Got it wrong with this hotel. The only plus it is 50m from the beach which last night was cold and windswept. The toilet isn't even on this floor and there are strange little notices all around the place. Definitely not staying again tonight.
I went for an early morning drive out to Le Croisic - a lovely little town built around a harbour of fishing boats. This is the northern point at the end of the big bay in the french coast around the mouth of the Loire - this is ocean not estuary, the estuary ends at St Nazaire. the theory was to drive there directly then come back to St Nazaire along the coast. In practice I finished up constantly getting on the wrong road.
Most of the day was spent in St Nazaire being a tourist visiting the submarine (I'm too fat to work on a submarine I couldn't get into the periscope bay) the St Nazaire history museum and Eclat Atlantique ( a reconstruction of the CGT transatlantic liners inside the submarine pens the Nazis built). Eclat Atlantique could use some Weta magic. Their scenes on the bridge and on the top deck are really lacking in realism. The top deck always felt like images scrolling right to left and not at all like a boat moving forward.
What the British and Americans did to St Nazaire feels to me like a war crime. They tried with bombing to destroy the re-inforced submarine pens and failed. So instead the turned to incendiary bombs and destroyed the rest of the city. The submarine pens and the railway station are the only things left in St Nazaire the pre-date WWII. I know the Germans did awful things on the war and the Nuremburg trails were fully justified but I don't think the British and Americans gave enough scrutiny to there own actions in the incendiary bombings carried out in Germany and Japan. I wasn't aware that the occupied French were subjected to it as well until today. And I won't start on the criminality of dropping atom bombs or I will be at it all day.
Anyway back on subject - the result is St Nazaire is a city with broad streets that is easy to drive in compared to the rest of France. They also have heaps of dedicated bus lanes. One of the main streets I drove along had a cycleway and footpath each side a 2 lane bus way down the middle and one traffic lane each direction. The traffic lanes and garden strips separating them from bus lanes and cycleway.
Since Ngaire asked so nicely for lunch I had a warm salad with some sort of sausage - menu was a bit vague about that,steak with salad and chips and lemon meringue pie. I intended to skip dinner but I went to a Tapas bar just down the road near where I parked the car (500m from hotel) and intended to just have a light snack. The menu said 6 squid rings but I got at least a dozen and was rather full just before bed time. The bar was run by a french man and his Spanish wife. We had a nice chat in spite of my limited French, even less Spanish and there limited English.
I'm interested that Lonely Planet skips every thing on this coast north of La Rochelle as I'm finding it quite interesting.
The major detour on the road south was to visit Noirmoutier. This is an island just off the coast. There are 2 roads, 1 across a bridge and the other is tidal and goes 4km across mudflats - well actually I think it was quite sandy as lots of cars were parked off the road and people where out looking for shellfish. No photos as I wasn't going to risk getting stuck. Noirmoutier is a very popular holiday spot with the locals. I was going in about 5pm when the crowds were leaving - and there were heaps of them. I drove right around the island. Got stuck for several kilometers behind a "train" - a tractor made to look like a railway engine and 3 carriages that went at 20 to 30km an hour. The roads a really narrow. A couple had warning signs 2.5m wide no camper vans - it felt really tight in the car which is probably about 1.8 wide.
Driving times on French roads away from the motorways are slow. It was 85km from Noirmoutier to Les Sables d'Orlonne which I though would take about an hour - It was nearly 2.
Other things - I failed to mention the furry roadkill I saw near Samur. Either very little does on french roads or they clean it up very quickly. Also I saw some passurine birds (is that the right word for sparrows etc?) at Rochmenier and also in the suburbs of St Nazaire. But I find it strange that when driving in New Zealand I see them everywhere but here they are almost absent - and yet they are the most numerous of birds.
I went for an early morning drive out to Le Croisic - a lovely little town built around a harbour of fishing boats. This is the northern point at the end of the big bay in the french coast around the mouth of the Loire - this is ocean not estuary, the estuary ends at St Nazaire. the theory was to drive there directly then come back to St Nazaire along the coast. In practice I finished up constantly getting on the wrong road.
Most of the day was spent in St Nazaire being a tourist visiting the submarine (I'm too fat to work on a submarine I couldn't get into the periscope bay) the St Nazaire history museum and Eclat Atlantique ( a reconstruction of the CGT transatlantic liners inside the submarine pens the Nazis built). Eclat Atlantique could use some Weta magic. Their scenes on the bridge and on the top deck are really lacking in realism. The top deck always felt like images scrolling right to left and not at all like a boat moving forward.
What the British and Americans did to St Nazaire feels to me like a war crime. They tried with bombing to destroy the re-inforced submarine pens and failed. So instead the turned to incendiary bombs and destroyed the rest of the city. The submarine pens and the railway station are the only things left in St Nazaire the pre-date WWII. I know the Germans did awful things on the war and the Nuremburg trails were fully justified but I don't think the British and Americans gave enough scrutiny to there own actions in the incendiary bombings carried out in Germany and Japan. I wasn't aware that the occupied French were subjected to it as well until today. And I won't start on the criminality of dropping atom bombs or I will be at it all day.
Anyway back on subject - the result is St Nazaire is a city with broad streets that is easy to drive in compared to the rest of France. They also have heaps of dedicated bus lanes. One of the main streets I drove along had a cycleway and footpath each side a 2 lane bus way down the middle and one traffic lane each direction. The traffic lanes and garden strips separating them from bus lanes and cycleway.
Since Ngaire asked so nicely for lunch I had a warm salad with some sort of sausage - menu was a bit vague about that,steak with salad and chips and lemon meringue pie. I intended to skip dinner but I went to a Tapas bar just down the road near where I parked the car (500m from hotel) and intended to just have a light snack. The menu said 6 squid rings but I got at least a dozen and was rather full just before bed time. The bar was run by a french man and his Spanish wife. We had a nice chat in spite of my limited French, even less Spanish and there limited English.
I'm interested that Lonely Planet skips every thing on this coast north of La Rochelle as I'm finding it quite interesting.
The major detour on the road south was to visit Noirmoutier. This is an island just off the coast. There are 2 roads, 1 across a bridge and the other is tidal and goes 4km across mudflats - well actually I think it was quite sandy as lots of cars were parked off the road and people where out looking for shellfish. No photos as I wasn't going to risk getting stuck. Noirmoutier is a very popular holiday spot with the locals. I was going in about 5pm when the crowds were leaving - and there were heaps of them. I drove right around the island. Got stuck for several kilometers behind a "train" - a tractor made to look like a railway engine and 3 carriages that went at 20 to 30km an hour. The roads a really narrow. A couple had warning signs 2.5m wide no camper vans - it felt really tight in the car which is probably about 1.8 wide.
Driving times on French roads away from the motorways are slow. It was 85km from Noirmoutier to Les Sables d'Orlonne which I though would take about an hour - It was nearly 2.
Other things - I failed to mention the furry roadkill I saw near Samur. Either very little does on french roads or they clean it up very quickly. Also I saw some passurine birds (is that the right word for sparrows etc?) at Rochmenier and also in the suburbs of St Nazaire. But I find it strange that when driving in New Zealand I see them everywhere but here they are almost absent - and yet they are the most numerous of birds.
No comments:
Post a Comment