15 – 22 Sept 2001

This was not the best week to fly anywhere and our worst doubts appeared to be confirmed when we got into Heathrow’s terminal 2. The place was completely packed. There were queues for American flights at least 300 metres long everywhere.

Terminal 3 however, was a different picture and we checked into our Air France flight to Nantes in less than 20 minutes.

We picked up a hire car at the airport and kicked ourselves for not booking it over the internet. The same company are around 40% cheaper over the net.

Nantes is a pleasant city with little new building in the old quarter. The narrow streets can get pretty congested with traffic and parking is usually limited to 2 hours at a time. There is free parking near the train station.

We stayed in a modest hotel close to the centre for 225FF per night. For that price you get to smell the drains.

The girl at the car hire place recommended a restaurant called La Cigale (Tel: 02 51 84 94 94) at 4, Place Graslin. It is the place to eat or drink in Nantes. The decoration outside is of blue tiling, but inside the decoration is a full-blown fusion of Baroque and Art Nouveau. The food is equally rich and wines are excellent. We had a platter of oysters from three regions followed by grilled dourade with a ratatouille spiced with cinnamon and cardamom.

Cafe La Cigale

Sunday

La Cigale is pretty expensive, even by UK standards, but it is worth visiting at least once. It’s also about the only place open on Sundays and they do a very civilised continental breakfast.

After breakfast, we headed off to Vannes, a small town with a large yachting marina and nice architecture. The marina frontage is quite touristy, as you might expect, with large areas given over to outdoor café life. We tried one of them and were not impressed. Really, the food in these places is no better than their respective English resort eateries. The ham and cheese gallette was much too greasy. A gallette, by the way is a thick crepe, generally made with buckwheat and usually contains a savoury filling.

The hotel was clean and comfortable and looked over the marina.

  Vannes and the Marina

We drove a little out of town and parked by the estuary, walking along it for about 4 km. It being Sunday, we passed plenty of others walking and biking. A few people were fishing and others were blackberrying.

We ate in La Breizh that night. It was recommended by the Lonely Planet guide to France. We started with fish soup and oysters, followed by beef braised in cider. The soup was thin and the beef over-sweet; all rather crude quite frankly. The wine was St.Nicholas de Bourgueil and fine without being really special.

Before we left next morning, we got some baguettes made up for us at a stall by the archway. These were tasty, filling and very good value.

En route to our next destination, we stopped to look at the standing stones at Carnac. These were mainly lined up in rows, unlike Stonehenge.

Carnac standing stones.  Somewhere, lovely but forgotten

Monday

My friend Colin the fat plumber had enthused about the Cote Sauvage, so we drove there next, staying at the Hotel Bon Accueil, 6, Quai de l’Houat on the Quiberon peninsula (Tel: 02 97 50 07 92) It smelt bad too; seems to be a hallmark of cheap French hotels.

Still, the walks along the cliffs are worth the trip. The peninsula seems to have rocky cliffs on one side and long sandy beaches on the other side. Anglers were catching garfish from the rocks and the smell of crabs and seaweed was all pervasive.

Cote Sauvage          The harbour wall at Quiberon

The town is nice enough, but clearly a real tourist haunt. We found some great Muscat grapes and passion fruit sorbet in the shops and wandered back along the seafront.

There is a long harbour wall which gives good views of the town and can be fished from.

There were a few hotel restaurants locally and for once we ate in the one we stayed in. Actually, the food was excellent. The fish soup was thick and substantial. Louise then had grilled sardines and I ordered a small roast lamb joint. It was cooked on the outside for 1 centimetre and raw inside. I thought about sending it back, but after tasting it, quite liked it as it was. We drank a bottle of chilled Saumur, but that was a bit thin.

We had another walk after dinner, but by 10pm, the town was asleep.

Tuesday

Breakfast in the hotel was a poor show. We decided we would drive on the Concarneau, one of France’s largest trawler ports.

As we left the Cote Sauvage, we noticed dozens of people, mainly elderly, descending on the beaches with nets and poles. A friend who knows the area well is certain they would have been searching for spider crabs.

We arrived in Concarneau in time for lunch. We tried another Lonely Planet recommendation, "L’Escale" close to the trawler berths. It is cheap and cheerful and some dishes like the ½ crab are good, but most are poor quality. Check your change too.

We consoled ourselves with some delightful dark chocolate from the supermarché Champion nearby.

The town has a fortress which you can visit and there is a promenade which takes you past several beaches out of town.

We had a stroll around the centre to look over the restaurants that evening. Many looked poor value and had few diners. The menu at Le Belem looked interesting and we settled for a meal there.

