Sunday, May 13, 2007

Quiberon

In fact, I didn't have the camera all that much of the time down in Morbihan. As I said, it is shared property, but Tom relinquishes it to me most of the time, so it seems appropriate to for him to use it more on holiday. Anyway he likes taking pictures of boats and scenery, which I don't especially, so I tend to relax and occupy myself with Mol and the simple experience of being away, taking in an unfamiliar scene; stopping to take pictures can be a distraction, an encumbrance.

However, I did get my hands on it the day we went to Quiberon.
Funny how when you go somewhere, the temptation is always to compare it with somewhere else, to make sense of it in terms of what you know already. Driving down the long spine of causeway into the Presqu'ile, it reminded me of the Isle of Portland ( folk from Portland must have been great travellers and settlers, there seem to be places called Portland all over the English-speaking world), not least because of the great fearsome prison building that lours over the causeway. I wonder if the inmates can see the beach below, and the free and cheerful wetsuited young men who splash about there on sailboards, added salt to the wound of their captivity if they can... The prison's aspect clearly doesn't discourage holidaymakers; in the summer the population of the peninsular can increase sevenfold. Then further on through the long ribbon of settlements, one of us observed that it really is remarkably like the scruffier parts of Torquay. We were unimpressed, despite the lure of the sardine-canning factory, a much heralded tourist attraction.

But then we reached the very tip of the land, and at last here was a place with rocks and shapes and colours.
Where other creatures make their homes.
It was rather wild and windy, so we went for a bracing walk before eating our sandwiches, which, in view of the epicurean indulgences of the fruits of the sea we'd been having, were rather plain and simple, and washed down with fizzy water.
On the return journey, we made our way up the west coast of the peninsular, which is as fierce and lonely as you could wish it to be; you won't find many beach huts here!
And Molly and Tom agreed, Quiberon is a rather good place, to sit on a rock, and look out to sea, with your fur all blown the wrong way.

8 comments:

Zhoen said...

That's my favorite kind of seashore, including fur blown the wrong way.

Fire Bird said...

And what a lot of snails... Glad you had a good trip.

leslee said...

I've never seen snails attached to stalks of weeds! I guess here on the other side of the Atlantic I've seen them on *seaweed* but not flowering stalks. They have beautiful shells. Nature just stuns me sometimes, its intricacies.

herhimnbryn said...

The rocks and ragged shore line reminded me of Cornwall. As do snadwiches eaten in the car.

Hallo Tim.

Lucy said...

Thanks.
There were enormous numbers of snails! At the other beach they were all clustered curiously on the wooden fences posts,around where the metal staples went into the wood. They all seemed asleep in their shells - I probably wouldn't have found them so pretty otherwise!, and didn't appear to eat the weeds they were living on. I don't know if the rock pipit in the picture eats snails, if it does it wouldn't go hungry.
It was quite a Cornish kind of coast, and not generally over-developed.

Ramesh Gandhi said...

Thanks for visiting my blog, especially since it has led me to yours.

Anonymous said...

Hmm.

I love these shared walks... The fur may be rubbed the wrong way, but the face is interesting!

Lucy said...

Hello Nancy, lovely to see you here!
Hey, Marly's back, hooray! yes, I think so too, perhaps even more so with the fur the wrong way ( as it sometimes is, literally and figuratively!) - we are talking about the dog aren't we?