Week 4 Off touring

MONDAY 21 May 2018
Pierre has been complaining lately about wanting a change of scenery, saying he'd love to smell the tang of sea air, so to shut him up we allowed Air BnB to find us a comfortable little apartment on the Atlantic coast at a spot called La Rochelle.  It's about 170km SW from Richelieu and we set off at 10.30 this morning.  Pierre was all ready to go early

(nb: click on photos to enlarge)

and set himself up in the back of the van, looking as pleased as a gnome in garden full of pixies.

The place was located in Rue des Roses and there it was

and there was the house to which our little apartment is attached








 and there is the beautiful rose tree in the back garden.


And all around us on one side are other flower streets

I don't think these are geraniums but they looked very pretty spilling out under the gate.

On the other side of the road are a number of bread streets, 'rue de pain', 'rue de baguette', 'rue de croissant', 'rue de poppyseed loaf'' so I'm a bit confused as to whether we're in a flowery neighbourhood or a floury neighbourhood.

Travelling by car and bike is just the best way to go for after arriving about 2.00 pm, unpacking then unloading the bikes, we were off into the town about 2 kms away.  No problems with negotiating narrow streets or trying to find parking and then being able to cover distances it would never be possible to do on foot.

The first thing that impressed was the fact they had erected a monument dedicated to moi.

So thoughtful.

The entrance to the town was well guarded by these two towers,

though it being a national holiday today it seemed a few boats had been able to sneak through.  The Lantern Tower further round the bay

was also keeping a close watch on proceedings, while this house on the point 

overelooking the bay had the best view of all.

Riding round the bay we were staggered at the number of yachts moored to the walkways.

 This was the sight looking down one walkway

and this was the sight looking over a small part of the vast flotilla.  We cycled for well over a kilometre past this endless forest of silent, motionless masts.  Who owns all these yachts? and why are they all sitting here idle?

To ponder this and other such though-provoking questions, we sat ourselves down on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in the early evening sunlight waiting for the answers to come to us.

When they didn't we rode back into town to see if taking an overall view of things would provide more inspiration

but the sky was so packed and the queue so long that we gave up and cycled off home.

TUESDAY, 22 May 2018
We rode into the centre of La Rochelle this morning just in time to see the start of the march by the public sector unionists,

starting from the magnificent station.  We enquired as to why they were striking and were told it was against what they considered was an incompetent government.  We thought for a moment we were back in Oz.  We asked the gendermarie escorting the marchers what was the meaning of these placards

bearing the letters 'FO' and they told us it was a well-known French phrase 'f*** off' telling the fat-cat government apparatchiks where to go.  We gave a clenched fist to show our support and continued on into town and spent the next half day cycling and walking through all parts of the old town, the new town and bits of the middle aged town, drinking coffee on the boardwalk watching the tourists drift by and cruising past the endless number of cafes, bars and restaurants wondering how they all managed to survive. La Rochelle is a stunning city built all around its harbour and newly-developed marina.  There is the usual endless array of monuments, churches and fairytale streets to wander through, such as the

cathedral of Saint Louis

with its grandiose interior,

streets of the old town,





with some of the upper storeys, in particular, needing a bit of tlc,

the 300 year old Great Clock Tower and the odd cow

 enticing customers in to try some of its cheese.

Later in the afternoon it was a choice between the much-acclaimed aquarium or the intriguingly named

 which was intriguing indeed, being in two parts, the first consisting of automated models such as these,

of which there were 50 or more, all of which had buttons for pushing which set the clockwork mechanisms inside them in motion performing all sorts of tricks.  The acrobats on the left started off horizontal then the top one raised himself to a vertical position while on the right the pigs emerged from the pighouse on a conveyor belt, tumbled into a mincing machine and came out as pork sausages which fed into the mouth of the man below.  All wonderful to watch and the models so beautifully made with incredible attention to detail. The second display, in a separate building, was of scale models showing the history of all forms of transport except the most important one, the bicycle.  There were battle ships and cruisers and sailing ships through the ages, a nice contrast here between Columbus in his simple Santa Maria in 1492

and the Pilgrims in the Mayflower some 200 years later,

a far more complex vessel.

There were countless other ships and cars and trains, all painstakingly and superbly crafted and a captivating model railway,

one of about six different displays, this one having 200 metres of track in it as trains ran all round the town and up and around and through the mountains.

By the end of all this we were in need of refreshment so headed back into town for coffee.  We helped ourselves from one of these new self service kiosks which seem to be springing up in all major shopping centres and plazas.

