Day 6. Sunday 4th June 2017. Mileage:
101 miles Total: 272
From: Guidel
Plage. To: Batz Sur Mer
Weather: Sunny and hot
It seemed fresher this
morning. Jackie is first up and has the
kettle on. It is somewhat overcast this
morning but the wind has dropped. Already
by 1000 hrs. five units have departed.
Our next door neighbour in a Laika 609 (Recovery)? He departs and we follow him out at 10.10 We are headed North for Lorient.
We have decided against
stopping at the submarine base here, and continue on to the N165 then South East
towards Vannes and La Roche Bernard.
Here we swing South onto the D774.
We cross through the Salt Marshes and witness the workers gathering in
the Salt from the evaporating Salt beds with their long-handled rakes and we
watch as they shovel it into wooden wheel barrows for further processing.
We enter Le Croisec and the major Gun control
station at Batz Sur Mer. This is a
fairly large WW2 complex for controlling the batteries on this headland that
would have formed part of the outer Northern defences for the all-important docks
and submarine pens at St. Nazaire. The
Musee here is unmissable with a huge 240 mm Long-range Gun situated in the
centre of the Car Park. It was originally French but captured by the Germans
and put to use. A little further on, at Govell, right on the sea front there is
an autocaravan (Motorhome) parking for seven units.
Produce of the sea features
very heavily on this Western coast of France.
If you like your muscles, cockles, langoustines, crab etc. You are in the right place. If like Jackie, a Birds Eye Fish finger is as
close as you need get to a fish dish, then eating here might be a
challenge. We check the Menu. There is page after page of dishes containing
Meules and Frites. Eventually Mike finds
a page with a few items listed he believes likely to be a vegetable quiche,
which Jackie is agreeable to and a Cassoulet with bacon, mushrooms and Frites
for himself. There is no Croque
Monsieur. I order with confidence.
The half Carafe of Savignon
Blanc arrives almost immediately with a small ice bucket. The waitress does not place the wine in the
bucket, I can tell the bottle would barely fit.
Strange. Looking around, alarm
bells ring. No-one has their wine in the
bucket. All bottled white wine is
presented in a rather chic plastic Carry bag.
It suddenly dawns on us both that perhaps we have not made the correct
Menu choices. Within moments, this is
confirmed. I have a dustbin lid size
plate of sea shells placed in front of me and Jackie a small ramekin shaped
pressing of vegetables in a sea of yellow soup.
On top of which, sits a creature straight out of Alien. I thought she was going to faint. No sooner had the waitress wished us “Bon
Appetite”, then Jackie leavers her fork under Ripley’s arch enemy and catapults
it over the table to land on my plate.
“What am I supposed to do with that” I ask? “Kill it” she replies.
With reluctance, I pass my
Frites over to her. We both tuck in and
on completion agree that everything tasted wonderful. The ice bucket? That was for all the shells,
crab legs and antennae or whatever these things have that you could not crunch
with your teeth or the supplied pliers.
Not since Spetses in the Greek
Islands forty years ago, when Tim said to us “I think I did that rather well”
when ordering stuffed tomatoes, another long story, has a menu choice gone so
spectacularly wrong. Jackie insisted on
a chocolate Nutella crepe to compensate and I consoled myself with a coffee. The whole experience we both agreed was most
enjoyable. The view out over the beach
watching the Paddle boarders and the Surfers was as entertaining as trying to
spot the Bride in the wedding in the venue next door. All open air.
No-one really seemed to dress up.
A smart open necked shirt and shorts with running shoes seemed to serve
the men, the women, some of whom had made an attempt, looked slightly better.
It seemed a strange dress code for what seemed a formal occasion.
We paid the E44.50 bill,
thanked the staff and departed.
We took ourselves off for an
hours walk along the coast path. Being
Sunday, half the world and his wife were out walking. Not to mention the other half on
Pushbikes. The cycle tracks, here also
were well marked, prepared and solely for the use of the cyclists.
Returning to the Van, we had
barely finished our cuppa when a very attractive Police lady, bearing a
striking resemblance to Angie Dickinson, glanced through the windscreen, smiled
and waved at us. Thinking she was
looking for my Insurance Docs (a disc carried on the front windshield in
France), I nipped out and asked what she was looking for. It transpired, we were in a “paiement” area,
not “gratuit”. I apologised and walked
over to the ticket machine and made three attempts to pay with my credit
card. Each time it was declined. I asked Policewoman to watch what I was doing
and submitted my card once again. Once again, it was
refused. We then tried Jackie’s
Credit card which was also declined.
Turning to me with a most disarming smile, she said “Don’t worry” and
proceeded to open the box, but could find nothing wrong. She said that as all other six vans had tickets,
the machine must be working and it must be my card at fault. “I hope not” I replied. “Don’t worry”, she said, “I’m on duty
tomorrow and I’ll come and check on you in the morning”. With a woman in charge, everything is
OK. “You sleep well”.
That’s easier said than done with a
potentially faulty credit card, I thought.
Yet we had bought lunch only a couple of hours before. We had a small snack for dinner on board that
evening.
2230 hrs. lights out.
