Tag Archives: Barfleur

Happy, Sad, Challenged and Relieved…

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So here, at the beginning of September, we are in France. The Barfleur [about which, more later] was busy on this Thursday morning, heaving with both young couples and their pre-schoolers and decrepit, or less ancient retirees, all of us revelling in this just-post-summer start of the school year. This is an altogether delightful time for us, for Husband and myself because for all of our working lives we were stuck with school holidays and now we are free to travel at this balmy, end of season time- what travel writers like to call the ‘elbow’ season.

If anyone had asked me a couple of months ago if we’d be away this September I’d have scoffed. Major surgery was looming. I didn’t expect to be mobile to this extent. OK, I’m not to cycle and there are other restrictions for a while yet, but I can certainly walk, explore, observe and photograph. It doesn’t seem long since I was handing my camera over to Husband as he strode off and left me seated somewhere.

I felt a twinge of sadness as our ferry chugged out of Poole harbour this morning, as it was our last voyage over on the Barfleur, which is to be sold off, the route axed as the French ferry company, Brittany Ferries seeks to rein in expenditure, debts having mounted. We’ve used this route for years as Poole is local for us- a mere half hour’s drive away. Poole’s huge, iconic harbour is scenic and beautiful. I shall miss sailing this route.

Our last French jaunt, made last year, was disastrous [https://gracelessageing.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=8132&action=edit] so it takes a leap of faith to strike out again. We’ve struck south to a different, new overnight stop from our usual aire, at ‘Grandcamp Maisie’ a small, Normandy seaside town. Why have we changed? Perhaps it was time, or perhaps we felt the Saint Brice en Cogles aire we’ve used so much to be a little jinxed now, since that is where the van refused to start on our first morning.

This aire, like all of them, is plucked from our trusty book of aires- although in the event, not so trusty, as rather than being the cosy, council run, 9 euro aire described, it is now a vast, company run area accessed via an app and a code. When we reach the barrier, Husband reverses the van out in disgust and resorts to scouring the book for somewhere else, while I turn on roaming on my phone, scan the QR code, download the app and get my access code. We are in, although when there seems no way of paying I assume we must do so in order to get out again…

We walk down to the seafront. Grandcamp Maisie is a quiet town with a strange hotchpotch of housing of all descriptions and no conformity whatsoever, which makes it interesting. Along the prom, one or two bar/restaurants are open so we select one. It’s tiny but already people are piling in. Once we’re seated, I open my phone to see a message from ‘Camping-Car Park’, the firm that owns the aire. I must pay within 15 minutes or else… [or words to this effect]. Or else what? Eeek! Getting towed away? Getting clamped? Impounded?

The tiny restaurant is not conducive to phone signals so I shoot out on to the prom and work my way as hastily as I can through the payment process, finally managing it. I’m not thrilled though, at having to choose an amount to pay from a selection of prices that are all more than the cost of the aire! Now I have a ‘balance’, of euros which I do not want.

I decide to forget it and enjoy my meal, which I do, and the pork pieces are too huge for us to eat them all so we get them parcelled up for lunch tomorrow.

In the morning we are up, emptied and filled with fresh water and off to pastures new- and yes- we are able to escape the aire- phew!!!

Novels by Jane Deans [Grace]: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend. Visit my website: janedeans.com

How we Roll-

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These days we cross the English Channel [our most trodden travel path] by taking the line of least resistance-and since we live a few miles from Poole that line is Brittany Ferries to Cherbourg, a four-hour crossing leaving at 8.30am.
Despite the proximity we know better than to hang about and we are sure to leave home by 7.00am. Once, inspired by Husband’s ‘It’s only half an hour away-we’ve got oodles of time-we don’t need to be there until five minutes before’, we arrived at the barrier just as the ferry was about to leave and winged it up the ramp with minutes to spare.
The ferry, the ‘Barfleur’ [named after a Normandy coastal town] is comfortable and familiar by now. We know that once on board there will be good coffee and fresh, buttery croissants as well as comfortable reclining couchettes in a quiet salon in the bowels of the ship. We know that we can mooch around the small boutique and peruse the eclectic array of merchandise both useful and otherwise. There will be WiFi and television news.
Mostly, these days the ship is peopled with retirees or young couples with pre-school children because since retirement we have the choice of avoiding school holidays. This time, however by setting off a little earlier we are beset by knots of excited, shrieking children who still have time for a quick taste of France before knuckling down to learning their tables. They gallop about the ship, throng around the games room, chase each other from the bar to the restaurant, use loud devices and shout to each other. I surprise myself by enjoying their excitement, which reminds me how I felt on early trips abroad when every experience was new.
A sulky boy wearing a onesie in a bear design makes several circuits past our table with his lecturing mother, prompting me to wonder what he has done and if his excitement got the better of him. A tiny, table-height toddler staggers about, chased by his doting father and shielded from protruding table corners by the various diners he is entertaining.
In the quiet zone I open my Kindle and continue reading Alan Bennett’s ‘Keep On Keeping On’, which is part diary/part memoir/part lecture in itself and a treasury of informative and amusing anecdotes. A couple of rows behind us two men slumber whilst between them a young boy plays on and with a mobile phone, the sound of which is just a little distracting-loud enough to hear but not enough to decipher. Husband, whose own hearing has been compromised during the last few years is immune to such irritations and dozes off easily.
We arrive to Cherbourg, disembark and set off-not tearing southwards as usual but this time meandering across the Cherbourg peninsula to the coastal town of Barfleur itself, where we have lunch and a wander around the curving harbour followed by drinking coffee. Then we continue a few miles on to St Vaast, another harbour town with a convenient aire for us to park up in.

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St Vaast is a delectable place; full of seafood cafes, narrow alleys lined with pretty seaside homes and beautiful gardens, boulangeries packed with luscious pastries, breads and tarts, a crowded marina and a working fishing harbour where sturdy mussel boats are tied up.

There are many, many West coast ports like this, with harbourside brasseries serving the freshest shellfish you can get. We take advantage and I am able to enjoy my favourite treat-a plate of fat oysters nestling on a bed of ice and tasting of the sea.

We stay 2 days despite the drizzly intervals and walk the coastal sea wall to see ‘La Hougue’, part of some anti-British defences of 1664. Then it’s time to move on.