St Gilles Croix de Vie to St Jean de Monts
Thursday 10th June
We awoke to find it was pouring with no let up forecast by the Meteo. So we had a leisurely breakfast and to our wonder and amazement a huge catamaran hoved, or possibly limped, into sight escorted by a flotilla of small boats and was clearly No 7 (actual number 29) the last boat back from the St Petersburg race.
The 7th and last boat coming in!
Thursday 10th June
We awoke to find it was pouring with no let up forecast by the Meteo. So we had a leisurely breakfast and to our wonder and amazement a huge catamaran hoved, or possibly limped, into sight escorted by a flotilla of small boats and was clearly No 7 (actual number 29) the last boat back from the St Petersburg race.
The 7th and last boat coming in!
It was still absolutely belting rain, with rumbles of thunder and the hotel kindly said we could stay as long as we liked. We even considered booking in for another night when suddenly the ‘front’ passed over and the sky turned blue and the sun shone beautifully.
So we went back to the harbour for a closer look at No 29 but by then it was completely closed down and the crew were presumably enjoying a hot bath!
As there wasn’t a great deal of the day left we cycled out of St Gilles through St Hilaire de Riez which was a rather smarter town than it’s neighbour on the southern side of the river. The bike route led us slowly up the coast past numerous campsites (how do they ever fill them?) following small roads and sandy tracks. We had to avoid the latter as they had been flooded after the storms and were in a rather perilous state for the bikes carrying so much weight. On arrival at St-Jean-de-Monts the sun was pretty hot and the sea looked extremely appealing, so we chained the bikes to the railings and ate our lunch on the huge beach. This resort is totally modern and has a very wide promenade stretching for miles with separate tracks for pedestrians, bikes and cars. At this time of year it was pretty quiet but rather more lively than last October. Nearly everyone was of retirement age and we felt quite at home lying on the beach for a quiet afternoon. In fact within minutes we were both sound asleep and only woke sometime later as the dustbin lorry came to empty the beach bins. We went for a swim slightly out of a sense of duty but it turned out to be very warm and Alec stayed in for quite a long time. By this stage it was far too late to think of going anywhere very far so we found a little hotel in the back streets of the resort which was very quiet with a rather good chef in residence.
So we went back to the harbour for a closer look at No 29 but by then it was completely closed down and the crew were presumably enjoying a hot bath!
As there wasn’t a great deal of the day left we cycled out of St Gilles through St Hilaire de Riez which was a rather smarter town than it’s neighbour on the southern side of the river. The bike route led us slowly up the coast past numerous campsites (how do they ever fill them?) following small roads and sandy tracks. We had to avoid the latter as they had been flooded after the storms and were in a rather perilous state for the bikes carrying so much weight. On arrival at St-Jean-de-Monts the sun was pretty hot and the sea looked extremely appealing, so we chained the bikes to the railings and ate our lunch on the huge beach. This resort is totally modern and has a very wide promenade stretching for miles with separate tracks for pedestrians, bikes and cars. At this time of year it was pretty quiet but rather more lively than last October. Nearly everyone was of retirement age and we felt quite at home lying on the beach for a quiet afternoon. In fact within minutes we were both sound asleep and only woke sometime later as the dustbin lorry came to empty the beach bins. We went for a swim slightly out of a sense of duty but it turned out to be very warm and Alec stayed in for quite a long time. By this stage it was far too late to think of going anywhere very far so we found a little hotel in the back streets of the resort which was very quiet with a rather good chef in residence.
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