Tern's Travels

It's a Bank Holiday weekend in France:13-15th Aug,the lifeboat is enacting a rescue in Camaret harbour with a helicopter taking "rescued" people to the "hospital" and other dramas. Saturday night there was a great firework display and the marina was packed, rafting up 2-3 boats, pretty noisy. It all reminds me of Falmouth, our home port where we are headed as soon as the wind shifts from the north. Although we are not hauling out and moving ashore until November this feels like the end of our journey. Mother's 90th birthday is taking us home now but there is still time to do some sailing before November and winter.
Since leaving Ile d'Yeu in early July we have been mainly visiting places we hadn't yet been to and also revisiting some places we know and love. We sailed from Ile d'Yeu to Periac and staged our tides to go into La Vilaine river. Periac is a picturesque holiday resort and a short hop to the Arzal Barrage where you enter La Vilaine, the whole area is a massive fresh water reservoir and river system. Going through the barrage is quite an experience, the lock is packed tight with boats and it takes a good 2-3 hours to negotiate. Once through we motored up to Roche-Bernard, a well-preserved and well-presented medieval town with a marina.
After a couple of hot nights we motored up the river, past Le Foleux then back down to anchor on a quiet stretch between cow pastures and oak forest. It was blissfully peaceful, we swam in the fresh water and Tern lost her small growth which is killed in fresh water leaving her smooth as a baby's bottom. The Vilaine is indeed tranquil and beautiful but too somnulent for us for any length of time. Next day we caught the last lock through and spent the night on the pontoon provided, setting off with the morning tide to Ile Houat, east of Belle Ile. We caught a mackerel on the way, the one and only fish we have
managed to catch on this trip despite almost constant line trailing. We enjoyed it in splendid isolation anchored in the vast bay on the SW of the island: Treac'h Salus. The next day we did a walking tour of the island and saw the popular anchorage: Treac'h Gourhead, which has 80-100 boats in fair weather.
The settled weather held so motoring yet again we headed for Sauzon on the NW end of Belle Ile. It's much less busy than Le Palais but has plentiful visitors bouys. It's a great place from which to walk the coast path around the exquisitely beautiful north end of the island. Walk, shower, icecream, shop, back to the dinghy for home - but... the fish stall on the
quay has oysters, 6 euros/doz.We bought an oyster knife in Ile d'Yeu so we were very keen to use it. Perfect end to a perfect day.
Speaking of oysters, our next planned stop was the Belon River, famous for its oysters. However, the wind wouldn't let us set the course, being too N of west, so we ended up in Port Louis near Lorient. Never mind, we like P Louis and the marina facilities have finally been completed so the showers and laundry are now very good. We had a lovely seafood dinner in a restaurant to celebrate our wedding anniversary, which we had forgot about in the Caribbean. The food shopping is terrible in P.Louis so we moved on, this time to Benodet and up the Odet River. Benodet is a genteel holiday town with a decent supermarket so after a couple of nights on a visitor's bouy we headed up the fast-flowing, tidal river to explore the higher reaches. Although you can theoretically anchor where you like, the suitable spots are nearly all filled with bouys, but there is a good anchorage just below the Baie de Kerogan, not far from Quimper. Walking in the woods and along the river towards Quimper was lovely but we gave up trying to reach the town and instead visited it by bus from Loctudy a few days later.
From Benodet it was a short hop across to Loctudy, another of our favourite marinas and ports. The fish shops are fantastic so our oyster knife was again put to good use. The langoustine are famous, the shops put out a sign to say when the fresh catch is due in: 16.45, so you roll up at 17.00 and get a bag of the liveliest langoustine you have ever eaten.
By now it was Saturday so we caught the bus into Quimper: 2euros for an hour's bus ride! Quimper is a wonderful city with flower-decorated bridges over the Odet, splendid medieval buildings and streets, with pedestrianised town centre full of shops and restaurants. We did the obligatory crepe and cider lunch but we also did art galleries, pottery and embroidery exhibitions, all of which it is famous for. A good day out!
Back in Loctudy, having done everything in order to move on west and north, the wind was not in our favour.So we stayed another day and I hopped on the bus to revisit Quimper and see the shops whilst Larry changed the oil in the gearbox. It was probably the only day we spent apart in our whole trip and Larry was waiting for me at the bus stop on my return - we
both missed each other! I managed to find a present for mother's 90th and the next day we were able to
sail west round Pen Marc'h and on to St Evette, which is a good place to stage the passage through the Raz de Sein. The harbour has visitor's bouys or you can anchor and walk into the historic town of Audierne. We stayed two nights so that we could have a walk up the river side and see the area, which is charming.
Once through the Raz de Sein we crossed Douarnenez bay to explore the east side of the Crozen peninsula. There are stunning anchorages in bays of turquoise water surrounded by high limestone cliffs with caves at sea level. Although GR34 coast path goes around the entire peninsula, there is only one place you can reach it from the sea.We provisioned in Morgat, which is dominated by dinghy sailing, windsurfing and kayaking, and visited several anchorages, settling in Anse de St Nicholas, from which the coast path can be reached. As the wind was persistently NW for several days, so pointless to try to sail to Camaret, it was a good opportunity to walk the coast path, through colourful heather and gorse with sparse pine woods, and do a bit of snorkelling and relaxing.
The wind went south on Friday 12th August and we could sail on to Camaret where we stayed for a few days which happened to be a Bank Holiday in France. We were treated to fireworks and a festive atmosphere and we did our usual coast path walking
and feasting on great seafood before setting off across the Channel to Falmouth.
The crossing was lovely with blue sky and a brisk easterly wind and a nearly full moon by night. I t was a fast passage, 18 hours to do the 125 NM, so we ended up arriving at 04.00 and picked up a visitor's mooring.Lovely to be home in some ways, but also a slight feeling of post-tour flatness. Not to worry, still a couple of months to sail before winter fully arrives.