quiet day, ebb tide

Mid-day on The Promise. Tide is around half and ebbing so we're pointing upstream towards the woods and steep banks, our stern leaving a bubbly wake as we go nowhere. The weather has lost some of it's heat and turned dampy, light rain, though still very warm. It's shorts and tee shirt times. The crew sometimes making the most of our solitude, pad about the decks wearing little or less. They're rustling up a favorite lunch below. Courgettes, lightly done in Olive oil, on toast with grated good cheese, English. A little local Muscadet too. Perfect.

We've been making the best of the weather, touching up on a bit of varnishing, scrubbing off the waterline and checking rigging aloft. Other than that, pottering up and down in the punt and taking the air. There are creeks to explore off the main stream and I've used the time to build a picture for my book. Notes and references. Colours, architecture, sounds and scenes, all grist to the creative mill. There is little on the history though. The French don't do a National Trust, and their museums are either prehistoric or 19th century painters. You'd get the impression nothing happened here till then. Perhaps it didn't. However, I've heard of a place near Audierne, a manoir that will suit my story and so I need to organise a trip ashore, or take the ship as it's not far. More on that later.

I motored down to Ste. Marine, opposite the noisy fleshpots of Benodet last night. Passing under the high, modern bridge that spans the river there and hauling the punt up the slip to avoid fishermen and trippers. What transport east and west was like before the bridge can only be guessed. A long trip around Kemper would have been in the offing. I imagine there were ferries but there are few obvious crossing places. After a chat with the harbour man, I walked around the point as far as the great sweeping beach on the bay north of the village, passing by weekend retreats and holiday cottages, through dunes and pines and marram grasses until the sea and surf filled all my senses. It's a place of sea and sky. This is the northern edge of the bay of Biscay. The Iles de Glenan smudge the horizon and the white sands curve away into the distance where a lighthouse marks the edge of land and to where the sun would ultimately slide into the sea. I sat watching the sunset for a while then wandering back to the port, enjoyed a Pastis in a cafe and absorbed all this Frenchness as last minute dippers towelled off and dogs barked at nothing in the sky, just because that's what they do.