It was not long before it soon filled up and we had an excellent meal there. To start we had Assiette de Fruit de Mer and grilled mixed fish for the main course. The wine, a Burgundy Haute-Cote de Beaune was the best we’d had so far. The wine was 120FF and I think the meal came to around 200FF each. Good atmosphere and good friendly service too.

The Hotel des Halles in Place de l’Hotel de Ville (Tel: 02 98 97 11 41) is an excellent place to stay. Quiet, clean and comfortable, it is around 300FF per night for an en-suite double room.

Wednesday

We had a superb breakfast in the covered market of crepes aux pommes, cooked by two ladies in one of the stalls. At 42FF for 4, they are better value than a continental breakfast.

Also in the market, we bought a lovely runny sheep's cheese, and some ham, salad and baguettes from the supermarché, then travelled on to the Morgon peninsula for the day.

Parking near the French Air Force radar station, we set off on a wonderful cliff top walk. The sea was clear and we had views for miles. We sat on a cliff ledge watching shipping in the distance and a couple of lobster boats beneath us. It was the perfect place for the picnic we brought with us. There are a number of walks along these cliffs and some will take you down to the secluded coves below, but it is a long steep climb back up.

                         The Morgon Peninsula

Driving back along the peninsula, we stopped off at Plage de L’Aber. It is a huge sandy beach with a creek and a rocky outcrop at one end and backed by high sand dunes. At high tide, the dunes are surrounded by the sea. Cockle, clam and razor shells litter the beach in large numbers. It looks windswept, but this September, the weather was decidedly balmy.

Plage de L'Aber

Back in Concarneau, we headed straight for Le Belem again, but were mortified to find it was closed. That is one major irritant in France, you can never tell what will be open on any given day. Sunday is a dead loss and so frequently, is Monday. Then many establishments will close on another day of the week as well.

La Cornuaille was another LP recommendation, so we settled for that. It seems to specialise in seafood. We thought we would try the 65FF menu and ordered moules for starters. The patron said they were out of them, so I had soup de poisson, which was OK and Louise had oysters. My tripe sausage was very poor and we had a bottle of St. Nicholas de Bourgueil, which was fine. The patron then tried to charge us for the 95FF menu, another annoying French habit, especially in this area.

Thursday

Got up at 7.20am, as I was going fishing today. First of all, I headed for the covered market for a crepe breakfast. It was closed, so I wandered down to the harbour to meet Monsieur B on his boat, the Santa Maria (Tel: 02 98 50 69 01). There was plenty of time, so he directed me to a café opposite the boat for a large coffee. The café was pretty full. As it turned out, half the occupants were joining me on the trip.

We sailed at 08.09am for 1 hour, passing an island with a gorgeous sunrise behind it.

Concarneau fishing trip

My companions were probably Danish, but I wasn’t sure. There were a couple of women with them and as usual, one of the ladies out-fished everyone else.

Closing on an island, M.B and his crewman shot a couple of longlines. These were stored in a couple of barrels with the hooks arranged around the top, inserted into slits in a strip of rubber A few hundred metres away, he handed us all short rods and we fished over the side for pouting. They were very plentiful and we caught dozens of them, often two or three at a time, plus some mackerel and herring over a 2 ½ hour session.

The pouting are normally considered a nuisance fish in the UK, but M.B liked to eat them. We had fish up to about ¾ lb.

On the return journey we stopped to haul the longlines and the first fish was a small conger. This was followed by 6 good dourade of about 1 ½ kilos each.

The pouting were filleted on the way and I was offered some, but with nowhere to cook them, had to decline.

The weather was good and the seas here are well protected as Concarneau is surrounded by a large bay dotted with islands.

The morning’s fishing cost about £19.00; not great value, and not great sport either, but it’s an alternative to sightseeing or shopping.

Louise joined me back at the harbour and we had a crepe lunch at Le Grand Chemin in rue de la Gare. They were OK, but the fillings were quite sparse.

We drove to Beg Meil, a pretty and uncommercialised beach with sand, rocks and rock pools and backed by pines behind the shoreline. It makes an ideal location for a family holidaying with young kids. After an hour or so there, we continued on to Benodet. This is in an estuary, but very much an established holiday resort and marina, somewhat upmarket.

Beg Meil beach   Benodet marina

Back in Concarneau, Le Belem were open again and we had another go at the Assiette de Fruit de Mer, which again was excellent. Regrettably, the second course was forgettable this time.

