Lobsters!

The entrance to St. Denis on the Île d'Oleron could be tricky if you didn't time it right ...

Arriving there the day before my birthday, we were fortunate to find plenty of space after a busy weekend in the marina. We also spotted Wizard of Paget, a rather special racing boat (a one-off German Frers, built 50 years ago to race in the Americas Cup and renovated by its current owners 12 years ago) belonging to friends from the Cruising Association. My special birthday meal consisted of fresh lobster bought in the local market,

and cooked by the skipper, accompanied by some excellent sparkling Saumur, followed by drinks aboard Wizard. The day for me was total relaxation, doing nothing except reading (A Tale of Two Cities - appropriate for our recent visit to Rochefort), sitting in the sun and generally watching the world go by ... bliss!

The Île d'Oleron, being quite a bit larger than the other islands we have visited on this trip, required bikes for exploration. Duly hired, we set off on a rather overcast afternoon but soon realised that the saddles on hire bikes are not built for comfort. Managed to make it as far as the impressive lighthouse, the Phare de Chassiron, positioned at the northernmost tip of the island, to eat the baguette sandwich, see lots of salt pans which supply the main island industry and to visit the other possible port of call for Follyfin, Le Douhet, before returning somewhat saddle-sore. At least we established that Le Douhet is not for us: far too small and too tricky an entrance!

Staying in port a day longer than intended, to wait for a storm to pass, undaunted we set off north early on 5 June towards the Île de Ré, intending to go in to Ars. However with the wind on the nose the passage took too long for us to make it over the bar at Ars so we dropped anchor, intending to go in the following morning on the rising tide. However this plan was thwarted by the French mobile company, SFR, from whom I purchase my 3G mobile connection for the trusty iPad. After multiple attempts at recharging online and several frustrating phone calls mainly to robots that kept telling me to "tapez un si vous ..., ou tapez deux si vous ..., ou tapez trois si vous ..." and me trying all the different combinations because the bit after "tapez" was spoken so quickly I couldn't understand what was said, I eventually found out that the SFR website does not accept any bank card unless it is French. Grrrrrr! To cut a long story short, instead of going into Ars we headed back to La Rochelle where the nearest SFR shop was located. Only consolation was another port entry through the twin towers and an overnight stay in the Vieux Port.

So Saturday 7 June we had a very pleasant sail back up to Ars on the north-east coast of Île de Ré and timed it perfectly so we could enter the inner basin, Bassin de la Prée, just about at high water. This was important since there is a drying sill over which there would only be a maximum of 1.8 m of water at high tide. Even with our lifting keel, one does not want to cut it too fine. The port of Ars was alive with holiday-makers and bicycles. Our berth was one of very few available for visitors. You can see Follyfin in the centre, just to the right of the big white house with the red roof.

Ars (yes, pronounced exactly as spelled) is a lovely, relaxed, slow place. The church is very old, founded in the 11th century, and has a very distinctive tower. The carvings over its impressive doorway are unfortunately being eroded away

The town is quaint with curious old buildings dotted about the place. The ice cream is seriously good too.

At this point, dear reader, you may be wondering why this post is entitled "lobsters" in the plural. The reason is simple: we have caught our first one, yesterday, and that is not all ... this morning we had another! Follyfin has moved north again, from Île de Ré to Île d'Yeu. After quite a marathon sail against the wind on Monday 9th June, and having a forecast for settled weather, we decided to anchor overnight on the south coast of the island. The bay is between the headland with the large concrete cross and the one with the ruined castle (see previous blog post). It has a few holiday shacks and small fishing boats moored. It also has some very menacing rocks, Les Ours, which dry.

Follyfin is positioned just inland from these rocks which have proved to be fertile lobster territory. Dropping the creel near to the rocks on the first night, bated with some fish heads saved from previous meals, imagine our delight when hauling it up yesterday morning to find a lobster inside! Not quite as large as my birthday lobster, but as you can see, he was big enough for the pot and made a delicious hors d'oeuvre for last night's dinner.

What is more, we have caught another one this morning! So, this place, named the Anse du Vieux Chateau, will forever be connected with lobsters in our minds. Of course we have been here before, on the land on our previous circumambulation of this island but little did we think we would catch our first lobsters here. A beautiful spot for more reasons than one ...

