saint nazaire

It is not my plan to give here a eulogy concerning St Nazaire: it has ww2 submarine pens of notoriety, it has an armoured lock of similar vintage, blocked by a preserved (French) submarine exhibit; it has the famous massive dry dock where the legendary SS Normandie was constructed, the lock subsequently repaired after the daring ww2 Campbeltown raid; it has a fine port with real ships, swing and lift bridges; it has extensive ship repair and graving docks in which it builds some of the world's largest vessels; it has a maritime museum; it has a fine seafront redeveloped after the allies tried in vain to obliterate those u-boat pens; it has trams; it has fine beaches nearby; it has big ships passing up and down on the Loire; it has the longest bridge in France gracefully crossing high over the river; it has conceptual art and interesting paint jobs; it has had an obsession with Hergé's Adventures of Tintin; it has quite a lot of navigation aids; It has tugs and a Phare Et Balises depot; it has a bypass. But, as I say, no eulogy from me. Visit the place and see what you think.

We like St Nazaire. It has industry. We'd rather stay elsewhere but at a pinch we will on occasion resort to its economy hotels. St Nazaire buzzes. It doesn't score highly on the phare front, mind: Le Grand Charpentier is assigned to St Marc and even Pointe d'Aiguillon is marginal. Vieux-Môle is clearly a post-war rebuild and is now relegated to a mole marker. I am going to stick my neck out and claim Aiguillon for the city.

Aiguillon was first commissioned in 1756. The current tower has a focal plane of 28 metres or 92ft, shows a white or red light depending on direction, occulting four times every twelve seconds. The tower itself is 19 metres tall consisting of the original masonry tower with gallery, topped by a lantern and a nine metre pyramidal steel skeletal structure that rises above the lantern and carries a white slatted day-mark.

Aiguillon was built to serve as the front beacon of a range guiding mariners into the Loire entrance while avoiding the Banc du Grand Charpentier shoal. The Tour du Commerce was the rear beacon. A lantern and Fresnel lens were added to the tower in 1830. In 1857 the tower was increased in height to 20 m (66 ft). Huelse has a historic postcard view of the extended tower. In 1909, at the demand of the Navy, the tower was reduced to its original height; we don't know the reason for this. Apparently it wasn't so long afterwards that the skeletal tower was added to restore the daytime height of the lighthouse, since the addition appears in another postcard view posted by Huelse. Located on the north bank of the Loire estuary at the end of the Chemin de Port Charlotte, on the east side of St Marc about eight kilometres southwest of St Nazaire, (just out of frame in my picture up top). I am indebted to The Lighthouse Directory for some of this information: they place Aiguillon in St Marc. It isn't really; we've been to it and it wasn't. Whatever, JBH sees fit to produce a postcard of the place, so it gets the thumbs up from Mrs Melling and me…

Before we get off to St Marc then, let's just pop up the river to take in the industry on the left bank of the massive Loire but also to gain sight of the harbour light at Paimboeuf. Our natural inquisitiveness took us up to this modest little riverside port, which is currently pulling up its socks and becoming a desirable waterside refreshment stop. It was closed when we turned up.