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Hello everyone, just got back from our latest trip, and we have NEW words and pictures in the travelogue right now, check it out!!
We've been a bit remiss in publishing an account of our journey through Brittany, La Gironde etc, and it will be coming soon, but as a taster, here's a short article that I wrote on our last but one trip...
Oystermen and Cream Teas
I’m sitting here in the picturesque French port of Mortagne-sur-Gironde, the view from our Motorhome is one of gently swaying reeds, tall on the riverbank, caressed by the unruffled serene brown waters of the Gironde estuary. A haven to a myriad of birds, this “gaping mouth” of France is stuffed with a Foie Gras of humanity and wildlife. The quaint wooden huts balanced precariously on spider-legged stilts, home to the Oystermen, punctuate this strange and beautiful shoreline. Their basket-nets hang silently in the windless afternoon, as the last of the ghostly sea mist is burned away by the determined sun.
This coastline is a riddle, one moment there, a moment later gone, sometimes revealed by retreating waters, sometimes hidden by a cloak of mist, that could almost conceal a ghostly galleon from a forgotten age. The Roman church at Talmont-sur-Gironde, once ruled by England’s Edward 1st, still standing defiant on its rock, the rock of its own faith perhaps, a stunning man made sea wall, that protects the church and village, as much a homage to their god as the holy house itself.
The village within this wall, almost English, perhaps a whisper from the past of Edward’s influence, for it reminded me so much of the Cotswolds, but with Crepes, not Cream Teas.
Miki has wandered off to sketch the harbour scenes here in Mortagne, a colourful array of craft, a rainbow moored alongside the dock, masts and sails dance joyfully on a gentle swell and soft breeze.
The sea can be an angry mistress, but right here, right now, deep into the Gironde, it is peace, and tranquillity on the Cote d’Atlantique……
Kev Moore 17/04/07
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