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Louis XIV's legacy - at least one of them

This is the town of Rochefort, situated about 16 miles up the Charente river from the coast and Île d'Aix, our last port of call. Established between 1666 and 1670, this is where the French navy was built. To protect it several forts were built, including Fort Lupin on the south bank of the river

and Fort Boyard just outside the mouth of the Charente estuary; it took over 50 years to complete by which time it was redundant!

Although the Charente river is tidal and not very deep, large coasters regularly travel up and down it. We met one such large vessel which hailed from Cardiff. These coasters need to take great care not to run aground and to this end, at every bend in the river, there are leading lines or transits, lettered TT to AA, placed to help them navigate a safe channel. The trip up the river had to be timed carefully since entry to the harbour at Rochefort is through a lock which only opens for about an hour or less around high water. This results in queues of boats in the river outside waiting for the lock opening and then a procession into the harbour, often degenerating into chaos, but afterward resuming perfect peace.

Fortunately Follyfin entered alone on Wednesday 28 May, a day before the Ascension day holiday rush, and was happily berthed on (we afterwards learned) the Quai d'Honneur, with a grandstand view of all the shenanigans of the following day.

During our 3-day stay in Rochefort (nothing to do with the same-sounding name cheese, Roquefort), we imbibed a huge amount of French naval history. Without wishing to bore you, the reader, I will relate just a few of the most astonishing facts we learned here, copiously annotated with photographic evidence ...

1. Le Corderie Royale (Royal Ropeworks). Built 1666 and over 374 metres long, it was then the longest building in Europe. Conceived by one of Louis XIV's most talented engineers, François Blondel, its foundation was a wooden raft fashioned from many oak trees, to allow for the very marshy soil near the river. The building was burnt down by the Germans at the end of WWII and recently restored, at which time the raft was found still to be in tact. It is a splendid building, seen below from the river (this side specially adorned as it was the first view of visiting dignitaries),

but left rather plain on the opposite side, seen only by the workers ... the palm trees only added lately for the benefit of tourists. Inside there is a wonderful display of rope-making as it was done then. Huge anchor ropes, 200-300 metres long were made here.

2. L'Hermione: A replica of a traditional fully rigged frigate, it has been 12 years in the making and is due to sail across the Atlantic next season where it's original namesake took part in the American war of independence ... against the English.

It's length overall is 66 m, it's mainmast is over 47 m high, it weighs over 1000 tons (equivalent to 46 current containers) and the sail area is equivalent to 9 tennis courts. The crew of the original Hermione numbered 320 but the modern version will only have 75 young people to sail her. We have to hope they have done their homework when we see the spider's web of standing and running rigging involved!

3. Musée National de la Marine: a fascinating place where we spent a whole afternoon, aided by an excellent audio guide in English. Here we discovered that both the word 'mayonnaise' and the flower name 'begonia' (you will have to research these for yourself good reader!) originated in Rochefort! The set of surgical implements carried aboard a French naval vessel in those days was an eye opener. Thank heavens for keyhole surgery these days.

On Saturday evening, after a surfeit of sight-seeing, it was time to leave on the ebb tide. Once again we tied up on a buoy south-east of the Île d'Aix to wait for daylight before moving to our next port of call, St. Denis on the Île d'Oleron. How surprised were we to find we had caught some fish on the way down the river.

Okay okay, they are just tiddlers, none more than 2 cm in length, and they were sucked in through the engine filter ... but it's a start!

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Creel catch en route to Île d'Aix

A night spent on anchor on SE side of Île de Ré seemed the ideal opportunity to test out the newly acquired collapsible creel. And it works!

Regrettably none of the catch was big enough to eat ... next time we hope for a lobster.

The Île d'Aix is tiny and shaped like a fish, it lies at the mouth of the Charente river estuary. And of course Vauban was here. Back in the 17th century the fort was a key position for the French defence of their premier naval establishment at Rochefort further up the Charente, of which more in the next post.

It's a sleepy little place with no cars, a couple of cafés and small shops. It has a hotel, a police station and a cinema.

but perhaps most notable is the faded but still quite grand commandant's house, built by command of Napoleon in 1803, which was the last place where he of the same name spent his last few days on French soil after defeat at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. His next destination was to the island of St. Helena. The house is now a museum but not showing much sign of activity when we were there.

