Well, 30th June, here we were, back in Guernsey after a week and a half in Jersey. We just couldn’t move west at all with strong westerlies blowing every day. Even when the wind lessens or changes the sea takes some time to ease and we just couldn’t get away as the westerlies returned time and again. The trip over from Jersey only took 5 hours as the wind was behind us and as we arrived back in St Peter port harbour it felt like we were returning into home waters.

At least we had returned to Guernsey, which we both had taken a great liking to, so it wasn’t so bad being stuck there again for another week and a day.

Mike decided that he would make a cockpit table while we waited for the weather to turn, and managed to scrounge some hardwood from a wood mill in St Sampson to use as a surround for a 3/8 inch plywood tabletop. It is still ‘in progress’ at the time of writing but should be a great addition to our cockpit, being able to eat out there without balancing plates etc. on knees. We erected our canopy and the two side panels and Mike thought he was at home in his shed! It kept the rain off though and he was able to get a few coats of stain and varnish on in the dry.

We only had one more good weather day in Guernsey that week, so took the opportunity to take the bus along the south coast to La Corbière and walk back to St Peter Port along the cliffs.  What a beautiful walk.  We covered 10½ miles in 6 hours which was pretty good going as the path undulated up and down the steep cliff sides.  We stopped two or three times for refreshments at more Beach Cafes and took some good photos of the sea state to show how bad the seas were in the direction we wanted to go!

The day finally came when a weak ridge of high pressure covered the channel and we left for France at 0600 on Saturday 7th July.

The journey took us 12½ hours and we finally anchored in the River Jaudy at La Roche Jaunne in Brittany. What a relief to be out of British waters at last! Mind, if the river Jaudy is pronounced as it reads I don’t think Pat would have been so keen to go there being a keen Sunderland supporter! La Roche Jaunne is just a small riverside village and after a couple of nights (after another adventure!! - see Mikes page) we moved along to Tréguier, a mile upriver, and anchored in a sheltered cove beneath a chateau.

Tréguier, one of France’s ‘Petites Cités de Caractère’, dates back to the 13th Century and has a marina and small port which is now little used. Sand and gravel is still delivered occasionally and scrap metal taken away, and a pleasure boat goes on sea trips a couple of times a month during the summer. There is talk of closing the port altogether and enlarging the marina, which would be a shame.

There are three rivers at this point, the Jaudy, the Bizien and the Guindy.  We took Poco along the Guindy to an aqueduct built in 1610 one day, then followed the Jaudy up to another village, La Roche-Derrien.

Tréguier is a lovely city with many half-timbered houses and the beautiful St Tugdual cathedral built between 1450 and 1479.  It was market day on the Wednesday and the streets were filled with stalls and shoppers.  It must have looked almost the same in the 15th century.

We decided to leave after a few days and set out for L’Aber-Wrac’h on the Friday. This is a journey of about 60 miles, still travelling westwards, but if we’d made good time we could have carried on to Camaret, another 50 miles or so, sailing overnight, then we would be out of the English Channel at last and into Biscay.  The weather forecast was westerlies as usual but lessening so we set out with confidence.  Ninety miles and nineteen hours later we were anchoring back in the River Jaudy! (more from Mike about the trip.)

We were starting to get really frustrated with the weather but drowned our sorrows at the celebrations on the quayside on Saturday 14th for Fete Nationale (France’s National Day). It was there we met Richard, a Welshman living in Tréguier with his wife Jacqueline, who kindly invited us to their home on the Sunday for a barbecue with some other Brits who lived locally. We duly turned up and met, among other people, our new friends Pat and Tony and their daughter Kate and boyfriend Rich. We invited everyone back to the boat later in the week and Kate and Rich came down to see us on the Monday. It was only then that Pat 1 discovered that Pat 2 was as fanatical a football supporter as her! They were Manchester United fans at home but now they were season ticket holders at the local Ligue 2 team Guingamp (pronounced Gangom) who just happened to be playing Vannes in a preseason friendly the following evening. Well, no further invitation was required and we were kindly collected, fed and transported to the match held locally at Perros Guirec the following evening. Pat 1 wore her Sunderland shirt of course (right colours, wrong pattern) and Guingamp won 1-0. The family came back to see us before we left and we felt we had made really good friends. We will keep in touch. Now Pat has another team to support. She already looks for the results of Hartlepool, Crewe and Ajax (Annelies’ club in Amsterdam) as well as her beloved Mackems!

