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Woke to lovely blue sky again. Actually woke a bit too early in order to Skype Jenny in Melbourne but discovered I had put my hour back instead of forward when working out Australian / French time difference and should have been Skyping at 10am not 8am !
Back to the Tandy for a shower and breakfast first. Then discovered how tricky it is sitting outside in full sunshine trying to see the screen of a laptop. Had a similar problem last night when I was loading the blog in total darkness. Could see the screen but not the keys. Let’s hope that the next campsite has a better arrangement for wifi than this one, where only option is to sit outside, even if it is free. I managed my Skype though and saw my favourite granddaughter Isobel running about and singing to me and my very pregnant daughter Jenny. Hoping that she can wait until I get there at the end of September before my new grandson makes an appearance.
Another scooter day today. A bit chilly at first even though the sun was out in a clear blue sky but a bit of an autumnal nip starting in the air. We went across the Les Marais Salants (roughly translates as salty marshland) to the medieval, walled city of Guerande. Route across the salt farms was fascinating. This is a low-lying area criss-crossed with salt fields between Batz-sur-Mer and Guerande. The D92 road we took (Routes du marais) was much quieter than the main road we came in on but was narrow and windy and certainly not as the crow flies ! About 10 km to Guerande and we stopped to buy some fleurs du sel on the way and a little traditional wooden salt scoop.
We have visited Guerande before but it is a pretty town with full set of moated outer walls, lots of medieval buildings nicely restored and well worth a second visit. Plenty of nice shops just waiting to be browsed. A pity Bob doesn’t do shops, as it rather spoils my enjoyment. Bought a lovely soft comforter lion for the baby which he is sure to love.
I also bought some of the lovely Breton buttery baked biscuits for lunch (as failed to find a sandwich shop) and then we stopped in the main square for coffee. The church by this point had opened its doors so we took a look inside. It has the most fantastic stained glass windows. The sun had also decided to come out in full glory and the cool chill in the air was replaced by roasting sunshine, enough so that I had to cover my shoulders on the scooter.
We then headed to the coast on the north side of the peninsula at La Turballe. We used the tomtom to find our way out of Guerande to make sure we took the quiet marais road we came in on rather than the main road that was signposted. Still not found a very satisfactory way of holding the tomtom on the back of the scooter and did drop it once !
We liked La Turballe. As well as an excellent icecream shop it has an enormous and very modern, expensive harbour for pleasure craft and fishing boats. There were very few empty berths so obviously a popular place for a sail. It also has a superb stretch of sandy beach. Can well understand why this is a desirable holiday area. It started as a small sardine fishing village then moved into sardine ‘tinning’. Now it seems to be more of a holiday resort but there were still quite a lot of fishing boats.
Back at the campsite, after crossing back across the marais, we had another swim in the lovely pool then packed everything away ready to move on tomorrow.

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