hill, which was a busy and boring road, to find the soulless buildings on trading estates, surrounded by large carparks.
However, we had a good explore by bike. You don’t have to go far inland to find unspoilt Breton villages and hamlets, each with their very old, very pretty church in the centre. Most of them have ancient communal washing places, like a stone paddling pool built to collect water from the stream, where the women of the village would once have gathered to do the weekly wash. This must have been a very sociable activity, with the children playing together as the women chatted and scrubbed. I don’t recall ever having seen these in England. Must be because of the climate, I guess.
We had a rather boring motor-sail from Audierne to Bénodet. The wind only got up for a good reacha few miles before we entered the mouth of the River Odet. This river is navigable up as far as Quimper at high tide, but not by boats with masts or deep keels. We can, however get a few miles up. We stayed a night at Bénodet on a buoy next to some very smelly fishing boats. It’s a small and very friendly port on the West bank, opposite the main town, but it is a holiday resort. We didn’t mind the church bell telling us the time every hour, but in combination with the Vedettes (pleasure boats which do tourist trips up and down the river), the many other yachts, ribs, motor launches and the ferry going back and forth and the night club which entertained us with dance beat music into the early hours of Saturday morning, we decided to go up river in search of tranquillity. (Especially as we could find no internet access in the town.)
The River is very beautiful once we got away from the marinas and under the big road bridge. We got a couple of miles upriver and anchored for a leisurely lunch. After that, we bravely set off even further up river where it narrows through a tree-lined rock walls. We saw egrets and other fishing birds, a couple of chateaux slid past, and we hung off a buoy next to an ancient stone quay with some ruins of old buildings. The sun came out and we ate fresh artichoke, dripping with butter, as a starter for our evening meal, accompanied by the usual vin rouge. Lovely. After getting into my bunk and reading a few pages of Madame Bovary I was drifting off to the sounds of the river washing past, when it started: the insistent beat of very loud dance, trance, garage or whatever they call it. I don’t know if I’d call it music, in the total absence of any melody, just the electronically produced thumping beat. As I got about two minutes sleep in the whole night, I had a long time to think about the difference between “factory” produced beat noise, and the discourse and communication which happens when musicians play instruments and the listeners respond by dancing or just foot-tapping. It was still going on at 9am this morning when we gave up and had breakfast, now accompanied by heavy metal, which then changed to punk rock, all very loud. We could see lads in hoodies standing around on the quay with beer bottles in hand. It eventually stopped. When I dinghyed my bike ashore to go for an explore, one of the walking wounded trying to engage me in conversation about bikes and fishing. Even with my limited French, I could tell he was talking bollox. When I got back from my cycle ride (with bread, vin de table and tarte aux pommes) they were lying around on the grass, unconscious. We thought it would be a good time to go and start singing popular folk songs, loudly, nearby. We didn’t have to, though, because enough Sunday afternoon locals turned up in cars, launching boats, canoes, dogs and even a pony into the river to disturb them. I just hope they’ve taken their generator home as we’re intending to sleep here again tonight.
Off to Concarneau tomorrow in search of internet, water, water filter (as ours is broken) and charts for northern Spain.

Another spoke has broken on my bike, making it unusable now, really.

Audierne, Near Quimper

Andy has started talking to the outboard motor!

Camaret, 14th July, after the storming of the Bastille.

I’m not sure whether Bretons in funny outfits playing bagpipes had much to do with the storming of the Bastille in Paris 1789, but they symbolically processed along the quay last night followed by children carrying paper lanterns. We followed for a bit, but couldn’t decide whether they were playing the same tune over and over again, or that it just sounded like that to our unaccustomed ears, so we went and listened to the band playing in the car park instead, where we were able to play “name that tune” and even had a little dance, but then had to stop to watch the feu d’artifice.

Well, the locals certainly made a night of it. We stayed up until after midnight! Unheard of for us. But we could hear the youth being rowdy long after we went to bed.

A few days ago, an English chap from one of the yachts had caught our eye, as he was wearing sparkling white trousers, navy sweater with a fancy yacht club logo, and a captain’s hat with gold stuff on the peak. As he passed our boat on the pontoon he asked if we had suffered any sadness in our family, as our ensign was flying at half mast. We explained that that was just the way it had been when we bought the boat from the last chap. We’ve never bothered to fly our ensign before, but we have been since we crossed the Channel, simply so that Johnny Frenchman doesn’t babble away at us in his mother tongue, leaving us nonplussed. However, after a long and informative lecture from “The Commodore”, as we privately named him, we decided we had better get some string up to our cross trees and fly the courtesy flag of the country we are in. Apparently it means we are asking protection from that country, under the Geneva Convention, and are not invading. We thought it best to make that clear, on entering a foreign country, despite the obvious lack of canons or other weaponry on our little boat. Now, Andy has asked me not to mention the amount of equipment and effort it takes to get a man of his age up, but nevertheless, we managed it. I’m hoping to attach a photo of Andy after I’d winched him up the mast – well, what did you think I was talking about? We now have the French flag flying from our starboard cross-trees and have also bought a Spanish one ready for the next country. We are a little concerned about the Basques, but have decided we probably just won’t go there. As to the raising and lowering of the flags at sunrise and sunset, they can stuff that. I bet you didn’t know that we are supposed to lower the ensign if we see a naval vessel from any country and wait for them to lower and raise their ensign, at which point we can then raise ours again. Yeah, right.

