We had intended to push on east today, but a combination of fresh easterlies and an artichoke fete in a nearby town convince us to stay.
We get the bus to Saint Pol de Leon arriving just in time for a parade of the various old guilds who we find slightly sinister in their medieval garb with overtones of the orange marches…
But it is all apparently harmless and just a celebration of the artichoke and old tractors…..
…plus an amazing New Orleans style brass band. What they lack in musicality, they more than make up for with sheer panache.
Artichokes are clearly big here and for €13 each we get a big artichoke, some potatoes with sausage and onions, a slab of Breton custard tart, a glass of wine and a cup of coffee.
This fete appears to bring together a big cross section of society with everyone happy to share and eat their artichokes whilst listening to the bagpipes drifting across the square mingling with some avant guard jazz.
Back to the boat for the final legs home…we think.
The overnight ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo is the start of our journey back to Heydays where we left her tucked up in Morlaix. They are really marketing it as a mini-cruise with entertainment. We forgo the magician though and decide that the restaurant offers a more suitable way of passing the time. Our cabin turns out to be below the waterline and we try to banish any thoughts of the scenes from Titanic where the steerage passengers (now including our Kate) are struggling to get gates open to the upper decks where the high class passengers don’t get their tootsies wet.
The trains from St Malo to Morlaix are the usual classy french efforts where their 2nd class is better than our dearly beloved (not) GWR 1st. Who says nationalisation doesn’t work? Back on Heydays after just over 2 weeks, is like coming home and we get her ready to lock out of the harbour to take the last of the tide down river while we have enough water.
The river looks even better than before in the late afternoon sun and we follow a couple of local boats as we slalom down the very shallow river (even at high tide).
A Heron eyes us malevolently as we pass. Not sure whether he is cross with us or the egrets nesting just above where he is fishing…
A local sailing boat clearly with local knowledge is sailing through the tortuous route among the rocks and buoys out of the river.
We are slightly more cautious and keep the motor running. However we have nice sail across to Roscoff itself. There are few merits about Roscoff marina, but we can get out at any state of the tide as we begin our trundle East. Having tried a couple of restaurants, it dawns on us that this is Bastille weekend…we eventually sit outside with some tapas, watching the sun going down and the moon and Jupiter rising above the funfair.
The prevailing easterly is chilly once the sun has gone and we warm up with some crepes and hot chocolate while waiting for the fireworks at 11.30. It seems like half of Brittany has descended on Roscoff for the evening and we have a grandstand view of the fireworks over the harbour if slightly bemused that the traditional folk band sings half its repertoire in English…at a Bastille event!
We’ve heard good things about Morlaix and so we slip away
from Roscoff (loaded with fresh croissants delivered direct to the harbour) for
the 10 mile jaunt up the river to the old tobacco town. The river dries almost completely
ant low tide and we need to get there in time to lock through into the harbour
which is right in the centre of town.
We pass an old fort which was put there to ward off the good
folk of Bristol, who apparently had a good thing going themselves in the
tobacco industry and were a trifle jealous and raided the town on several
occasions in the early 16th century. On one occasion, the Bristolians
were found in some woods, sleeping off their pillaging and plundering by the
returning men of Morlaix. According to one source, the Bristolians arranged for
several return matches, none of which went well for the visitors.
The route up river is well marked and very pretty, even in the grey skies of mid June….
By mid-day we are hanging around outside the lock and soon find ourselves greeted by the cheerful lock-keeper, who once we are through, jumps in his dinghy…
and shows us our berth for the next night or so.
We trundle off in the familiar drizzle to suss out the station for Yee Tak who is due to leave us tomorrow and to look around the town itself. The town is dominated by the fantastic railway viaduct and this is a clue….
to a very steep climb up to the station! This has been completely rebuilt for the new TGVs and is a fantastic example of what can be done with a state owned railway if the political will (and pride?) is there. We have remarked several times on this trip, how the French towns seem to take an enormous pride in their public spaces.
…and once again there are multiple childrens clothes and toy shops which appear to be irresistible to grandmothers…
We wander off round the old town with its amazing original
gables and even take a stroll along the walkway halfway up the viaduct…
It is a Monday and most of Morlaix and its restaurants are
shut, so our farewell dinner for Yee Tak turns out to be a hotel slightly up
market from a premier inn…not quite what we had in mind.
