We do an early zoom and our intentions are to head to St
Marc sur mer and hole up for the evening and perhaps go and have a look around
the naval museum and submarines in St Nazaire (next door) the following
morning. We arrive at St Marc and the aire is wonderful, plenty of space, no
snotty welcoming committee and the beach is just over the road and utterly
utterly beautiful. We do a quick recce and decide that this will do thank you
very much!!
The dogs are being oddly very well behaved and we spend a
wonderful afternoon on the beach – despite our favourite spot being nicked from
under our noses!! As the tide goes out, more and more pristine sand is
revealed, it’s very Cornish around here and reminiscent of the north coast. As
you know we are very law abiding people, so we obviously paid extremely close
attention to the fact that no dogs were allowed on the beach. Again. Happily
this results in no dogs being on the beach and Norm and Moo, in absentia of
course, had a fabulous time off the lead and generally tearing about. All ten
of us on this glorious plage had an empty and sunny time of it. However, we’re
out of booze and low on food, the dogs have been cooped up all day (ahem) so we
decide to forsake the charms of the beach and the lure of the subs and make a
move. We earmark a place that looks like a mere hop and a skip down the road,
but that might offer up a bit more in the way of supplies. Hop and a skip it is
not. We get caught in rush hour and have a total ‘mare extricating ourselves
from the area surrounding St Nazaire. Our final destination is Piriac sur Mer,
we cruise through some impossibly pretty and historic places en route, but
they’re not pretty or historic enough to tempt us. Piriac centre is a disaster,
the aires here are packed full (selfish camper van types, put your awning down
and move over!!); our magic aire book has left us with one option and the blurb
reads “always busy”… our hearts sinking we press on to our final option. Upon
arrival we find plenty of space, a very apathetic welcoming committee (selfish
camper van types, move your bicycles out of the way of the entrance please) and
we park up in record time and collapse.
We take the dogs for a walk on the
beach; dogs off the lead are of course allowed (ahem) and we meet two sprightly
locals. Everywhere we stop we find seems better than the last, how much better
can it get??! The locals we meet are totally unfazed by the dogs and we are
regaled with stories of how Monsiuer learned to swim on this very beach and how
he has kayaked pretty much around the world! They are 70ish years old and don’t
look a day over 50. With baited breath we await a demonstration of
sprightliness and sea prowess, fortunately the dogs take it upon themselves to
create a distraction.
When we return to the aire we are greeted with british
voices, perhaps an unconventional greeting of: “are you good??”.. what to say…
“never if we can help it?”.. mrs mischievous brit lets us off the hook and we
retreat to the van to fall asleep to the sounds of the sea and a peaceful,
beautiful aire, little piece of paradise again, we consider ourselves very
fortunate.
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