Called 'The´potterie et machine du cafe´' you select your language, in this case English, and it then comes up with a sub-menu asking 'British', 'American', 'Australian' or 'Indian'.  Select 'Australian' and tell it what you want, 'tea' or 'coffee', insert your 2 euro coin and out comes a steaming cuppa'.  In this case, someone tried to fool it by asking for hot chocolate and was rewarded with a blend of tea and coffee.

WEDNESDAY, 23 May 2018

Ile de Re is a tiny little dot off the coast of La Rochelle, joined to the mainland by this very graceful toll bridge

(nb: click on photos to enlarge)

 just over 3 km in length.  We drove to the bridge from 'Street of Roses', leaving Partner in the parking lot and cycled over the bridge, saving ourselves an 8 euro toll.  We had planned to cycle over it anyway to enjoy the sweeping views over the ocean and to the island.  This is a map of the isle

about 30km in length and 5 km wide.  The bridge joins in the bottom right-hand corner and we rode up the right side, then out to Noix and back again on the left-hand side, about 50 km in all.  The island is pancake flat, the sky was blue, the temperature low to mid-twenties and the riding was easy.

Ste Marie was the first little town we passed through,

gleaming white against the blue of the ocean.  As luck would have it, the next little village, La Flotte, is another on the list of  156 'most beautiful towns'.  Couldn't quite work out how this one fitted in as it had no big churches or castles but all the houses looked in pristine condition and we noticed that the doors and trimmings and gates were painted green.  All of them.  Everywhere.

Not only here but all over the island.  Too odd to be co-incidence, we thought, so we popped into a hardware store and headed for the paint department and sure enough, only green and white paint on sale.  At the third store we asked an assistant what was going on and in his broken English he explained that a long time ago, Louis XIX visited the island and was so upset at the sight of all the houses that were painted like this one

 (which has been preserved as a historical curiosity) and offended his sense of refined elegance that he decreed that henceforth all dwellings were be painted in only green and white, which were the favourite colours of his mistress, Nicolette, aka Mmslle Guillotine on account of her sharp tongue which she used to cut him off when he started to ramble and mumble and bumble after too many vins rouge with his lunch.

As we approached the main town on this isle we chanced upon this sign

alerting us to the fact that it was twinned with Esperance.  Exciting times.  We conducted a straw poll with the shopkeepers in the town asking them what it meant to them to be associated with such a vibrant and progressive community, and apart from one stallholder who had stayed in Margaret River for a month and had heard of it, the replies were pretty much 'What?', 'Where?'

This is a beautiful island and while there were a lot of vineyards and fields of crops, tourism is the mainstay.  The little towns dotted around the coast and centred around a marina have all the tourist attractions of stalls and restaurants and souvenir shops.  Wandering around provides all sorts of surprises, such as donkeys in the main streets

people fishing from their windows wondering what they might catch

bicycles being put to good use

as well as one town hosting a regional diving championship at the local pool.

Oysters are a specialty here and no doubt caught in abundance and riding out to Loix we passed a number of little restaurants right on the edge of the ocean

 offering all sorts of menu items featuring them.

Salt production from the low-lying marshland is another local industry and Madam Isabelle had set up stall along a road selling her wares.

Pierre loved it here, the smell of the ocean, the cries of the seabirds, and perched himself on the dock

 gazing wistfully out over the moored yachts hoping someone would notice him and invite him aboard.

THURSDAY, 24 May 2018

Miffed by what he perceived as shabby treatment by the yachtsman of Ile de Re yesterday, Pierre declared he wanted to move on, so today we scooted 330 km north and now find ourselves in St Malo.  This ancient settlement which traces its history back to the 1st century B.C, became a walled city during the bickering and fighting and squabbling that went on in the Middle Ages and much later was bombed into oblivion by the American and British in 1944.  Re-building the walled city lasted until 1960.

We set the GPS on 'ecological' which in terms of time and distance seems to be half-way between 'fastest' and 'shortest'.  Its something like 'the road less travelled' as we often found ourselves on tiny roads needing to head for the mown verge when another vehicle passed and popping in and out of little hamlets.  We saw the by now familiar scenery of farmland and woods, old churches and the odd castle, none odder than this one we diverted to look at

(nb: click on photos to enlarge)

 on the outskirts of  La Plus Connerie.  Apart from this there was not much unusual to see, though we were impressed by this display of cycling patriotism,

and houses like this one

are always a pleasure to look at.

By lunchtime we'd been dumped onto a motorway where we made good time with the speed limit at 110 km and NO roundabouts, but it means options for lunch and a chance to stretch the legs are slightly limited.  Taking pot luck at one such rest area, we had a choice of a self-service baguette,

feed 1.15 euro into the slot and out pops a fresh and crusty baguette, or one of these.

