Through the Twin Towers – probably the most outstanding entry to any port:
But I couldn’t work out if
a) I loved La Rochelle and wanted to stay
b) I hated La Rochelle and wanted to get away
So I’ll give you pros and cons
You will love La Rochelle:
If you are hungry:
The old port is absolutely surrounded by restaurants of every type from Tapas (yum) to fish (yum) to everyday French (yum)
If you like historic well preserved old ports
See some of the photos, but with its white stone buildings, historic towers and old port right in the centre it’s a beautiful place that is well preserved
olde style wine bar…
back streets with nice shops
front streets with nice shops
If you like nice shopping:
Beyond the immediate port side there are streets and streets of shops with nice clothes, accessories and chic things for your house
Because of the climate: during our stay mainly mid twenties by day, full sun. Warm evenings. No dew
If you like quick airport transfers
By bus €1.30 each way, about 20 minutes from the centre. €15 by taxi.
Why not la Rochelle?
Can’t work out why we are in two minds? After all who wouldn’t love the above. And there’s the problem – everyone does love La Rochelle to the point that it is absolutely overrun with tourists (include the author).
Everywhere. A non stop process of walking from A to B and back, a conveyor belt of humanity nudging, bumping, shoving, nattering and chattering.
slipping out at dawn
Allo, bonjour, bonsoir, au revoir, a bientot, a demain and on and on. Interrupted by the roar of the traffic and the seemingly endless supply of young French motorcyclists determined to let you and everyone else know how fast their machines accelerate.
After the peace and quiet of mega marina Les Minimes we stayed in the beautiful setting of the old port to await arrival of James. He arrived. We ate. We didn’t sleep much and set off as soon as we could the next morning vowing never to come back.
But we did come back!
A week later to despatch Zoe and James back home. This time we stayed in Bassin des Chalutiers. A quieter spot (well not so quiet due to the crew of a 60ft yacht having a good time late into the night just behind us). We left for the peace and quiet of Les Minimes as soon as we could…..
The Aquarium
If you do visit La Rochelle you must reserve 2 hours to visit the Aquarium: €14 a head and worth every penny to see just about everything the sea has to offer.
No smelly set of small tanks this affair. You have full view in dozens of different tanks of all sorts of creatures from all over the world. The largest tank is probably 10m deep and you get glimpses at all levels.
I’d love to go back outside of the height of the tourism season. For the time being it’s just one of those places that you have to imagine without all the other tourists
Missing pt2 ? watch this space for so much to say about beautiful La Rochelle. (and plenty more for Ile de Re yet to come)
Pt3 is a quickie, more an observation on one thing that is especially nice here: the climate.
you really have got to have the right gear
It’s getting on for 9pm.Note the new nautical clock:
We’ve got about an hour of direct sunlight left.
warm evening, sun shining, wind scoop on neighbours boat
We’ve just eaten Noix St Jaques up in the cockpit..mmm
chubby hubby, or just relaxed?
I’m savouring a nice glass of Saumur White (French of course) you can see it there bottom right….
slurp…
Note polo shirt: it’s warm, I would guess low to mid twenties…
We’ve missed the last boat to Wales….
It’s the 13th August. The nearest equivalent to crow flying works out at 450 miles to base. that’s a long long haul when 60 miles a day is hard work and needing a rest day in every 2: not what we want really…
So we’ve decided to not bring the boat back to Wales…..Hang around here a bit longer…sail around here a bit longer ….stay in the sun a bit longer and enjoy the warm as long as poss…
But we are heading North
So that’s it for facing South. We’re heading North tomorrow (14th Aug), eventually to Arzal-Camouel where we might leave Filibuster. About 3 or 4 days away depending on what we find (Ile d’Yeu being one place we’d like to find again – anchor up, swim in 20deg C water etc….)
And then we just need to get back to home in England and car in Wales…
Well it seems that on Le Belle Isle all of the above. It’s stuffed full of bars and eateries that are just right for people watching.
And when you get bored of that then why not hark back to your youth and do something you haven’t done for years?
Yes – hire a scooter. OK I have to admit to never having ridden a scooter in my life, being an ex member of the loud, proud and oily British Motorcycle Owners Club.
Belle Isle is about 17km long and 3km wide: too much to walk but grease the palm of the local hire place (right on the quay) with about fifty squids and you have a trusty Honda 110cc scooter for the day.
Easy, rider
The last time I rode a motorcycle was in 1984 – a different epoch. Perhaps my reactions were faster in those days but wobbling along with trusty wife on trusty steed was a whole new experience. 30mph has never seemed so scary….
…at one stage we even reached 50mph! But trusty wife on the back of trusty steed bottled out at this pace and requested something a bit slower. We settled on island buzzing at around 40mph…..
We buzzed to the South – the tiny beach at Locmaria overlooked by ancient manor house:
Locmaria small beach, overlooked by ancient manor house
easy rider with a lighthouse
We buzzed to the West: Le Phare Goulpar: one of France’s premier league lighthouses
We roared to the north – don’t park your boat here:
Ster Wenn on a nice day
But here is supposedly safe – not far away at Ster Wenn on the NW cost. Apparently exposed to a NW swell, which was indeed running that day and the boats at anchor looked very uncomfortable.
