Beauvoir sur Mer to Ile Noirmoutier.
Sunday 11th October.
Sadly we left Reggie Perrin as we’d become to refer to him and headed off toward Noirmoutier. There are two ways to get onto the island; one is over an enormous span of a bridge which on a bicycle is quite intimidating, and the other is by road but only passable for two hours either side of low tide. Option one is just down the road from Beauvoir and the other is about ten miles down the coast.
Correct, the tide was in and we did the latter. However the ride to the bridge was through pine forest on a sandy but firm track and was in fact less arduous then it might have been. The bridge although enormous and very high in the middle had a two lane cycle route on one side so turned out to be far easier than anticipated. Standing in the middle and looking down we saw some of the biggest jelly fish we’ve ever seen any thought we’d entertained of swimming went completely out of our heads.
Once on the island, the cycle route leaves the road and takes you through a birder's paradise of wetland and scrub, we saw wheatears, harriers, a covey of quail, and all the usual white sea birds plus countless little brown jobs who never sat still for long enough to be identified. Judging by the number of men out with shotguns, (there seemed to be groups of three or four about every 300 yards) I’m surprised there were an birds at all – or maybe it was the lunch club on a training exercise. The Ile is about 2o miles long, very narrow and mostly made up of salt marshes and dunes. At the furthest end there is the main town where we booked in for the night with a very nice couple who had the neatest home you had ever seen, and a very small dog called Tosca who barked a lot. They all have tiny dogs, mostly Yorkshire terriers or similar and we really worry about treading on them.
We then had a very British picnic on the ‘Plage des Dames’ one of the beauty spots with colorful bathing huts all along it, so we sheltered behind one, but it was blooming cold so sat wrapped up in all our clothes trying to admire the view and not let the sand blow over our food. The old part of the town had the usual selection of restaurants clustered around the square overlooking the oyster beds and boats.
Sunday 11th October.
Sadly we left Reggie Perrin as we’d become to refer to him and headed off toward Noirmoutier. There are two ways to get onto the island; one is over an enormous span of a bridge which on a bicycle is quite intimidating, and the other is by road but only passable for two hours either side of low tide. Option one is just down the road from Beauvoir and the other is about ten miles down the coast.
Correct, the tide was in and we did the latter. However the ride to the bridge was through pine forest on a sandy but firm track and was in fact less arduous then it might have been. The bridge although enormous and very high in the middle had a two lane cycle route on one side so turned out to be far easier than anticipated. Standing in the middle and looking down we saw some of the biggest jelly fish we’ve ever seen any thought we’d entertained of swimming went completely out of our heads.
Once on the island, the cycle route leaves the road and takes you through a birder's paradise of wetland and scrub, we saw wheatears, harriers, a covey of quail, and all the usual white sea birds plus countless little brown jobs who never sat still for long enough to be identified. Judging by the number of men out with shotguns, (there seemed to be groups of three or four about every 300 yards) I’m surprised there were an birds at all – or maybe it was the lunch club on a training exercise. The Ile is about 2o miles long, very narrow and mostly made up of salt marshes and dunes. At the furthest end there is the main town where we booked in for the night with a very nice couple who had the neatest home you had ever seen, and a very small dog called Tosca who barked a lot. They all have tiny dogs, mostly Yorkshire terriers or similar and we really worry about treading on them.
We then had a very British picnic on the ‘Plage des Dames’ one of the beauty spots with colorful bathing huts all along it, so we sheltered behind one, but it was blooming cold so sat wrapped up in all our clothes trying to admire the view and not let the sand blow over our food. The old part of the town had the usual selection of restaurants clustered around the square overlooking the oyster beds and boats.
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