Eventually the wind eased and we set out again on Thursday 19th July at 1030. The sea had calmed considerably and we passed L’Aber-Wrac’h about midnight. We kept on and reached Camaret Sur Mer at dawn on Friday.  Hooray - Biscay - at last!!!

Camaret is a busy little seaside resort which used to be an equally busy fishing village. There are skeletons of the old fishing fleet aground on the beach in the harbour - not a pleasant sight - but the many seafood restaurants seem to be flourishing so there must be some local fishing going on.

We spent a pleasant couple of days exploring the immediate area and walked around the peninsular for a half dozen or so miles.

There is a little 16th Century chapel on the quayside, La Chappelle Notre-Dame de Rocamadour together with a tower, Tour Vauban, built in 1693. Because of it’s strategic position at the entrance to the Rade de Brest Camaret has figured in many wars. The tower repelled a joint Dutch and English attack in 1694 and in 1791 won a victory against English frigates.

Both the chapel and the tower are picturesque and look as if they could have been used in filming the ‘Hornblower’ TV series.

After three nights at Camaret we moved along to Brest, a distance of about 12 miles, which we sailed in 2½ hours.  I say sailed, as we actually sailed all the way. For the first time in weeks we didn’t have the engine on at all and it was lovely, just how sailing ought to be. We spent some time just ‘messing about’ then suddenly saw on the horizon another junk schooner! We were having trouble with our radio, unfortunately, and weren’t close enough to see the name of the boat, but we waved enthusiastically as we passed. She looked a real picture as she beat to windward (we can you know).  I hope we looked as good with our two sails goose winged downwind.

Brest is a busy naval and commercial port but there is a marina at Moulin Blanc to the east of the city. Brest was almost completely destroyed at the end of the war, and has been rebuilt on a grid system.  To be honest, we didn’t find it very attractive, but the fact that it rained incessantly for 3 full days while we were there may have coloured our opinion. We spent one day visiting the National Maritime Museum in the Chateau, which was interesting, and another day in Océanopolis, another aquarium similar to the Cite de Mer in Cherbourg. Overall, it was a better display here, with three separate exhibitions, Polar, Tropical and Temperate. There were the usual marine species and fishes but in addition had penguins and seals, which were very cute, but Cherbourg had the Rédoubtable.

We had a few ‘senior moments’ in Brest. On Friday we caught the bus into town to find a scuba shop as Mike wanted to buy two new elastics for his spear gun. We had watched a man catching a mullet every day in Camaret marina, and Mike decided ‘that’s the way to catch them’. So we landed up near the port and found a scuba shop after many enquiries.  We had forgotten our dictionary, our phones, our map and Mike had left the sample elastic back on the boat. When we found the shop, Scubaland, the assistant was very helpful and showed us various elastics but we couldn’t tell which was the right length so decided to go back to the boat and bring the sample back.  We started to walk along the road looking for a bus stop then realised we were walking along the wrong road. Back on the right road we found the stop and Pat read the timetable and announced “We have 40 minutes to wait, let’s go for a beer at a bar back along the road”. Two glasses of beer later we checked the next bus stop and Mike said, “We’ve just missed another bus.” “How has that happened?” Pat wailed. “Because you have been looking at the timetable for Samedi, not Semaine, weekdays”! Never mind, a bus eventually came, we got back to the boat, picked up the elastic, back to the scuba shop, bought the new elastics, looked round the store, which was very extensive, walked back to the bus stop and found we’d just missed a bus - next one 40 minutes later - all this in pouring rain!! We often muse about how nice it is not to have a car now, better for the environment, cheaper, more exercise, etc., but we really missed one just then.