By the way, I forgot to mention, after a cycle ride of about 8 miles to Crozon the other day, we were unable to get spokes to fit our small wheels. We are going to have to try internet and posting to somewhere where we expect to be. The internet is very patchy here, which is why I haven’t managed to get any pix on the old Fred Blog lately.

Kouign Amann from Camaret = a stonking 9 out of 10. I know I said I wasn’t going to eat any more, but it looked so good. But it wasn’t even a bike ride away – just a short walk. What the hell – it’s a holiday today here in France.

Saturday 12th July – Life is a Camaret!

Here we are. The sun is shining. We’ve turned the corner and are out of the Channel. We’ve left the forbidding granite behind. The landscape is softer.
We had a good sail here yesterday – 8 ½ hours door-to-door – and the wind abated, as did the waves, as the day went on. We hardly even got rained on. The Chanel du Four wasn’t nearly as bad as we’d expected, with the tide zipping us through. We were accompanied by several interesting old wooden boats, gaff-sailed and square riggers, which were belatedly making their way to Brest for the huge international festival of traditional boats which is being held there this weekend.
Camaret is touristy, but charming. There’s a holiday feel around as Monday is a holiday for the French, who like to celebrate the storming of the Bastille with fireworks and alcohol. We just watched a boat arrive from Brest with 8 blokes on it who took three attempts to come alongside the pontoon and tie up. They didn’t want to be separated from their vin rouge and cigarettes just to moor the boat safely. One of them was playing a trumpet just now.
We’re now having to cycle to Crozon to find a bike shop, as I’ve broken a spoke (un rayon de roue) and the shops will be shut on Sunday and Monday. It’s all go.

Friday 11th July – Escape from l’Aber Wrac’h

We’re preparing to leave this morning. The wind is slightly less horrific than it’s been for the last eleven days. Eleven days we’ve been here. Once we’d found our way around we went into a time slip. We must have stepped through a portal in the fabric of the universe when we stepped ashore. Thenceforward, we observed the normal world as through a veil. We have at last, finished the blind for the forehatch after four weeks of conceptualising, fashioning, manufacturing and fitting. The reason we needed it was that we were waking up too early in the mid-year sun. Once in France, that automatically became one hour later. Once we were in the parallel universe, it no longer occurred. We sleep for 12 hours and manage to maintain a kind of wakefulness for the other 12 hours. The blind does help, though, at the other end of the night, as it is still light when we yawn our way into the fo’c’sle.
So, the preparations are done: we’ve removed the sail cover, attached the main halyard, winched up the genoa halyard, put in the speedo, the waypoints are in the GPS and marked on the charts. We’ve stowed everything that can move and got our foul-weather gear out of the locker. We’ve checked and double checked and triple checked the weather forecast. High water at Brest is 1205 and we plan to leave at 1100. Andy’s making me a cup of tea.
So it’s goodbye to the Monument of Desolation, where we had cycled to the western tip of the peninsula and stopped to look at the War Memorial. I stood on the low granite surround to peer at the weathered lettering, when I was assaulted by a gnarl-faced Breton man in furious French. I think he thought I was disrespecting the war heroes: the liberators and the Resistance. I tried to explain in my ‘O’ level French. “Je suis desolée. Je lis les mots seulement.” But he wouldn’t listen and carried on shouting and waving his arms. Later I put it down to his lunchtime anis having worn off and it was not yet time for his evening ones. Or maybe he had missed his game of boules because of the rain.
And it’s farewell to the Roundabout of Despair, where I collapsed on the grass verge to eat an apricot pastry and rest my wearied feet. It was our first day in L’Aber Wrac’h and we’d walked about 5 or 6 km to Lanilis for supplies in the hot sun – it was the last we’d seen for almost two weeks. We asked at the Bureau du Tourisme for directions back to the marina, away from the main road, parce qu’il y a plus de voitures. It was too embarrassing to go back to the lady in the office and ask again. We owed it to all future British tourists not to seem too stupid to follow directions (given in English) and find our way back. Anyway, it worked. After the pastry we used the Force and the position of the sun and the lie of the land and got back to our boat. A harbour is always downhill, wherever you start from.
We’ve got a bit bored with being in one place, even though we didn’t actually manage to squeeze a visit to the Museum of Seaweed into our packed schedule. We’ve seen enough. It’s onwards, into the wind and rain to see what delights Camaret-sur-Mer has to offer.
Kouign Aman á la Lanilis = 8 but I’ve decided not to try any more. They contain more calories than the cycle ride to fetch them uses.

Trapped by the weather and the biggest cycle race in the world.