POSTSCRIPT
The weather decides to take a turn for the east and worst in a fairly major way for the rest of the week. Meteo France even suggests gales locally before the temperature heads into the late 30s…and thunderstorms. Our sailing window ends anyway on Sunday and any destinations to the east would entail some uncomfortable beating or motoring into some very lumpy seas and near gales. We decide to leave the boat in Morlaix (snug, safe and cheap(er than Roscoff) and will return mid July to continue east…and home?
PPS. The views from the train as we go over the viaduct are amazing…
We decide to give L’Aber Wrac’h a miss and try our luck in
Roscoff. While it is a major ferry terminal, it is also a very attractive
little town and we decide to make the most of the weather before the winds
settle in to strongish (F6 or 7) easterlies from Wednesday onwards.
We resist the temptation to cough very loudly at 6.30am…or to sound the foghorn, and instead slip quietly away into a still but drizzly morning. More motoring! A cormorant is doing its very best to change the north marker into an easterly…an avian wrecker?
We plot a course though the very narrow easterly channel out of the river, seemingly within touching distance of the rocks which seem to be strewn liberally around in a very haphazard fashion.
Once out, we set off for the Ile de Batz and initially plan
to take the longer but less rock strewn northerly route round the island. We
re-read the pilot book and given the favourable wind with tide once more and
excellent visibility, we plot a course through the southerly channel between the
island and the mainland. This require
serious buoy counting and we list them all out in advance. We wonder idly,
whether Iran will retaliate for the recent US cyber attack by taking out our
GPS…although probably not directed at us personally!
The rain is steady as we start the various dog-legs through
the channel. The markers are very clear however and we hop from one to the
other, again within spitting distance of some very spikey rocky stuff. The only
company we have are some fishing boats and the small vedettes which ply between
Roscoff and the Island. The route saves
us about 3 miles and the possibility of a deck-full of water in the overfalls
to the north. By noon we are moored in the modern, faceless, but otherwise excellent
(in terms of facilities) marina in Roscoff…and by 1.30 we are sitting down to
Sunday lunch by the old harbour. At 4 we left, telling ourselves that we really
should go for a walk. A slow trundle out to the edge of the channel to Ile de
Batz confirms that with low water now imminent, there really was no room for
error on our way in.
The town is charming with the old harbour and even some petanque…
Audierne turns out to be delightful with a brilliant Saturday market. we are even serenaded in a very traditional French style as we walk ashore.
We half expected it to be full of the same stalls as in Concarneau, but while there are some similar, none appeared to be the same and Audierne was very much its own character.
One of the highlights was another of the stalls selling a range of hot food…pommes de terre au gratin, ratatouille, veggies, roast meats and lasagne. We decide that since we are likely to be late into L’Aber Wrac’h we will buy some dinner for later and then all we have to do is heat it in the oven.
We have all been enchanted by Audierne and will surely
return sometime…
Our plan today is to head for L’Aber Wrac’h via the two big tide gates of Raz du Seine and Chenal du Four. It is slightly less easy than going south as due to vagaries of tides, there is slightly less north going time available in the Chenal than in the Raz. We need to be fairly precise about our timings as we don’t want to end up with a night-time entrance to L’Aber Wrac’h. The other complication means that we will be leaving Audierne at low water. This is not to be recommended as the channel is very shallow in places and prone to silting according to the pilot books. We ease our way out of the berth and slide past the moored fishing boats as close as we dare.
We can see breaking water ahead near the entrance and can feel Heydays nudge the bottom…we hold our breath, but she shakes herself free and we are through and out into clear open water.
With a full main and a couple of rolls in the genoa, Heydays is nicely balanced for the SE breeze off the land and we head out past beaches and small villages towards the Pointe du Seine and our first rendezvous with some fast water.
Bang on schedule we make the turn for the Raz and once more it does not live up to its reputation (thankfully) and with wind and tide in harmony, we don’t even experience the swirls and eddies that we would expect on a routine passage through Hurst Narrows.
We head out across the bay towards the next headland and the Chenal du Four with a steadily easing wind now dead astern. Reluctantly we make the decision to run the engine to maintain our boat speed and a daylight entrance to L’Aber Wrac’h. The purists and Joshua Slocum himself will be turning in their graves…what’s the rush why not just put into a convenient anchorage and wait for another favourable tide and wind…sadly the modern world is not quite like that and some commitments back home later in the month suggest that we need to be well on our way towards St Malo for ferries etc. Anyway, we are lugging this chunk of iron around the high seas, so it may as well earn its keep…a bit defensive I know but…
Lunch, coffees and the last of the sweeties come and go and then we are starting to feel the strength of the tidal stream once more. We pick off buoys one by one and once again, the combination of wind and tide together mean that we don’t even get our slippers wet.
