23 April

Today I awoke after a much better sleep courtesy of using a pillow with the bolster. Then it was up, prepare and down for breakfast (at 7:30 by the clock there, not by mine. Breakfast was half-laid out, with three places set, so I presume the other must have been for the other guests. From the noise last night, though, I would have said there were two children, not one (the child’s place had a uch smaller cup, drinking chocolate and an egg-cup).
I boiled the jug for my cup of tea and mine hostess arrived before it boiled. She was going out to work in the fields and wouldn’t be back until 8:30, but I thought I would be on my way, so settled my account immediately. I had a leisurely breakfast, including reading the rest of the comic book (with equality of opportunity, the cows were having a hard time laying eggs and the chooks had problems getting milk, let alone being milked), including a good cartoon of everyone having a go painting the tractor. There was also a booklet on the history of the farm; apparently it was retained in the property of a noblewoman after the revolution, but when she went to leave it to her son, the state transferred ownership to another person, presumably one sympathetic to the revolution. The farm had been in the family since the tenth century, but after transfer it was broken up and the current owners have had it now for a few generations.
I finished breakfast, finished packing and left. The others had not risen yet – it seems they are like someone else I know, who thinks that holiday time is a chance to sleep somewhere else, rather than see and do things which are new. I left, setting course for Nantes and trying to avoid main and busy roads.
As luck would have it, because I avoided Blois, I went through the same town this morning as I had last night where the Customs officers were. This morning, at the same place, the road was blocked by gendarmes, and the particular road I wanted to go along was where the car, dog and Gendarme were. I had to detour via Beaufort, so got to see more of the Loire Valley.
Further along I had to make a stop (three cups of tea, large, and two orange juices, medium, tend to go through) and a rest stop appeared. If you look at the photos, you will see how private the facilities provided are. I decided to use the alternative facilities, more private and not open to the road. At this spot I rang about and got accommodation on the coast, just south of St Nazaire.
As I got closer to Nantes, I had seen levee banks (which the road was on, and narrow it was), mixed farms and small vineyards. I had imagined the Loire Valley vineyards to be like Coonawarra or the Barossa, large in extent, so I had to stop when I finally saw some like that.
Then it was into Nantes; time for lunch and to email. I stopped at the closest McDonald’s to my route and … NO WIFI, which I didn’t discover until after I had ordered. I did have the fortune to run into the best English speaker I met in such establishments, and he suggested that I try the shopping centre next door. He had tried to convince the boss to get it on, but been unsuccessful. Another McDonald’s in Nantes has it, but I doubt I will be around to look for it. While I was waiting in line, a family watched me with the laptop and the daughter got the giggles – then when I looked over, having heard it, she blushed and looked away, and the brother looked at me with the expression, girls, what else can you expect? Seems behaviours are the same all over the world.
After finishing lunch, I went over to the shopping centre (only a minute’s walk) to find it had an Orange WiFi, which I could use the remaining credits from the Formule1 fiasco with. I found a set of seats (sumptuous vinyl armchairs) and did my uploading of photos and blog, then checking emails while the photos finished. I can’t believe how slow it was, and groups of schoolchildren “doing the mall” were looking at me with the laptop during their cruises and making comments (but I couldn’t understand them, for although they were muted, they were spoken quickly in French). Finally I finished and headed back to the car, thanking the McDonald’s duty manager and explaining what facilities they actually had in the centre.
The car was warm (it was 18°C outside) so the airconditioner went on. Then it was down to Les Moutiers en-Retz, where I had said I would arrive at 5 p.m. (17 heures). I found the place with n problem (the SatNav is right more often than it is wrong, it remains calm in the face of me driving the wring way and recalculates routes quickly enough that I don’t have to circle roundabouts multiple times – the record is eight, in England in 1980). I went down to the beach, which was only a few minutes away and there were people on the beach and some children in the water (it really wasn’t that warm). I had a look there (the water didn’t look too inviting), then went back to the centre of town. Here, after parking, I watched a game of boules for a few minutes. Just when I went to take a photo, they finished. After a look around there, I went back, met mine hostess for this evening, had a look at the room, got the key and then headed off to St-Nazaire. I found out the home had been the old farm house, so the back yard is big, even by Australian standards, and must be considered huge here.
No problem getting there, across a huge and beautiful bridge, with smooth curves leading to a very large centre span and three traffic lanes (two up, one down) in each direction. It crosses the Loire River, perhaps as wide as three kilometres at its mouth. As I came over the top, I wondered at the peculiar shape of two hotels there, then realised they were ships under construction. They were large and TALL, so I wonder what the capacity of them will be when operating. I looked at the harbour (and the beach), then went north to Le Croisic. Along the way I saw a Citroen Deux Cheval towing a trailer – full! As expected, on a hill it fell back, and just managed to get over the top. What can people expect from these little cars? At Le Croisic I expected to find a sleepy little seaside village and instead it was a place coming alive for the evening. All along the waterfront there were eating places opening up and people promenading (for those unfamiliar with the term, it covers people walking along looking for somewhere to eat, girls walking along looking to get looked at, boys walking in groups hoping the girls walking will notice them and families walking with reluctant children being dragged by the hand) and parking spots were non-existent. I stopped up by the harbour and walked around, but the smell of baguettes and other foods was too enticing (as I had eaten not too long ago) and I decided to return to my writer’s garret (yes, it’s upstairs and only has a small window out, so it qualifies (but the door is fully [double] glazed), unpacked for the night (during the day I had done some shopping and now have five hangers for my shirts, so hung them), settled in, wrote up my blog and transferred photos, charged the camera batteries and then hit the hay. It takes about ten to twenty minutes to transfer, name and shrink the photos, and another hour to write this up, partly because I have to refer to maps and partly because I have to remember what I did.