It looks like we're going to be in L'Aber Wrac'h for a few more days. Don't fancy Beaufort Force 8 and what they call High Seas!

However, here in the Cafe du Port, Andy is glued to the big plasma screen with the first day of the Tour de France in full pedal. He has a biere in his hand. Andy heaven! The Tour set off from Brest this morning on the first day of the gruelling 3 week ordeal. We decided not to take the bus down to Brest to watch it, as it would have been very crowded. Here we get marvellous arial tv shots of the Breton countryside. It doesn't seem to matter to Andy that the commentary is in fast French that neither of us can make head or tail of.

One morning this week I had a bit of a scare when I turned on my phone to find a message from my daughter, Cherry. I could hardly understand what she was saying because of the emotional flood of tears and sobs which met my ear. Oh no, I thought, something really terrible has happened. It turned out she’d got her final Uni results and had been awarded a B Sc with first class honours! She was actually rather pleased.

Score for Kouign Amman from the patisserie in Landeda, just up the hill from L’Aber Wrac’h = 8. Firmer texture with a subtle layer of apple. Nice chewy edge.

American Independence Day.

Il pleut, ici.

We left Primel last Monday and motor-sailed through a slack wind to L’Aber Wrac’h, which is on the sticky out bit of France: their equivalent of Land’s End. It was a bit of a culture shock coming back into a marina after the quiet and independence of hanging on a buoy in Primel. We were finding it difficult to get up-to-date weather forecasts there, though, as the print-out on the notice board outside the Bureau du Port was changed about once every 5 days! Going on the forecast we got from cycling to the town and using the internet in the Tourist Info on Saturday (last blog day) we decided it was safe to leave when we did. We had got a bit fed up with the constant rolling motion from the Atlantic swell. It would get worse at higher states of the tide and we had to cling onto our bunks at night. Keeping food on the table was also a challenge.

There was a melee of boats coming into the marina, no signs telling us where the “Visiteurs” could moor, and no Capitaine du Port in sight. We managed to find a place to tie up then set off to get the code no. for the Sanitaires and the WiFi. This marina is newly built and the buildings on the quay are still under construction. There is the occasional construction vehicle to negotiate, a lot of loose gravel which gets in your sandals, the ubiquitous merde de chien, and the facilities, we discovered, smelt less than sanitaire. The hommes and femmes are in together and the jeton (token) for the shower is 2€. We have been informed that the douche lasts about 2 and a half minutes. We’ve been using our solar shower bag in the boat, instead. You get used to it. Luke warm is better than cold.

However, due to the weather conditions which have been not enough wind and now far too much wind, but always in the wrong direction, we are still here and the place is growing on us. Our next trip has to take us west then round the corner then south through the notorious Chanel du Four. As we’ve not done it before and as we are neither brave nor rash, we prefer to wait for better conditions. Ideally a north-east wind, but that’s not likely to happen.

It’s funny how you can arrive in some places and not be impressed at all, but after a while the charms become more apparent. Some of the places where I feel the deepest connection have been like that to start with. I wasn’t bowled over by Andy when I first met him, either!

We’ve discovered the Cafe du Port which is a very laid back place where you can drink beer or coffee and use free wifi while listening to interesting jazz and blues. The proprietor also sells fresh bread, which saves quite a long trip to the nearest town. Although, we discovered yesterday on our bikes, that there is a small town with a little supermarche and a boulangerie only a couple of kilometres away up a steep hill (nothing to us Chalfordites.) We had walked about 5 kilometres in hot sun to get emergency supplies of beer and cake on our first day here!

There are cheaper moorings to be had up the river in Port du Paluden, which we went and had a look at, by bike, as usual. (They are brilliant, those folding bikes.) It is a lovely peaceful spot and very well sheltered. However, we do have this need to get internet access for contact with friends and family, as well as weather forecasts. We tried out the Relais du Pont there for lunch, though. It had been closed down, according Tom Cunliffe in the Channel Pilot Book, but had just reopened two days before under new management. We don’t eat out very often because with Andy being a veggie, it’s not always that rewarding in France! However he had a very good mushroom omelette which had all kinds of fungus in it. I had what may have been a galette (like a crepe but different) with fruits de mer. We don’t get the French thing about pancakes. We eat them once a year with lemon and sugar, and yet about two out of three eating places here is a creperie. I’ve been told by Joan (our new marina friends, retired teachers from Coventry) that the French will go in and have a crepe, then have another one with a different filling, then maybe another, to make up a meal. The French, though, certainly don’t get vegetarianism. The only other choice for us to eat out here is a pizza. Might try that another day. Mostly, though, we’re happy to find lovely vegetables, artichokes, haricots verts, tomatoes that smell of tomato, lettuce with real dirt on it, and eat on board.

As it’s still raining, I could carry on waffling for hours, but I won’t. I’m going to carry on making a blind for the fore-hatch out of an old spray-dodger, and maybe a bit more of Martin Chuzzlewit. I’m about two-thirds of the way through the 880 pages now. Well, there was no point bringing detective novels, I’d have been through them all by now.