The oven goes on and by the time we are round the final headland and heading broadly east, we each have platefuls of steaming nosh bought earlier in Audierne. OK, foil trays are not exactly fine dining but this is brilliant.
We reach the entrance to L’Aber Wrac’h right on schedule and
motor up river in the evening light…to find a jam packed marina with boats rafted
up over 3 deep. This is not quite what we had in mind, as the sound of a disco
and very loud voices pierces the evening across the water. We avoid the revellers
rafted up and try to find a local’s berth which we hope they won’t be using
this late at night. We finally squeeze in (fitting where it touches as they
used to say) to a berth slightly too short for us and with our stern provocatively
sticking out from the row of little fishing and day sailers. Still, we are in
and will happily move if anyone wants their berth…we’ll be away early in the
morning anyway.
We ask some passing sailor types what the codes for the
toilets and showers are and what is going on with all the boats. Apparently it
is the 60th anniversary race from Helston River to L’Aber Wrac’h…and
then she says “if you have facilities on board, use them…the toilets are …” she
waves her hand in front of her nose. We decide that there is nothing ashore we
want and settle down with some booze of our own, wondering when the music will
stop. By 11.30 it is still going and we decide that with an early start we may
as well try to sleep. They finally turn off the music around 1am. On our way
down, we had a nice time in L’Aber Wrac’h and were looking forward to the return
visit with Chris and Yee Tak…perhaps another time.
The Friday morning market in Concarneau is wonderful in the sunshine as only French markets can be…
…and we round it off with a late breakfast outside, listening to a decent busker …
We slip the lines around mid-day and push out of the harbour
and into the afternoon sunshine…and a wind dead on the nose. With a bit more in
it we could have tacked out and round the headland, but we want to be in
Audierne before darkness arrives. The pilot warns about approaches after dark
and a very narrow and silting river. We don’t fancy a night on a sandbank in
the river, so use some diesel to push on.
A huge number of fishing boats (we count 18 at one point)
are returning and don’t seem to want to make many concessions to collision
avoidance regs as they rush to get their catch to market.
Once round the headland, the wind frees and we have a wonderful early evening sail on the longest day. A small pod of dolphins breaks the surface …
…and soon they are playing in our bow wave and criss-crossing around under the boat. We watch mesmerised and delighted until they either tire of our company or decide to find their fish supper elsewhere.
We are still buzzing as we close the coast andsome fantastic sandy beaches…
We approach the river entrance and have all eight eyes peeled as we make our way up to the little town of Audierne. We expected to find it heaving with Friday night sailors out for the weekend, but instead it is quiet and peaceful, with just the occasional splash as the terns dive bomb into shoals of tiny fish which seem to be panicking very close to the surface.
Tomorrow we plan to pass once more through the Raz du Seine and the Chenal du Four, but the earliest we can leave is around mid-day again and there is a ‘grande marche’ in Audierne tomorrow morning. For now, we are content to sip our rum as the sun goes down on a wonderful little harbour…
We were up around midnight last night just to have a look at
the little area where we are allowed to dry out. The grumpy older man in the
capitainerie earlier, was at pains to point out that we are not allowed to do
any cleaning…just to look. His younger assistant was much more helpful,
pointing us to the best spot and probably wondering when his boss is due to
retire. The area we have been shown seems to shelve quite steeply so we plan to
try to hold Heydays at a jaunty angle to the harbour wall to give us the best
chance of getting at the prop ‘just to have a look’.
By 8.30am we are playing around with lines and are the
subject of many conversations and even some helpful advice from the dockside,
including the inevitable ‘not sure why you are there, it is much better on the
other side’. This latter bit of advice came once we were well and truly
aground.
We settled in to do some general polishing while the tide
retreated and ended up feeling quite smug with the way our old boat scrubs up.