Whilst exploring on foot we found a lovely little beach,

evidence of former big boats having been here,

and noted that we could come back here by ferry to get away from it all ...

That night, Tuesday 27 May, we picked up a mooring buoy in the harbour, kindly provided by the island authorities. Now we were poised for our trip up the Charente river to Rochefort on the following day. Follyfin can be seen as a speck in the centre of the picture, way out to sea.

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Beautiful Île de Ré

From La Rochelle, with our new Competent Crew, aka the Pooles, aboard, we had an excellent sail from La Rochelle under the bridge connecting the Île de Ré to the mainland. To everyone's delight we were able to sail virtually the full distance; with a WSW wind varying force 3-5 (max 21.8 knots), we covered the 13 nm in 2.36 hours, maximum speed 8.7 knots and average 5.0 knots. This was pleasing despite the gloomy sky and occasional shower. Our spirits were undiminished as we entered the lovely harbour of St.Martin on the Île de Ré. You can see the ruined Citadel in the centre left of the photo below. Like so many other harbours in this area, Vauban was responsible for the fortifications on this island, and they are impressive, reminiscent of those in Berwick-on-Tweed. Of course here they were built to keep the English out. According to my sources (thanks Duncan), Vauban was responsible for 160 great fortifications along the borders of France, not a bad record for the 17th century. More information for those history buffs amongst you is available online Vauban, military architect

According to all the books, this picturesque little harbour gets very crowded at weekends, especially during the summer months so arriving on a Friday, we were prepared to be rafted up. As it happened the combination of poor weather and being quite early in season meant we were provided with a very comfortable alongside berth close to all the facilities (see Follyfin lower right corner below). The inner harbour dries but we stayed afloat in the locked harbour. Widely considered to be one of the most attractive harbours in West France, we well understand why. The island has hollyhocks scattered all over the place, which must look very pretty when in flower, and gorgeous little alleyways inviting further exploration.

There is also a daily market where all sorts of goodies can be found, including wonderful fresh fish and oysters ... talking of which we were delighted to sample some of the said shellfish on Saturday evening in a charming little restaurant whose speciality was the oyster. They had about a dozen different varieties, hot and cold, to choose from. Had Monsieur Le Patron not been so patient explaining them all to us, we may well have missed the experience of trying the 'Royale' which is grown just down the coast from here. Definitely less salty and more meaty than the equivalent no.3 size oyster ordinaire, 'twas a taste sensation! Managed to restrain ourselves from trying the Gillardeau oyster (named after the producer) which is purported to be the Rolls Royce of French oysters, with a price tag to match; apparently these ones are exported to Dubai.

Wonderful seascapes in this type of weather.

The weather at sea was not inviting, and we wished to explore the island anyway so we hired a couple of tandems, as one does ...

thereby fulfilling a lifetime's ambition for me. What I found rather disconcerting was being entirely unable to control the situation (as I was riding pillion) as well as being unable to see ahead! We survived, however, and enjoyed several hours riding along the cycle tracks beside the north coast all the way to Ars-en-Ré. And just to remove any nagging doubt, Ars is pronounced exactly as if it had an 'e' on the end! A fete in the town square was in full progress when we arrived so we spectated whilst enjoying ice cream - caramel au beurre salé being the popular flavour - before the return journey.

Sunday came all too quickly and it was time to return our crew to the mainland. Virtually no wind necessitated very slow progress back to La Rochelle. One last evening with Penny and Duncan was spent in the huge marina 'Les Minimes' built onto the outside of the coast about 5 km from the town centre. This marina is wall-to-wall masts, over 3000 boats being berthed here. Not our ideal overnight spot but very convenient for our crew to get back this morning to their camper van parked at a campsite only 6.4 km south of here. Sad to see them go indeed. Now to plan our next bit of exploration whilst lying to anchor this evening a few miles from here. Within the next few days we plan to go up the Charente river to Rochefort, which is the furthest south our current insurance allows us to go. In the meantime the weather is settled but in low pressure so cloudy and rather dull. Good time to get the chores done!

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