Granville 48 50N 1 36 W
Gryphon II
Chris and Lorraine Marchant
Mon 22 Sep 2008 20:28
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Our autumn cruise continues, now in excellent
weather. The trip from Jersey was fast and enjoyable, if you ignore the 5am
start. Another boat which left just after us was catching up little by little ,
but with some tweaking, we soon had the boat sailing fast on a fine
reach.
We stayed in Granville for 2 nights behind the
giant harbour walls, which with the aid of a sill hold back the 12 metre tides.
The new part of the town s like most similar sized French towns but the
old town is positioned ona comanding peninsula high above the sea and has
beautiful old buildings and narrow cobbled steets. It was marlet day when we
arrived which was intriguing to se. The clothing stalls were selling tat of a
high order but then there were the food stalls selling beautiful fruit veg and
especially shellfish.
On Sunday we visited the town museum and a
fascinating exhibtion to the fishermen on foot. The enormous tides allow for the
locals to wander far out on the sand flats and amongst the rocks to gather
shellfish with the aid of only rakes and buckets. Having seen it in principle I
wandered off to find some French doing it for real. I found a couple below the
walls gathering clams. I asked them in my best French weather there were oysters
you could collect and the man said yes there ...and there...and there. He
then proceeded to knock a couple from the rocks for me to eat. I took another
back for Lorraine which after I had persuaded it open she ate with relish whilst
spitting out bits of shell.
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