The Ria d’Étel empties into the Bay of Biscay, and right at this meeting point, things can get pretty interesting. After our morning detour to Saint Cado, we continued driving westwards to Barre d’Etel, located at the mouth of the estuary.
Along the river, large volumes of water are displaced by the tides and the estuary itself is subject to strong currents – we saw multiple signs warning potential swimmers from committing the folly of mounting a watery challenge. At Barre d’Etel, an ever shifting band of sand is formed by these cross currents. Additionally, on days with strong wind, be prepared for the assault of the sand. (Yes, I was ill-prepared, for I arrived wearing shorts and it was painful being pelted non-stop that I couldn’t go anywhere near the seafront! Everyone else came back with pocketful of sands instead.)
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Another month, another wedding to attend. While July’s wedding took us to Dijon for a weekend, August saw us heading to Morbihan (southern Brittany) for a handful few days to celebrate the marriage of one of my best friends from my Dublin days. While we were there, as you may have guessed – road trip!
One of our post-wedding sightseeing stops in the region was Saint Cado, a small islet just to the north of Belz. It is such an idyllic village, set with stone and whitewashed houses surrounding a chapel that was built in the 12th century on the site originally founded in the 6th century, and flat green fields that occupy the eastern half of the islet. It is also surrounded by structures that indicate oyster farming as the main economic activity off its immediate bay today. Between the islet and the mainland, a singular stone house is seen to sit on another small rock island in the middle of Ria d’Etel.
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Having two cameras, one dSLR and one PnS, is a good thing. Depending on the situation and the size of the bag I’m carrying, I can opt to bring one or the other, or both. The downside, however, is I’m hitting more or less the same range of image number on both cameras. When it comes to organising them, I had to be very careful not to let any overwriting from happening. My folder system goes by the event name, and photos from both cameras could potentially end up in the same folder. I should reset the count for one of them.
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5 Aug: This kitty in real life look like a grey fluffy ball, loves to be petted, super duper cute, but for some reason, when I tried to photograph it, it gave me this serious big cat-like look. I guess it didn’t want to appear too adorable, and it was not too adorable indeed when it jumped on me at breakfast table one morning. It went straight onto my lap and leaving some scratch mark even though I tried to lift it up as quickly as I could. See, I was wearing shorts… ouch!
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This week, I discovered that being a translator is probably not a career alternative I should pursue. My friends, in the spirit of keeping things bilingual for their wedding, had asked me to help out with certain tasks (e.g. translating wedding ceremony programme, speeches), and working from English into French, oh dear… I am lucky I have other wonderful friends around me who helped to proofread my translations, and I also roped F into translating some particularly tricky texts. What would I do without them?
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29 Jul: This piece of street art reminds me of the sculpture of Le Passe-Muraille to commemorate Marcel Aymé that can be found in Montmartre. The main differences? This is on the other side of the wall, thus forming a continuation of sort to the sculpture, and this is a very modern take, for I don’t think hoodie fits into the setting of Aymé’s story. Disclaimer: I don’t know if the artist intended this as an echo to Le Passe-Muraille. Total speculation on my part.
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Now that spring has truly arrived, a massive spring cleaning is required chez nous. Not that we’re normally incredibly messy people, just that we had workmen in for a good few days fixing and repainting the windows. The layers of dust that settled on just about every surface had me cringing silently, so a top-to-bottom cleaning is definitely required. Still, I’m taking a little break to bring you the latest round-up of Project 365.
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22 Apr: A Keith Haring retrospective is currently running in the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. For a week, the métro station of Alma Marceau was transformed into a cultural station, showcasing some posters of this pop-art master, featuring the iconic jelly bean-like figures in striking bold colours or in black and white. This exhibition – themed Political Lines – is on my to-visit list, and if you are in Paris, you shouldn’t miss it either.
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This winter has been the bane of my health and I am really tired of it. It seems I’m falling ill nearly every month, and this week has been the worse yet. The irony is that I’ve had a restful week last week and was preparing for a solid week of work and planning etc, only to be thwarted suddenly by a crippling flu. I had to stay put for a couple of days at home. Boo.
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18 Feb: Seeing cherry blossoms makes me happy. It just does, and I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s the imminent arrival of spring (never mind that the weather forecast for the rest of the week would be coooooold). Maybe it’s the wispy splash of soft pink. Maybe it’s its association with Chinese New Year. Maybe it’s the reminder of the beautiful view I used to get from my studio in Cité U.
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Early this month, Frédéric and I were back in his hometown in (historical) Brittany and taking advantage of the opportunity to see another part of the region which I don’t know, I suggested an afternoon visit to Le Croisic. Situated at the tip of the Guérande peninsula (just a little further down from Le Pouliguen and Batz-sur-Mer), it is a beautiful small town but a little on the quiet side during the winter – the visitors won’t be coming in until warmer summer months.
But first, we made a pit stop at Plage Valentin of Batz-sur-Mer, which we didn’t visit previously. It is not named after St Valentin (sorry to burst some romance bubble there) but rather, it was introduced by a certain Monsieur Killian who was nicknamed Valentin to be a small “bathing therapy” resort. It gained popularity and the venture took off. Today though, it is favoured by families for beach holiday, given the relative calm of water in this bay in comparison to the other beaches along the coast.
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When we left for Brittany, in the train, I told Frédéric that we must go to La Trinitaine at some point during the weekend we were there. I was flexible for any activities that he could think of, but I absolutely could not come back without my favourite goodies from the shop – nougats tendres au caramel au beurre salé. It has been many moons since I finished the packet that I bought in Guérande and the hankering was getting stronger. Unfortunately for me, La Trinitaine is not available in Paris. (Ok, I could have ordered online but we were going to be in the region anyway, you know…)
This search also gave us a good excuse to visit yet another town within the vicinity of F’s hometown. Instead of revisiting Guérande, we decided to head to Pornic for a little walk-about. The weather was less co-operative in comparison to the previous day when we were out for the long walk at the Côte Sauvage. The sun and the rain battled to trump one another. As a result, most of the photos I took were less than brilliant, but here are some anyway ;)
(Hover over the images for captions)
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Weather in Brittany is supposedly similar to the Irish’s, mostly rain-related, but I find a rather dissimilar point between them – in Ireland, we often get drizzle all day long whereas in Brittany, rain and sunny spell alternate in bursts. This trip round, I’ve been lucky. It rained when we were in cars etc, and it shined when we were out for walks. Long walks even.
One of the afternoons, Nico joined us for a walk at the Côte Sauvage. We trekked along the coastal cliff/path from Le Pouliguen to Batz-sur-Mer, and it took just a little over 2 hours in each directions after factoring in photo breaks as well as pauses to watch the surfers taming the waves that crashed in seemingly haphazardly.
Here are some photos from the day, and I love the last few on sunset. So dramatic, for something quite fleeting. ;)
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