whilst engaging in conversation a yottie moored to the visitors pontoon at Binic, his ensign unfurled enough for me to see that I was chatting with a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron with a wife whose accent wud ket gless ... Too late to politely move on, he replied to my question, whether Binic was better than any of the other watering holes in the Bay St Brieuc (it is according to Cunlipps), that it always rained at St Quay Portrieux and he couldn't find an open restaurant at night.
Binic is indeed a very nice place but it does have one small problem; you can't get out of or into the place for up to 4 days during neaps.
Now, at first sight to a short sighted old buffer, this might appear true of St Quay. The (one and only) local bread shop is run by a very cheerful old bird whose baguettes are so mis-shapen and, generally, tough, as to appear useful only for a sprare crankshaft. On one evening a sound system was being erected in the port and in due course a fiddler, double bass and two Hank Marvins duly performed a medley of Bretagne country dance music. Of the forty or so listening, half debarqued from winnebagos who must have thought a really wild gig was about to happen - the sound system was big enough for the Emirates stadium and that from my recent personal experience listening to B Springsteen there one evening. The fiddlers programme ended at 9.30 and the travellers returned to their wagons; each had a name with a nautical theme, I noted, such as Atlantic Challenge and one, complete even with a patio, was named Claymore. Within minutes of the winnebagoers returning to their motorised homes, the electric motors whirred as the satelite dishes on the roofs unfolded, twitched and turned to the nearest TV satellite.
Meanwhile, and much later, the one fairground ride was keeping the infants amused through the night. I did think of proferring my bus pass to get on the london bus .. and, speaking of which ...
There is a cheap bus service (2 euros anywhere) covering the whole of the area from Morlaix in the west to St Malo in the east. Then there's the trains ... which all have bogs which work and aren't filthy. The airports, particularly Rennes, are the only airports in Europe where the planes always take off on time such that there is no need to inform passengers of the status of their flight.
There's something very pleasant aboot France .. perhaps its the way that everyone says hello to each other ..
On the way back to the UK (by ferry, it was never going to happen by plane) we passed into Portsmouth at the end of the Meet the Navy Week - what's left of it, that is. The aircraft carriers Illustrious & Invincible looked unloved and the latter with a pair of tea cosies over her funnels wasn't going anywhere quickly. Illustrious's flight deck had one of the new F35B joint strick aircraft which are going to be flown on the 2 new carriers but, it was a wooden, life-size, model apparently. We haven't commissioned a new frigate or destroyer since 2002. In the past, one or two were commissioned each year.
Onyways, here we are in St Quay. A small celebration of our arrival occurred ..
Note that the bottle of Wullie McT's speshal Aberlour is nearly empty.
Jim "I don't drink whisky" proved that point the morning after ..
And doing 12kn down the Alderney Race
