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Bonjour from Saint-Quay-Portrieux, a small French town where I currently find myself.

From deepest Brittany, using an extra-authentic AZERTY keyboard (though Ivo, with whom I am staying and whose computer it is, is English enough to provide a one-click QWERTY conversion meaning that, as long as I don’t look down, I can type almost normally), I shall provide thee, readers, with a tale of mild beachy peril (perhaps the most exciting exploit thus far), with a more complete French update to follow at a later date.

So to the “adventure”: it’s Friday, it’s sunny, and la Plage Bonaparte, a local beach rebranded during World War II due to its hefty involvement in Operation Bonaparte (during which Allied airmen were shuttled back to Britain by the Resistance), is looking like a very tempting option. So, we catch a bus for a mere €2 to a nearby town and walk down to the adjoining Port Moguer, have some lunch, and decide to proceed à la plage…

Now, there are two options as regards getting there; either i) we take the cliff path, which winds all over the place, doesn’t stick to the seafront and is a long way up or ii) we simply nip across a few rocks and find ourselves strolling across the moist sand. So Ivo, who knows the beach quite well, decides on option ii).

Oops.

The first couple of coves went okay, with us scrambling with relative ease over a succession of coastal rocks and attendant fallen boulders from the cliffs behind. We’d already done some exploration of the Plage Bonaparte from the more conventional end a couple of days before, and the rocks then had been a relatively easy scramble. However, it wasn’t long before we reached a rather inconvenient impasse; a large, near-vertical rock with nothing behind it and sea in front of it.

Luckily, prepared for swimming, we all changed into appropriate gear and decided to wade, bags-on-heads, around the thing. It was near nipple-deep in places, with moderate waves, but we edged around, with 6′6″ Ivo occasionally ferrying bags where Chloë couldn’t manage it.

However, having rounded the massive rock, we found ourselves with a short stretch of water in front of us populated by rocks and seaweed and, as mine and Clym’s feet rapidly found out, those rocks were covered in razor-sharp oyster shells.

Clym got a pleasant cross-foot gash and was relegated to swimming, taking Wifey for some company. Having been taught the French word for “plaster” such that he might enquire on the beach, he set off. With a mere lacerated big toe, I was left to carry the stuff over the remaining rocks with Ivo…

My sandals squelched pleasantly with blood combined with water from occasional rock pools, meaning that while the soles of the sandals gripped the rock quite effectively, even hefty tightening of staps would not repeat said feat for my feet on their surface.

Consequently, I was mildly stressed by this now slightly-more-dangerous rock-scrambling; the most bizarre thing was the adrenaline, which seemed to prevent my mind thinking any further ahead than the next rock. My occasional thoughts of the eventual finding of the intended beach were cloudy and difficult, and I would, with retrospect, have been interested to see just how hard it would be to make a career plan or think about pension investments when fuelled with the wonderful mind-narrowing hormone.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too long before Ivo and I met up with Wifey, allowing her to take over the rock-scrambling duties and leaving me to a casual (!) swim. Having exhausted my not-swum-for-years, unexercised muscles in the breast stroke, I went for some backstroke. Then, having exhausted those muscles, it was time for a little more breast stroke and, with no dry land in sight, I was beginning to get a little worried. Thus, I decided to find out how far away the bottom was. I stopped swimming…I could stand! And the damn water was by now only knee-deep.

Having made it out of the beachy part of the peril, it only remained to make it home. However, a rather spectacular dam-building exploit (culminating in a decent-sized pool of water which Clym christened «le Bain des Blessures») led to our leaving at some five thirty, about half an hour before the bus left from the an-hour’s-walk-for-non-invalids bus stop.

It was at this point that we managed to blow all the £2.50 on my ‘phone paying F Bouygtel, which appears to provide (most) of my ‘phone’s signal over here, to connect twice to Ivo’s parents’ answering machine. We then popped the SIM from Ivo’s ‘phone (which had conveniently run out of batteries at this crucial point) into mine, and continued our contact attempts at regular intervals.

We made it up the side of a hill, and were advised to deviate from the signed cliff path due to its being marked a dead end; presumably only for cars, as we re-joined it later after a hefty detour inland. At first, our detour was merely French country roads, and French-driver-driven tractors aside, it was largely free from peril. My sandals continued to squelch a little, but mainly my feet just stung, the wonderful antiseptic saline bath of the ocean having been replaced by French dust.

Then, rather than continue to Pointe de la Tour which Ivo assured us was not on the cliff path, we took a trip along a French dusty road, which terminated in a French muddy field inhabited by beaucoup de vaches. We got over the electric fence, went inside, scrambled towards the now-visible cliff path down what was barely a rabbit track between brambles, nettles and gorse and got into a nice field adjoining the path at the bottom.

First, there was the bog. Then, having negotiated the super-squelchy ground with only a modicum of mud in the wound, we reached another fence. It had two wires; one was barbed wire, the other unadorned; presumably some kind of supporting wire.

I pressed the barbed one down with my hand, and at some point it presumably made contact with the other wire, for a second later I was screaming what is best rendered en Français as «merdre!» as my entire body was wracked with the wonderfully strange all-over pain that only a good bout of electrocution can provide. So presumably it wasn’t just for support after all.

It was then an unspectacular trip to the beach at Bréhec, and we also managed to get through on the ‘phone at long last, resulting in the best part of the day, a car trip back home…the injury inventory:

• Clym: one majorly lacerated foot, one minorly lacerated foot
• Statto: one lacerated big toe, several other foot injuries, annoying little cuts all over hands, one count of electrocution
• Ivo: some holes in feet
• Chloë: holes in feet and hands, lovely rash caused by stinging nettles

Oh, and did I mention that the only time it properly rained…and I do mean proper power-washy down…on the entire trip was as we walked to Bréhec?

A wonderful time was had by all.

Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 00:03 | permalink | trackback