16th July
Today was the day, we were going to travel into the Golfe du Morbihan, this is an inland sea with sixty islands and a narrow entrance, causing very very strong currents (these can be up to 9kts on a spring tide). Even though the date we had chosen was a spring tide it had a low coefficient, therefore we only encountered 5.5 kt of tide. Calculations done we were about to cast off when the boat Shades of blue was rafted against said that they would be leaving as well, and they had done the journey before. After checking drafts of boats we decided to follow them. No need to worry really, we later found out the skipper on the French boat we were following was a local harbourmaster on a day off, he knew the area like the back of his hand.
The experience was a little hard to explain really, with the boat travelling at 3.5 kts through the water, 9 kts over the ground, the water flow is in narrow channels and another boat can come towards you 10m to your starboard side with no current against them. Apparently whenever there is a sailing race in the Gulfe the locals win hands down. I can see why.
The plan was to find a spot near the Ile Aux Moines, when we got there the pontoon was very busy, Shades of Blue moored up, but Escapade and Lily decided to find somewhere more quite, an anchorage near ile Berger was found and a very pleasant night was spent watching the yachts sail by and a large moon appear in the night sky.
The next day all boats made the move to the lovely city of Vannes.
Vannes
Angela
Having survived our first experiences of the skittish and sometimes extremely fast tides of the Morbihan it was a relief to enter the quiet channel leading to the bridge gate into Vannes. Here visitors raft up right in the centre of town which is great for shopping but if you are on the opposite side to the Marina office it is one huge trek round to the showers when the pedestrian bridge is lifted to let local boats into the inner harbour for a couple of hours either side of high water .
This marina gets very busy in summer but while we were there it was very pleasant and quiet
Vannes is the capital of Brittany and was home to the dukes of Brittany ,their castle and it’s surrounding formal gardens being a jewel in the crown of the city.
Unlike many places Vannes was not damaged in the war and so is a superbly preserved medieval town.
I have never seen so many beautifully preserved half timbered houses together with masses of cobbled streets squares and narrow alleyways it was a joy to wander round .
The heart of the city is the Gothic cathedral of St Pierre. It is a beautiful building with some lovely stained glass windows and a rose window. We were lucky enough to see the Hernan J Pereda exhibition depicting 2000 years of Christianity as a continuous wall document.
This remarkable document records the entire first 2000 years of Christian history as a timeline which runs concurrently with all the other major events that occurred through out world history whether it be a natural disaster such as the eruption of Vesuvius, social history such as birth of Islam or a major political event such as the great wars or more recently space exploration . It really is an extraordinary spectacle to see all these things gathered together synchronised in time and space in one place .
As with every French town Vannes has a huge and excellent mixed market every Saturday running through out the central streets . There is a covered food market open every day which has an amazing array of fruit vegetable cheese and charcuterie stalls but the star has to go the the incredible duck stall which will get an entry of its own .
19 July
Lily decided to move back to Le Crouesty whilst the other boats enjoyed another day in Vannes.
Suzanne
Well the rest of our cruising company were not impressed by the Port de Crouesty… possibly because they had us all rafted up on the main ‘fairway’ and the marina computers were not playing ball that evening and we had to go through the paperwork twice…
However I thought that Crouesty had delicious ice cream shops – some with 100 flavours ( parfums in French –not sure I would like courgette flavour!).. but also for those of us who like a bit of history and archaeology – there was adjacent to the marina “Cairn de Petit Mont” a 6,000 year old Neolithic structure built to line up with the sun.
Strictly speaking this place is a Dolmen – a burial chamber(s) with a stone passage bounded by horizontal stones, which formerly held human remains. The Dolmen is then covered by rocks – a Cairn [stone monument covering a burial place(s)] and then it becomes what we these days refer to as a Tumulus -a mound covered by earth – possibly because of the thousands of years detritus that have deposited since it was constructed.
Anyway this venerable collection of tombs was successively desecrated by the Romans and the Nazi’s – the Romans being the least disrespectful as they used the ‘mount’ as a temple to worship their gods – evidence of pottery and icon gods etc. But the Nazis destroyed two of the burial chambers completely by constructing a concrete bunker inside the Cairn…..!!! They obviously didn’t equate its ‘worth’ with that of a Monet or Manet!
Anyway I find these places pretty mind blowing really – there were beautiful carvings in the granite inside the tombs of hominid feet, sun wheel spirals, wavy lines, swirls etc. In fact the whole of the whole of the Morhiban Gulf is dotted with Menhirs, Dolmens and Tumulus.
More about Menhirs when we get to Carnac next week.
Cruising to Brittany 