Port Joinville, Ile d’ Yeu

The day before we left Pornic, as Gordon said it was Market Day. What a good market, but let me tell you, you wouldn’t need to be watching what you were eating going there. As you might guess we didn’t come away empty handed, especially after a visit to the fish market, serenaded by your archetypical Frenchman in a Beret.

As Anne-Marie and Mick are heading north, it looks like we won’t be meeting up with them in Portugal, this year anyway. We had a farewell drink on Fleur of Pendle . We are sad to see them go, but are sure we will meet up again, even if it is in Largs.

We headed out the next morning for Ile d’Yeu, which is about thirty five miles, it could have been shorter but the shorter passage was rock strewn so we gave it a miss, adding an hour to the overall trip. We had to motor sail the first half but then had a lovely sail for the last three or four hours. I must say, Camira is doing us proud so far, so much so that we absolutely creamed a 37ft yacht that we passed. Not sure what kind it was but the big Belgian guy sailing it didn’t look too happy, but we found out later it was made of steel so can’t crow too much. Incidentally, he is moored up next to us and has invited me for rum, presumably to quiz me on my sailing tactics. The marina is choc-a-bloc and continuing to fill up. Honestly, you should see this; unfortunately the picture doesn’t do it justice. They just keep pilling them in and if you are on the inside, tough luck, you just need to wait till it empties a bit before you can get out. We are in the middle there somewhere.

We hired bikes yesterday to see the island. I promise, I will never complain about a spin bike again, these things were like sit up and beg butcher’s bikes, thankfully, the island is relatively flat, and so the three gears just about got you there.

The island is lovely; all the houses are more or less the same style, and are very pretty. We cycled round and across the whole island, about 22 miles.

This is an old semaphore station

I would never get away with it if I didn’t mention it, Gordon went on a bit farther, probably another five or six miles as he wanted to go and see the citadel  de Pierre –Levee,where Marechal Petain was imprisoned for collaborating with the Germans.

Today we decided to go to the beach. Looks lovely doesn’t it?

Well, we got settled after watching a very strange looking man doing some sort of rain dance and incantation down by the sea. Thankfully he didn’t have very strong powers as the weather was lovely, more than could be said for the beach. Yes, it was gorgeous to look at, but flies, OMG! There were millions of sand flies. Every time, someone walked by, although not often (as it was deserted), it disturbed them and they all seemed to fly about for a few minutes then settle back in the sand or on me! Well, that was enough , so much for my day relaxing on what looked like a beautiful beach.

We thought we would be going to Les Sables d’Olonne tomorrow to meet up with a friend of ours, big Alec, assuming we could get out of the marina that is, but, unfortunately, what was originally going to be a force 3 has developed into a 5 -6. So it looks like we might not catch him before he heads back to Ireland this weekend.