la grande côte: la coubre

In 2002 Mme Melling sorted out an addition to our more usual summer holiday in France when she researched, found and booked a diminutive apartment on the west coast, within easy striking distance of Royan. With her usual perspicacity she foresaw the burgeoning fascination of her husband with all things phare since the purchase of the Plisson book in 1999 and the visit to the exhibition in La Rochelle in 2000, as described in my page about the start of this quest: light bulb moment. So it was in a chilly but intensely bright between-terms-week we came down to La Grande Côte, after the previously mentioned stop on the Île-de-Ré and associated ascent of Phare des Baleines. 

The apartment was indeed small but looked out above the coastal main road straight across to the most iconic of French lighthouses: Cordouan. There it was! The legend. We could watch it night and day if we chose. Not particularly near, but no matter, almost as close as possible on land, anyway. Cordouan was within sight!

I shall deal with Cordouan, France's oldest and most revered phare, in a later post, because dear reader, there were other pleasures to be had from the strategic masterpiece Mme Melling had secured by finding this cramped little holiday rental. And principle among these delights was the revelation that is La Coubre!

Cordouan is wonderful, yes: but La Coubre is so much closer to my ideal of what a lighthouse should really be about. On the Pointe de la Coubre a few miles north of our holiday let, in the forests cloaking the sand dunes. No chapel here, just a soaring clean white tower, with a keeper (well there was then) and an informality about allowing the occasional visitor to take the spiral stairs up to the gallery to view the vast seascapes, the broad and almost deserted beaches, the forests. I had to make the ascent on my own as the son-and-heir had declined to test his head for heights a second time after not enjoying Les Baleines overmuch. Mme Melling agreed to remain behind at the foot of the tower, to allow me to indulge my desire to top out. I slipped the requisite coinage into the honest keeper's quivering hand and strode manfully to the stair. A fine and airy ascent to the peeling paintwork of the gallery, the lantern curtains drawn around the Fresnel (to avoid fire from the reversed magnification on to the lamp). I almost had it to myself.

In season of course La Coubre gets a steady stream of visitors. The keeper is long retired, the chequerboard paintwork has been added since our first visit in 2002, and in 2019 when most of the pictures above were taken, La Coubre appeared freshly painted. I fear the Fresnel optic has been replaced with a more modern LED; the curtains seem to have become unnecessary.

This Pointe-de-la-Coubre tower was commissioned in 1905 at a station first established in 1830. The tower has a focal plane of 64 metres which comes out at about 210ft.  The characteristic is two white flashes at ten second intervals as well as a steady red or white light (depending where you are seeing it from) from the secondary lantern 42 metres up the tower. Said tower is 65 metres tall overall and made of re-enforced concrete. It did have a first order Fresnel lens. But now? I am not so sure. Huelse has a postcard view showing the earlier 1860 and 1895 lighthouses.: well worth a look

This light station guards the entrance to the Gironde and serves along with Cordouan as a landfall light for Bordeaux. The site is subject to rapid beach erosion. The 1830 phare was abandoned in 1860 when it was about to fall into the sea; it was replaced by a pyramidal skeletal tower that was regarded as a temporary light. In 1895 a 53 metre stone tower was placed in service, but it was built much too close to the water and was rapidly endangered. The present phare was built about a kilometre and a half from the shore and just in time; the 1895 lighthouse collapsed into the surf in May 1907. Forand (another post card collector) has historic postcard views of the 1895 lighthouse just before and after its collapse and of the 1905 lighthouse during its construction. I am indebted to The Lighthouse Directory for the links above and for the basic facts concerning La Coubre.

Erosion has brought the shore to within 200 metres of the present lighthouse. It may have to be moved. But will they do it? I think not, sadly. Phares and Balises are not renowned for the continuing upkeep of their lighthouses these days… The coast here has constantly shifting sands, wonderful to wander along, often almost deserted where the hinterland is pine clad dunes (but not 'in season' I'll be bound). We loved it in 2002 and on other brief visits, when we have hoped we might climb the tower en famille, but no, it has always been fermé. A simply wonderful location, the light watched for at night from La Grande Côte (well just  a few metres up the road to see it properly). One of my best of the best! We remember too La Grande Côte beach with phosphorescence at night, and its higgledy-piggle of bunkers, pillboxes and other 'Atlantic Wall' concrete defences, skewed and shunted by the sea into a discard of gigantic toy bricks…

The Coubre poster above graces a corridor wall at UK HQ and is the work of JBH, who else. 

The photos below shows the foundations of the 1895 tower now on the beach; the current tower behind the last dunes before the beach (below middle) while the last montage reflects our fascination with the ww2 Todt remnants scattered about La Grande Côte beach.