SALT AND SLOW SERVICE OR TUESDAY

Another scorching day in Sud Breton. So what better way to spend it than drying out in the same place that is hot enough to grow fields of salt. That is correct. Field upon field of salt. It makes Maldon look like a comical Sunday afternoon attempt at grow your own crystals, as this place, Guérande, is so good at it they needed to build a wall around their town. Which has a slight flaw as the fields are outside the town walls, so surely if you were a salt thirsty siege-minded nation you could just help yourself from the fields and sod the buggers inside the town wall? The poor salties not only defended their salt badly, they were also taxed on it in the ‘olden days’ thus giving rise to the saying, ‘there are only two things certain in life, death and salt taxes.’ OK I 'may' have added the salt bit, but I bet all of the medieval salties uttered this.



To you this is just salt, but to the good people of Guérande
it is... erm well probably salt as well.


The town is a delight. Three churches, three high streets and three hours to wait for a bloody coffee. Mrs M winged about this at the time, we had sat down in the traditional café frontage on the main market square for approximately 20 mins, a couple of trips inside had been made to order only to be swatted back outside to utilise the waitress service. Nothing. I responded to Mrs M’s blatant impatience that we needed to slow down a go with the pace of the land only to be met with the same snarling response that Woodstock used to give when angry with Snoopy. I admit now that the wait was too long, and my meek acceptance to get up and view the church with our fervently religious eldest daughter was my compliance in Mrs M’s mini impatient rage.

Spookily Mrs M even has the same colour hair. Imagine this with
squinty eyes and little anger lines flying around. That is Mrs M with no
coffee (or wine)*.

* this makes her sound like an alcoholic. She is not. I feel I should make that clear.

Addendum: This happened again that evening in a Tabac. The same ***$*££@@*** Woodstock style snarl was raised after our drinks were order and never materialised. Once again I called for calm and patience. Turned out the bar owner had forgotten our order. Oh well, without Mrs M’s presence I would die of thirst. This is fact.

We went to a beach this day as well. It was a fine beach. (why am I writing like EM Forster all of a sudden? I know you are now thing, 'Forster? he wishes!') Ginger and Blondie made friends with a girl from Leeds. We all buried ourselves in the sand and made huge boobies on our sandy chests. Ginger did a spot of open water swimming. Mrs M didn’t see this at the time, it was actually me accidentally taking her out of her depth on my back and forcing her to swim back on a wave. Fortunately she enjoyed it.

Aah happy times.

I got sun burn, Blondie got the hump because we took her away from her new beach friend, all was as it should be. Got back, went for another bike ride into Deliverance country, and survived.


Curious French things spotted today:
• French wasps appear out of thin air when you open a sugar filled drink.
• No French women went topless on this beach, this was something I always noticed as a child when holidaying in France. Although I did see a 60+ woman’s leathery old boob when she accidentally pulled her swimming costume down to her waist for no real reason.
• Parking so far has been free everywhere. On this occasion we parked about 20 footsteps from the beach.

We had a little meal consisting of moules, fish, duck and plum tart (separately and collectively). The meal was excellent, and they virtually paid us to eat the moules. Our girls love moules. We ended the evening watching the sunset over the port at the insistence of Ginger. She is the most romantic seven year old in our family.

I won't make a flippant comment, as this is a fabulous sunset.

Another glorious day.