We went the 'galette' option, a type of pancake, with ham and cheese.  While eating we observed a truck driver preparing his lunch.

 Not quite sure if we could believe what we were seeing

 we eventually went over and asked him and he said he didn't like eating sandwiches every day, and doing so was making him fat so he prepared his own meal of fish and vegetables, which he then showed us bubbling away.

                                                                                                                                                                                                       And as they say, 'the proof of the pudding......'

Around 3.30 we arrived in St Malo and found our little apartment,

the one on the 2nd floor with the window open, with a quirky interior

tiny kitchen and bathroom,

there won't be any roast dinners cooked here I shouldn't think,










and a narrow, winding staircase

up which I then had to lug 6 cases of Faye's and one small bag of mine.  It was worth it, though, to be able to then walk outside and be confronted with these views over the marina.

FRIDAY, 25 May 2018

Bucket list item number one ticked off today as we headed for the legendary Mont St Michel, a mere 50 kms up the road from St Malo and site of the Grand Depart for the 2016 T de F.  We drove to the HUGE HUGE HUGE parking area a kilometre from the start of the causeway to the island, intending to ride over it but found to our dismay that cycling over it is banned until after 6.00pm from May to September.  It was either shuttle bus, walking or

this way to get there.





(nb: click on pictures to enlarge)

 We took the bus and this was the sight that greeted us as we approached.

As picture perfect as all the views of it we have ever seen.  The abbey in one form or another has been around for about 1500 years and the town grew around it over the centuries.  Nowadays, it is purely a tourist attraction with something like 3 million visitors a year.  It seemed like most of them were there today.  Some of the little alleyways had a distinct 'London Court' feel about them

while it wasn't long before the souvenir hunters were out in full force, crowding the shops and looking for non-existent bargains.  We have to admit to succumbing to some of the sales pressure.

We won't bore you with a catalogue of the numerous snaps we took, but every time after thinking 'That's enough.  No more' something even more picturesque or interesting

would appear, like this, or this view below of the mud flats surrounding the island at low tide and the causeway leading to and from the mainland.

One couple clearly found the exertion of climbing the hundreds of steps too much for them

while the monks who lived here over the centuries used to stop at this

to fill up their bidons as they dashed up and down the steps on their holy business.  One exhibition, in particular,that  drew fascinated tourists was 'The Wheel',

over which they used to strap those monks whose religious views had unfortunately departed from orthodoxy, for it had been discovered that a few short, sharp sessions of stretching were most helpful to clearing their minds of heretical thoughts.

On the way back to finding our car we were delighted to see herds of cows of various hues wandering the streets.  A local herdsman explained that their colours reflected the fields they grazed in, for example, these ones

dined in fields of bluebells, these ones

fields of daisies, these

in fields of Collingwood supporters, and these ones

only God knows where.

SATURDAY, 26 May 2018

It was inner St Malo today as we rode into the centre to the walled city, about 1/4 of a sq. km in area.  We first took the 1/2 hour tour on the little motorised train to learn about the place and something of its history and because it's not really suitable for bikes with narrow, crowded roads, many with cobbles.  The walls have been in place since the Middle Ages.  Fires ripped through the area in the 1600s and it was then decreed that all buildings had to be built of granite.  Most of the inner city was destroyed by bombing in late 1944, and after the war ended, the buildings were painstakingly reconstructed.  The first step was to go through and number each block belonging to each building before starting the painstaking task of putting the jigsaw back together again.  It has been magnificently done

(nb: click on photos to enlarge)

and the whole area is visually stunning.  

After the train ride we walked around and through the city, being enticed into a lolly shop by this charming pair (of people),

eyeing off the diverse range of shellfish of this harbour town

and marvelling at this shop

 (place of research for spice powders, herbs and aromatics)
the inside of which was lined with shelves of every spice and herb you could imagine

and people were using little scoops to taste mixtures of spices and herbs with water or oil added or undoing bottles and smelling them.  Now here is a place that takes its spices seriously.  Perhaps not so surprising as the great wealth of the place in the Middle Ages was based on the ships from here that brought back rich cargoes from the then Spice Islands.

It was then up the steps to walk round the city on the ramparts of the wall. 

             This snap, taken about 2.00pm, shows the Isles of Grand Ble, which you can walk out to and Petit Ble, which you can then cross to, until the tide starts to turn.....after which you'd better make sure you're heading back or you'll be stuck there.  By 5.30 the considerable expanse of beach was under water.   The tides are a natural phenomenon here, rising and falling up to13m and retreating by as much as 2km before rushing back in.