The following day Mike went back to Scubaland to buy another set of connecters so Pat decided to walk the other way to try and find a supermarket as we intended to leave the next day. She didn’t take a map but could see houses on the horizon on the top of a hill. The sun had decided to come out so the walk along the beach to the next village was enjoyable. Twenty minutes later she received a text “I’ve missed the bus so I’m walking back”. She texted back “I’m walking up a steep hill trying to find a supermarket”. A half hour later another text, “Where are you? I’m back at the boat and I’ve forgotten my keys and I’m locked out”. Pat’s reply “I don’t know. I’m lost”. She had walked past 5 hairdressers, 6 pharmacies, a bar, a boulangerie, a boucherie which was closed, but no supermarkets. This was the third small town she had passed through so decided to give up but thought she could work her way back to the marina by going a different way. Wrong. Half an hour later she accosted a young man walking a dog and asked the way back to Moulin Blanc.  He told her it was about 5 kilometres away but hooray, there was a large supermarket on the way. He kindly walked to the supermarket with her and wrote down a taxi telephone number to call after she made her purchases.

On coming out of the supermarket she rang Mike and said “All is well. I have found a supermarket, bought some groceries and now I am going to phone for a taxi. I won’t be long.” Then the phone call (in schoolgirl French). “Parlez vous Anglais?” “Un petit,” came the reply. “Could I have a taxi to go back to the marina at Moulin Blanc. I am at the LeClerc Supermarket.” “Which LeClerc?” “I don’t know.”  “Which town?”  “I don’t know.” “ You don’t know?” “It’s near a no 27 bus stop.” “Is it in a shopping centre?”   Relief! “Yes, there is a McDonalds next to me.” “OK, 5 minutes.”  Ten minutes later, Pat goes back into the supermarket and asks the girl on the customer information desk, “Parlez vous Anglais?” The girl kindly rings for another taxi and says to wait outside for 10 minutes.  5 minutes later a taxi arrived and Pat thankfully jumped in. Whether it was the first or second taxi she didn’t know and didn’t care. Mike was still locked out of the boat when she got back but at least it wasn’t raining!

We decided that it must be poison in our blood that made us so ‘old fartish’ as we had both been bitten by swining flies in the last few days.  That’s our excuse anyway!

The following day, Sunday 29th, the weather forecast was a bit better, with westerlies veering to nor-easterlies later so we decided to leave Brest and the rain behind us and sail overnight to Belle Ile, another 80 miles south. Wrong again! There was a Force 4 westerly in our faces through the Goulet de Brest increasing to a Force 6 as we turned the corner so we cut and ran back to Camaret again.  The journey of 12½ miles in 2½ hours one way turned into 14½ miles back in 3¾ hours!

We stayed overnight in Camaret then set off at 1130 the next day for Belle Isle, west of St Nazaire. The journey started pretty well, with benign following winds until 0130 the next morning when the wind came round to the east and we made painfully slow progress for the next 8 hours.  Neither of us had any sleep overnight, and at dawn Belle Ile was still 30 miles away so we decided to turn inland and make for Ile de Groix, which had a couple of anchorages on the south coast which would give us shelter. When we got there, at about 0900, the anchorages didn’t look so welcoming, so we decided to round the island and make for the river Blavet, opposite. We checked the almanac and saw that there were a choice of marinas all the way up to Lorient, and chose a smaller marina at Port Louis, an old walled town with a lot of history. So that’s where we are now, having had a good sleep yesterday afternoon, we have begun to explore our new surroundings - and hooray - it is hot!!!

Check in next month for the next instalment. Oh, for you folkies back in Peterlee and Weymouth, there is a big annual folk and Celtic music festival due to start at the weekend so we may stop here a while.

Photos below.