Via Sara Bernhardt’s castle:
(she got so tee’d of with hangers-on visiting her that she had a new place built for them, the roof of which happened to be a great place to take this photo)
We would really like to get back to Sauzon: although just a few miles away from Le Palaise the pace of life was just so completely relaxed it could have been a different planet.
So there you have Le belle Isle
In less than a few words. it can be summed up as frenetic. It never stops, it’s noisy, it’s fun, the port is busy 24 hours a day, people buzz around on scooters and all sorts on small hire cars. It’s that kind of active holiday place.
Having completed this post after visiting Ile D’Yeu and chi chi St Martin on Ile de Re it’s worth waiting for the completed posts from those places as they are all very different kinds of islands.
One of the nice things about cruising is that you often have no idea what’s going on in a port until you get there.
Les Minimes in La Rochelle is no different: We find ourselves right in the thick of the World 470 Championships.
This means that there’s a lot of 470’s around and at this early stage GBR is well placed in both mens and womens events – more if you read this post from the 470 people.
It also provides a few opportunities for nice photos to pass on:
The electro taxi boat was making a great attempt to get honours:
but was subsequently disqualified for a) not being a 470 and b) having too many crew on board
anyone seen my trolley? – it’s blue with black and red wheels
We are in Les Minimes, one of Europe’s largest marinas, if not the largest. It’s huge and the photo above doesn’t even show half of it.
The observant will notice that the top metre of the piles holding
everything together appears to be new.
They are new.
On 28th Feb 2010 a storm devastated the marina, along with many boats still inside. A key cause was that on the storm surge atop a high tide the pontoons overtopped the original piles and they, and anything attached to them went their own way.
They say New York, New York so beautiful they named it twice. (I’ve been there, I think they couldn’t think of much else to say).
But think of Le Palais, Belle Isle, an island off the west coast of France: now doesn’t that conjure up all sorts of imaginations. I’ve now been there as well and it is worth talking about.
But first let’s get the stressful bit of arrival over with:
The pilot guide says:
“when will we ever learn, Le Palais is rapidly gaining an unenviable reputation as a place where not to park your boat. Many folk visit and vow never again!….
Ok, if you still insist, get there early, bring plenty of fenders and a king size sense of humour
”
Well we did insist. Our only other choice that day would have been Port Haliguen, a marina so vast, soulless and particularly unpleasant for visitors (eg nearly 1km walk to the loos) we care to avoid if at all possible.
So to Le Palais, Belle Isle with joy and anticipation – a new place for us. Arrived early as per instructions, fendered out to the max, mooring lines on every cleat ready to take on the challenge.
First unusual thing: they have 3x 3.1m ribs with 10HP engines. They buzz around the harbour, locating, directing, shoving, tugging and cajoling boats into spaces. They do this with a demonic verve because at peak times there’s an awful lot going on.
So a quick intro to the mooring system will set the scene.
there is a big granite harbour wall with substantial chains hanging off it every 15m or so. Number 1-8, 1 being the outermost
there are 8 mooring buoys set around 60′ from the wall, roughly in line with the chains.
Another 4 buoys set around a further 40′ out, but inner the harbour
This is how it goes:
One of the guys on ribs, let’s call him Mr McEnery, locates us and becomes our man:
“Monsieur -vous allez en reverse la bas” pointing somewhere to chain number 3 and buoy number 4
Quoi, je pense. You want me to reverse toward that granite wall, in the hope that someone (possibly wife aided by McEnery) will put a warp onto our buoy before I hit the wall?
“Oui monsieur”
OK. we go backwards toward said granite wall.
Amazingly a warp does indeed get put around buoy no 4
We stop. Buoy 60′ out, warp 5′, boat 40′ leaves us 15ft adrift of chain, stopped, wind and boat momentum carrying us sideways.
Towards, in sort of reverse, our nearest neighbour to be. Actually very, very close to our fortunately unpopulated neighbour to be. Hmm -a bit of forward power needed to avoid le crunch..
Meanwhile McEnery has whizzed around the back to take our longest line, thread through chain and back to boat. We could be moored in a jiffy… mais il y a un probleme…
– “You ‘ave a longeur ligne?” dit McEnery, on account that a) our longest ligne is no longer long enough as we are now heading forward on account of my desire not to get too friendly with our yet to be neighbour’s home.
So we pause. Boat going forward, Michele holding on the bow, McEnery holding the not long enough ligne whilst I dig down in the locker for another bit of not used very recently rope.
With not used very recently bit of rope now tied on and other end delivered to McEnry on his rib now simultaneously holding shorter than needed warp, standing in rib with power on preventing us meeting soon to be neighbour sooner than needed, smoking a gauloise, steering with foot AND on the phone, tying both bits of rope together.
(well maybe I exaggerate a bit for the benefit of creating the scene that must now be in your mind’s eye)
And then we are there…attached…nous sommes arrives. relax
A McEnery. Note absolute regard for personal safety…
McEnery buzzes off to deal with the next crisis. Adrenalin levels reduce. We are fully attached in our own bit of water in an interesting harbour overlooked by Le Palais and the Citadel. Nice.