The ramparts still featured a number of cannon,

  pointing out to the English Channel to deter the dastardly British who besieged the town on a number of occasions without ever capturing it.                 






There was also a handy corner guardhouse complete with barred door in which to lock up recalcitrant tourists.

We had a nice view of a rooftop garden complete with gnomes as we walked the wall 

and when we returned and showed Pierre, who had elected to stay home pleading boredom, he was devastated, convinced he was looking at his long lost papa.

Back on the bikes again, 

though not this neat souped-up version we saw at a supermarket, we rode round the bay as far as can be seen.

To our right as we rode and the whole way around overlooking the ocean were magnificent looking dwellings such as these.

 Nearly all of them seemed to be either hotels or some sort of rented accommodation.

There was a keep-fit class happening on one section of the beach,

we wondered at the size of the winged gulls all around,

which seemed far plumper the what we remember of our seagulls, and arrived back at the sea wall to check the tide to this splendid sight below us.

First the bride,

then the groom, who seemed a little over-eager we thought, especially with a gaggle of spectators above all snapping away with cameras and phones, and then, as Bobby Darren sang,

.....pretty soon there was a room full of rabbits.

The last thing we noticed before heading home was these tree trunks lining the beach.

 Dating from the late Devonian Period, approx. 65 million years ago, they are all that remains of extensive forests that once stretched down to the water's edge and for hundreds of kilometres inland.  Seismic testing of the trunks shows that in some cases they extend up to 300 metres into the sand.

SUNDAY, 27 May 2018
Having had enough of old buildings, grand cathedrals, souvenir shops and crowded alleyways for a few days, we spent the day riding around the bay of St Malo and through the leafy suburbs.  First thing we came across, though,

were ancient Roman ruins dating back to around 1 b.c and the remains of a church that was later built on the site.

We spent a lot of the day, however, riding round the bay in which St Malo is situated and gazing over the ocean at sights like this,

or this view of Grand Be and Petit Be from the other side of the bay

showing how you can walk right across from the mainland while the tide is out.  Grand Be is the burial place of Chateaubriand, a native of St Malo and a famous French writer, diplomat and general man about town.

Those laggards who dawdled too long over their croissant and bowl of coffee this morning would have found themselves stranded if they went out for a sail around 10.30

as the tide was well and truly out by then, leaving them high and dry, including the captain of this craft 

who should be named and shamed as his bottom is definitely in need of a good wiping.  It was a different story at 7.30 tonight, though, as the pictures taken from the same spot show.

The movement of the tides is dramatic over the course of the day.

In our travels round the bay we came upon a series of rock sculptures in a little village called Rotheneuf, carved in this area from about 1870 onwards by an abbot who had suffered a stroke, lost the ability to speak or hear and became a hermit in this part of the coast.  For 2 euros 50 we were allowed access to view these interesting carvings, a few of which are shown here.

Pierre saw this one and claimed it was his grand-father and was not too pleased when I told him he had rocks in his head.

Some of the sculptures were quite colourful and were more lifelike than others.

 People were clamouring all over the rocks taking pictures of them

and while all this was happening, this fellow thought he could sneak off and have a quiet wee without being noticed.

Further around the coast there was a replica of one of the ships of the pirates,

for which St Malo was famous in the good old days, who used to sail out and illegally plunder and murder the ships and crew of any vessels they caught and divide the spoils among themselves before the State realised how much revenue it was missing out on so licensed the pirates, re-badged them as corsairs and allowed them to then legally go out and plunder and murder the ships and crews of any vessels they caught, dividing their spoils three ways between the State, the shipowners and themselves.  St Malo ships and sails, apparently, were superior to all others because of their design.  The train tour we took the day before spoke extensively of the heroes of St Malo, nearly all of whom were pirates or corsairs, including Jacques Cartier, who discovered Canada, parts of which were a French colony till the British pinched it from them as part of a war settlement. Legend has it that when Cartier first landed, the natives crowded round him shouting 'can ada, can ada, oom pa, toom pa, pa ma da', which he thought meant 'welcome to Canada', hence the name, 'please colonise us in the name of the French king' but was later embarrassed to discover it meant 'bugger off Frenchies, we were here first'.   By then, though, it was too late.

As we made our way home, we chanced upon this enthralling and hotly-contested boules competition

 The spectators thronged the sea-wall, cheering and clapping every throw.  I studied the actions and strategies of the players closely and have picked up numerous tips which I believe will make me a shoo-in next year at Busselton for the 'Heather Wallace Perpetual Trophy'.

I was particularly taken with the tactic of one of the players when disputing the end of nudging the kitty with his heel while the other player was fiddling in his pocket for the tape measure.