We crossed the causeway to the Île Tascon about five minutes after the water stopped ebbing across the roadway. Actually, I think it was still just flowing because we got our feet wet!
Once the road dries the tide continues to ebb via a number of underground ducts. This creates whirlpools…
Fortunately they aren’t big enough to suck a fully grown adult underwater, but they might catch the odd baby – or an unwary duck!
One of our last walks on the peninsula took us around one of the gulf-side promontaries to Le Moulin de Pen Castel – a tidal mill. Strictly speaking a tidal ex-mill. Now a tourist attraction describing the old mill’s activities, with a cafe and an art exhibition. Except it was closed when we were there – so I’m making the exhibition bit up slightly. We stopped for a picnic…
… with a distant view of the mill..
Close up, it was clear that the mill had been well gentrified:
The coastal path turned out to be a great source of sloes. Sloe gin, here we come! ♥
I guess we picked about a kilo and a half. Too much for our supply of gin (2 litres). So now we need some more alcohol and if we aren’t careful, we could end up short of the berries. This could go on a bit and we might fnish with 15 litres of the purple liqueur!
One of the coastal oyster vendors was seen flying an interesting flag:
There must be some connection here! Brittany, Wales, Isle of Man, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland. I can’t imagine what the common ground would be with that lot!!!
We’ve managed to get this far without comment on “road furniture”. Road narrowing, chicanes, raised central sections of roadway – the French have the lot. In spades! It’s so dangerous. They put them in all the places where one should be concentrating on not knocking over young children or dogs (or even old fogies). Instead you have to reserve all your attention and evasive manoeuvres for the raised and wobbly kerbs which threaten to dismember tyres and other running gear. The amount of tyre rubber adorning the raised bits is a clear indication of how difficult it is navigating some of the villages.
And speed bumps! Some of them – a few – are sensible and adequate to reduce speed to the local limit. Most, however, are constructions of a similar magnitude to Stonehenge. Massive raised platforms with approach slopes of about 45 degrees. Some of them extend 20 or 30 metres in length. These monsters are big enough to slow cars to less than 20 kph. With a caravan in tow, 10 kph is really the safe limit. It must do untold damage to cars’ suspensions. I’m amazed that the French put up with them – and, it’s true to say, that we have seen places where these offending obstacles have been removed leaving massive scars on the original road surface. The most effective calming measures are the unrepaired roads in towns and cities where unfilled potholes and generally a rough surface maintains a steady pace. That or cobbles!
Our wedding anniversary was celebrated one day early – or two years and a day early depending on which one we are talking about! (The awning had to come down on our anniversary so we could be ready to leave the next day.)
Nine of us, lots of candles, wine, cider and raspberry tart (thanks for that guys!). A great evening. Oh, and one card! Opened very carefully aware of the senders’ penchant for dosing their envelopes with tiny silver stars and other similar crap which takes weeks to eliminate from the caravan’s carpets! I think I’ve mentioned this before. However, on this occasion, the glitter was safely contained behind a cellophane window! Thanks B & S.
Shame we have to leave. We didn’t quite complete the full coastal walk – AND it’s the women’s volleyball final this weekend! I needed To get a better photograph!