As it turns out, the prop is not bad at all, but we look
very hard at it and miraculously it develops a deep shine and a nice new coat of
grease. We pay attention to the paddle wheels for the logs and they turn out to
be the root cause all along. Perhaps we needn’t have dried out after all…
With the tide returning, Heydays once again returns to her
natural element and we shoot round to fill up with diesel before Chris arrives
on the bus from Quimper, having flown from Southampton to Rennes and then
trained to Quimper. John has a shave and shower in her honour…
The forecast for the day is showers and light winds, but
dead on the nose (of course). We wake up
to rain and having arranged with the boat moored outside us to leave at 9, we
climb into wet weather gear…just as it stops and we start to steam gently
inside layers of oilies.
Madame on the boat next door is handling mooring warps in one hand whilst carefully guarding her cigarette in the other…monsieur seems relatively laid back and we are soon clear and heading out of the little harbour. Ile du Groix has been one of the highlights of this cruise (among the many so far) and we are sorry to leave it behind.
A couple of other yachts are leaving around the same time and we are all just motoring north into a strangely lit sky….
…and a light zephyr which is not even strong enough to make
beating a worth while activity.
This one of those short passages where not a lot happens, save for a few boats passing slowly in the other direction…
…and some gannets circling and then diving spectacularly into
the sea, only to bob up a few seconds later with a beak full of fish. We are
similarly spectacular in failing to get anything approaching a photograph!
We doze in turns and the drizzle comes and goes as we start to close the coast once more. A hardy fisher person of indeterminate gender is sitting on what appears to be little more than a kayak. We wonder idly what would happen if a larger than usual fish took the bait…
The approach is rocky as is everywhere along this coast, but the beacons and buoys are reassuringly big and soon we are tucked up and having lunch. We have come to Concarneau to find somewhere to dry out and clean the propeller (we have lost a bit of power to what seems to us to be higher levels of marine fouling in these waters)…and also to pick up Chris who is flying out tomorrow to join us.
The harbour is busy and seems like yet another mecca for sailing schools and children getting to grips with the world of sailing and an assortment of interesting boats apart from the bits of plastic which most of us float about on.
We have a wander around the town to pick up bits of shopping and are forced into a small bar to have a couple of Ricards and a Mojito…just to get out of the rain. Once the shower has passed we are further delayed by a little Vietnamese snack van which is part of the small organic market on the waterfront.
We dine on risotto packed full of fresh organic herbs from the market…
…and this is what a real chart table should look like.
After a short break at home to attend to grandchildren, elderly mothers and assorted ne’er do wells (friends), we fly back from Southampton to Nantes. Even that is not without some late drama courtesy of SW Railway trying to get rid of guards on our trains…or gaurds as GWR would have it….
We leave a slightly drizzly UK and arrive in a sunny Vannes. This is why we sailed south surely. We are forced into a small bar in Nantes to wait for our train and then soak up the last of the evening sun back on Heydays. It is great to be back on board and in the evening sun Vannes takes on a completely different atmosphere compared to the drizzle in which we left. We eat above the capitainerie and it turns out to be one of the highlights…great nosh and a relaxing evening idly watching young people flirting and enjoying a Monday evening in the sun. Despite revelry going on ‘til late we sleep the sleep of the devils….
We need to be away by 8.30 to catch the last of the eb out of the Gulf du Morbihan. By 7.45 we have dashed into town and bought some bread, croissants etc and done some shopping…we nearly ran out of rum!!! We finally slip away at 8.40 and will remember Vannes with great fondness. The late summer sun of the evening before has given way to a threat of heavy showers…we have our waterproofs at the ready. By 9 we are well clear of the canal and the sills and are threading our way between the islands and rocks which are a constant feature of the Golfe.
With main and a small genny (just so we can count buoys) we are doing around 7 kts over the ground, but at least this is in the right direction…we’ve learnt our lesson.
At 9.40 the squall strikes. We have gradually put on more
and more wet weather layers as the sky became darker and darker, but in the
space of 60 seconds the wind turns from a benign 12kts over the quarter to a
screaming 30+ kts dead ahead. We furl the genny and haul down the main in a
torrent of near gale force winds and lashing rain as the spring ebb takes us
through the narrows north of Ile des Moines
at nearly 11kts over the ground, despite being dead into a near gale and with
just a bare minimum of engine to give us steerage. And then we are through! The
sky clears for a while and we are left sweltering in full weather gear in a
gentle breeze from the quarter. With sails up once more we are swept as if on a
conveyor out of the Golfe and wave a sad farewell to what must be one of the
great cruising grounds of Europe.