Friday

We had an excellent crepes pommes breakfast, sitting on the harbour wall. The crepes were courtesy of the ladies in the market again. We bought 6 this time. I think we were a bit greedy, a couple would have been enough each as the ladies are generous with the fillings.

We sat for a while by the open market square, drinking café au lait and watching the day’s business passing.

There were lots of stalls selling cakes, patisserie, cheeses, cooked meals, shoes, clothes and mounds of wild mushrooms, especially chanterelles and ceps.

Wild mushrooms, Concarneau market

After buying some lovely dark chocolate at the supermarché, we drove back towards Nantes. We had a baguette at one of the ubiquitous Le Clerc supermarchés and changed our minds about staying in Nantes again. Instead, we crossed the Loire estuary over a magnificent bridge by St.Nazaire.

This area is part of the Côte Vendee and seems pretty well deserted. We passed through a small town called St. Michel Chef-Chef and then stopped in a sleepy beach resort called Tharon Plage.

There is a hotel opposite the harbour, but it was closed that afternoon. I found the phone number and arranged to meet the owner at 5pm, when he reopened.

 We then strolled along the tiny harbour opposite. There were anglers fishing from the harbour wall, but more unusually, there were a couple of men with giant shrimp nets, clamped to the wall. These nets were lowered into the water with a winch and raised a minute later. Any shrimps were scooped out with a long-handled landing net and the net lowered again.

Shrimp netters and fixed stations

In the bay, there are a few dozen wooden shrimp huts on stilts operating on the same principles. The shrimpers climb into the huts and fish the rising tide.

This is a beautiful bay with very clean water. You can tell from the number of people visiting the rocks carrying buckets, the odd wheelbarrow and chisels. What are they after? Wild oysters. They cover the rocks on the beach. There are mussels too and a huge variety of shellfish below the tideline.

Oyster encrusted rocks   The Harbour

Returning to the hotel, we fixed up a room overlooking the huge bay. I think we paid 200FF for the night. Prices in the village a bit further inland were around 150FF per night, but there is no view.

A lady in the grocery shop recommended a restaurant called Les Sables d’Or for really good seafood. I thought she said it was in Pornic, some 5km along the coast.

We searched in vain in Pornic and a series of tiny coves nearby before we found a man who knew the restaurant. He said it was back in Tharon Plage on the coast road to Pornic. No point going back, so we stayed in Pornic and enjoyed the waterfront before looking for another place to eat.

Pornic

There are a whole row of eateries overlooking the water, some of which may be good, but we were dubious, so on the recommendation of an elderly local couple, we sought out Le Galion, further back from the waterfront at 12, Rue de la Marine.

This is a lovely and intimate restaurant with separate rooms for smokers and non-smokers. The meal was exquisite. I started with 6 escargot (snails) and progressed to a platter of fruit de mer. On the platter were 5 oysters, 8 langoustines, a heap of shrimps and winkles, mussels, 6 dog whelks, 6 big raw cockles and half a crab. At just 120FF, the platter was great value.

Louise had a gorgeous grilled sheep's cheese starter and grilled fish.

I had a rum raisin ice cream, thoroughly drenched in rum to finish off the meal and it was ably accompanied by a delightful Chinon rouge.

Driving back that evening, we found Les Sables d’Or, just 200 metres from our hotel.

Saturday

 After a mediocre breakfast at the hotel, we got down to the beach and walked towards it’s southern flank. The tide was going out and exposed a broad expanse of sand, lined with great swathes of shells.

Tharon Plage

They say the simple things in life are best. Why? They aren’t exciting, and usually there is no sense of anticipation and one’s role in the whole experience is often passive. They just happen.

Hardly anyone else was about and the sense of well-being was as tangible as the sun and sea air. It must be a good 3km to the rocky flank and we passed several more shrimp huts, usually in clusters. Some have long makeshift walkways to the shore, often in need of repairs.

A few large houses are built above the beach and the low cliffs are riddled with caves.

Best of all, there are good numbers of wild oysters on the rocks and we stopped there for a light marine repast. I didn’t have a chisel, so used a large rock to knock off the top shells. I then used the top shells to scoop out the oysters. Absolutely fabulous!

Oyster feast

We walked back relaxed and contented, stopping to look at the menu in Les Sables D’Or. It looked good, but a bit pricey and more formal than we felt in the mood for.

Just 100 metres from our hotel there is another hotel/restaurant and we had lunch there. It was reasonable, and the food was pretty average. Service, as is the case everywhere, was idyllically slow. It has to be observed that this is normally because there is only ever one person serving, regardless of the number of diners.

By the time we finished the meal, there was time only for a brief stroll along the harbour wall before driving back to Nantes airport.