Thursday 16^th August – Brest

48:23.553N 4:25.816W

Today the wind eased and the rain stopped and we took the bus into Brest.  Our French must be improving – we managed to ask for tickets on the bus and understand that they were valid for an hour after being validated. 

We walked from the Place Liberté to the Chateau de Brest and then back to Les Iles before catching the bus back. The view from the Chateau over the Rade was impressive but much of Brest itself was rebuilt after the war and sadly many of the parts we saw were fairly uninspiring.

The surprise of our trip was that on approaching a zebra crossing, a car stopped – we checked the number plates to see if it was British.  We’ve been trying to figure out the rules for zebra crossings since we arrived in France.  If you stand at the roadside by a zebra crossing, the car just whips past; if you step out, it still whips past just missing you.  It seems the best way is to wait until the approaching car is far enough away for it not to be worth the effort of accelerating.  One day in Camaret, I discovered that having the trolley was effective – if you step out dragging a trolley, you enter a different class of victim, and the cars give way – it is helped if you pretend not to have noticed that the car was there in the first place; the game moves up to the next level.  Hopefully we’ll figure it out soon.

When we got back we tried the ‘moules au curry’ at the marina bar – had to be done and very good as it turned out.

Tomorrow we are moving on.  The weather is due to turn horrible again over the weekend meaning a bay crossing is still not a good idea, and so we need to decide where we would like to be for the next few days.  There are still plenty of jobs to do around the boat, so hopefully the time will be well spent.