Read on..there’s more..
We are not the on the only ones to visit Le Palais
So armed with a nice cuppa and reducing adrenalin levels we decided to sit back, take in the scenery and watch what happens to other boats.
Fascinating. Hypnotic.
First of all remember the 8 inner buoys, now with with a couple of boats on each and, in my mind, looking a bit full. A bit short of space.
How wrong can one be?
First of all the “ram them in tactic” gets used. This is where boats are encouraged to drive on and “open a space”. Everyone on board a stationary boats sees a new neighbour coming in, grabs and pushes against them as they arrive. Self preservation again avoids le crunch and magically opens a new boat sized space for new neighbour.
All in good humour because that’s how it’s done.
Secondly, after the “ram them in” tactic has resulted in no more obvious boat sized gaps left, McEnery and mates reappear and use their ribs to push boats apart. More spaces open up and instantly get filled with boat.
Finally, when the number of boats crammed in = space available less 1x fag packet each, the place is full. Really full. A new commune of boat people forms, fenders squeak, fenders groan, and everyone is cordial and happy because we‘ve “got there”.
With the outer row of buoys also now full that’s it. The poor souls on the inside are not going anywhere.
So what else goes on?
It’s a bit hypnotic really: across the fairway the McEnrys do the same for smaller boats.
Ferrys come and go with astonishing regularity. The whole harbour is hyper.
Late arrivals get turned away (nous sommes desole, mais nous sommes plein!)…= you should have got here earlier
Peace at last. The view over to the quay wall. Ramparts of La Citadelle on the left. Filibuster somewhere in the middle.
Enough of the mechanics of hi stress boat parking, the next post will cover what we did on Belle Isle.
Take a closer look a this photo panorama, taken from the back of Filibuster and looking across to Isle Tudy later that day.
The 2 French yachts on the left allow me to make a gross generalisation about French sailors:
French sailors like to commune with nature, to sail right at the forefront of their boats capability. And they are good at it too. Both the aforementioned boats had sailed through horrendous conditions: monsoon strength rain with 30+knot winds.
You will notice that they have no sprayhoods or dodgers and get whatever Mother Nature throws at them in the face. I suspect that Mother Nature, who is French in these parts, takes their principal of communing with her and gives it a Gallic shrug.
Us Brits (at least the two of us on Filibuster) prefer to put a bit of fabric in the way and as a result don’t generally arrive looking half drowned and needing to bail out the boat 🙂
Anyway, enough of digressing, I’ve said it and got that off my chest.
Why we love Loctudy
To start it’s a nice place to arrive: greeted by the chequerboard tower of Perdrix on the way in and straight into a berth view a view.
Loctudy’s marina is another small communal boat parking place with friendly staff who generally come out to meet, greet and place you.
But perhaps the real reason is the seafood from the adjacent fishing port:
from boat
to shop
to plate
All in a couple of hours. The langoustines were still fighting back before we cooked them…
And another thing is the price: a demi kilo of best langoustines and and 7 bottles of fine Muscadet sur Lie (one cold for drinking the others destined for the UK) came to just over £40 from Viviers de Loctudy.
Moules Mouclade, bread, wine: £5 per head…..
The following night was moules mouclade, (light creamy curry sauce) cooked by Michele with the main ingredient costing under €3.
Add another bouteille of fine Muscadet (oops, that one isn’t going back to the UK) and you have a meal for two for under £6.
Nice place, friendly staff, super fresh seafood, excellent wines, great views. Loctudy is a mandatory stop in both directions.
This is probably the most boring post of the trip !!!
This is the one passage that HAS got to be planned as it passes through a smallish gap between mainland France and a small island (Isle de Seine). Get your arrival here wrong and the tide is so strong that it is extremely difficult to make headway. Get it correct and the tide squooshes (is that a nautical term ?) you along and hopefully in the direction that you want to go in.
Squooshing at 9.2kn
By the way its is pronounced “RARH” and not RAZZ (as we used to say)
Looking north east after going through. La Plate on the left and La Vielle on the right. Do not go between due to to rocks, rock-ettes, strong tides, dragons and sea monsters.
We left just before 6am from Camaret (still dark) as the navigator had worked the timings backward for this. This is one of the most uneventful sails, as there was very little wind for the whole of the journey and the sky was grey, overcast and dull. We motored all the way but put up the main to stabilise us as there were a few Atlantic rollers.
The most exciting thing was a huge pod of dolphins going across the Bay of Audierne but they did not stop.
So after 49.1 nautical miles we arrived at low tide at Loctudy (taking care with the depth on arrival – shame to go aground at such a stage).
Addendum from the skip:
Full chart of this passage (made on 27 July) :
and the important bit:
Over the ground distance: 54nm, log distance 49.1m = favourable tide saving 5nm (means we arrived 50 minutes earlier than would have been the case with no tide)
As noted above the Raz to be treated with care. Even at 1 hour after slack water a 3-4kn tide was running. Good timing is of the essence