There are more sailing boats out than one would expect for a
Tuesday morning in mid June, but perhaps that is the whole point! Work/life
balance …as the French may say.
We thread our way through the line of rocks off Quiberon peninsular
and round up for Ile du Groix once more.
We are looking forward to another stay there on our way to meet Chris who will
join us in Concarneau on Thursday. James shakes out the last reef in the main
(we don’t have lines led aft) and wonders why he is hanging onto a tall metal
object pointing skywards as an ominous clap of thunder echoes off the land
behind us. Why is Yee Tak checking insurance policies…just askin’!
In less than an hour, we are close hauled making for the
island and gradually losing layers of clothing until finally we are in shorts
and T shirts and slapping on the sun cream… This bit of Tuesday is so
completely unlike the start, we wonder if we were in a time warp.
Ile du Groix tempts us with sunlit beaches…
and we find ourselves jostling for space in the small harbour once more. After a few fruitless sorties down narrow lines of boats we finally tie up….and relax. This time we wait for a more appropriate amount of time between getting properly moored and breaking out the gin.
This is a great place to hang out and clearly some dark and forbidding French marines (or whatever their equivalent is) think the same…they pretend to be on serious manoeuvres, but we know why they are really here!
We wake up to a different world from the night before. Where there had been the equivalent of a Solent chop and leaden skies, we now have sunshine and a virtual mill pond. Another trip ashore and we are in yet another world.
This is so very different from its next door neighbour. There are some tourists, but the tranquillity is striking immediately and while it has a few motorised vehicles, we can amble down lanes and paths without a care. The gardens and flowers are stunning, almost as if it is an island obsession and the smell of honeysuckle and roses seems to hit us at every corner.
We wander around the little churchyard but are also struck by how many lost their lives in the wars, given that the population has been around 260 or so for decades.
One plaque catches our eye and it is a female sub lieutenant who has won medals for the resistance as well as France’s highest honour, the Croix de Guerre. She was captured and sent to a concentration camp but survived the war finally taking her leave in the 50s. it is all the more poignant as we have been reading the news about the D-Day commemorations both in Portsmouth and in France.
Lunch is typically country French. Just a small café/restaurant, but sitting in the sun with some fish or simple steak in a pepper sauce makes us feel like staying.
As it happens though, we have a tide to catch up to Vannes as we fly home for a couple of weeks on Friday. We meet a Dutch couple who sailed here for the sailing festival, but need to find a new bowsprit from somewhere. Apparently it was broken by a boat to ran into them because its anchor had been lifted by a third boat lifting their own anchor. Good luck in sorting that out with the insurance companies. They seemed in good spirits though and planned to stay in Arz to ride out the storm which is due in Biscay (and over us) on Friday.
Another afternoon genoa dash across the shallows, but this time with the motor running as we complete almost a complete circumnavigation of the little island before heading up the river to Vannes to catch the opening of the swing bridges and locks.
We follow a small local lorry ferry for a while, although ferry is rather a grand name for what is really little more than a glorified floating platform no wider than the lorries themselves.
A moment of lack of concentration (James) finds us heading
up the wrong arm of the river down a length of increasingly shallow and narrow channel
with boats on either side. We survive…just and back in the main river we are
soon moored up next to some other boats waiting for the bridge and the locks. One
half of a young couple on the boat next to us is climbing into a wet suit to
have a look at his missing propeller. They did well to get this far just on
sail in the narrow channels…what it is to be young and impervious to the cold.
With the lights green we motor up to our allotted berth for
the next two weeks…to find that it is about 3.3m wide….and we are 3.4m! We can
just about moor safely and the capitainerie say they will sort it tomorrow. We
have our stern sticking out into the channel, but we fender up and hope for the
best!
In the morning we finally get allotted a berth more suited to our girth…and right in the centre near the showers and laundry….this is a glamourous life!
We have a wander round Vannes which is amazingly old and medieval (and yet more toy shops) and then set about snugging down Heydays for the impending storm Miguel (violent storm 11 in Biscay!), before we leave her to fly home for a couple of weeks.
Postscript.
We are sitting on the runway at Nantes in one of FlyMayBe’s
tiny planes and are wondering with each gust which shakes us violently whether
we will take off. Some passengers seem jumpy, but the attendants seem relaxed ….so
it should be OK then.
One break in the cloud allows us a glimpse, just before we land, of the needles and Hurst Spit where we left just 3 weeks ago.
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