French Islands
21 June 2018 | Île de Houat, France
Joni
We walked around Nantes and went to a fancy pet store, a Vietnamese restaurant, and an old castle. In the town square, there was a fountain in the Roman style with the personification of Nantes, the Loire, and some other rivers on it. The Oleos came to say goodbye the next night and we left in the morning. It was nice seeing them again.
We sailed to Île de Houat, pronounced “What,” and played on the beach. It was a nice island with a beach stretching on for a long way along the coast. Sirius met another dog, Nino, and we went for a walk with Nino and his owner. In Greece, we had met a French family travelling in a camper. They met us on Île de Houat and we went for a beautiful hike across the island. Sirius is a mixed breed, but we think he is mostly Greek Harehound. The island was covered in rabbits. Sirius liked eating the dead ones, but didn’t chase after the live ones very much. Maybe because he prefers hares. We played at the beach with Vincent, Celine, Louise (8), Owen (3), and their dog Jango for a while and built a car out of sand. Jonas speaks English and no French and Louise speaks French and no English, but they had no trouble understanding each other. We sailed with our friends to the mainland and dropped them off in Port Haliguen. Mom, Dad, Jonas, and Sirius got a ride in their camper and Sirius got the front seat. It was Father’s Day so I made chocolate mousse for dessert.
Belle Île was the next island we went to. It means “Beautiful Island” in French, and it really was beautiful. It was lush and sunny. We were going to go for a hike, but to get to the start we had to walk all around the harbour’s edge. It was low tide and the harbour was now only mud, so Dad thought that we should just walk across the mudflats to the other side and start the hike. It was wet and muddy but we made it. There were many people digging for clams so Mom and Jonas dug as well, but they didn’t find many. It was a very beautiful hike. There were rolling hills and a forest and beaches. The only downside was that it was too hot.
In Île de Groix, we went for another hike. It was equally hot but still very pretty. On the way back, Sirius decided that he wouldn’t go any further and lay down in the water to cool off, so we played at the beach. There are twenty-foot tides here, so when we got back to Zoom, it was quite far up the beach. To get it back into the water, we had to wade through disgusting brown goop. We ate dinner, then went for an after-dinner beach outing.