appendix four: post/post: some 2020 lights

It was a bit of a bonus in the year of the pandemic, to take in a couple of phare opportunities as we beetled back to blightey after our one and only visit to Sablet. So intent was I upon reaching our island shores before France turned inwards for a second shut-down, I completely forgot my aspiration to try and improve on my Barges photograph, even though we were spending our last night in France at adjacent Les Sables d'Olonne. It was only as we walked the quayside at dusk that I remembered poor old Barges. Too late. Another time maybe.

A happy morning of sunny interlude was spent on the Île-de-Ré after such a lack of promise weather-wise the previous day en route from Sarlat-la-Canéda to La Rochelle. The island proved to be considerably busier than we expected, not that it impeded us particularly. 

Chauveau is much closer to the island shore than to the mainland of course, but being south of that shore was rather more of a sihouette than I would have liked at that time of day. Tide and time prevented us walking out to it, as you can in favourable conditions, and by now the virus infestations inside my TZ70 camera were getting quite beyond a joke: black smudges on the sensor, motes and particles in the optics. In fact after the island I more or less abandoned using it altogether.  Le Tour Lavardin is red and black and partners Chauveau. Sorry, just a silhouette again but it is a feu not a phare, so it will have to do.

At the north end of the Île-de-Ré we returned to Les Baleines, demonstrating big time on this day the truth of the fact that this is indeed the most visited lighthouse in France if not Europe. Pandemic notwithstanding there were hordes, more hordes, and then some. Mostly masked A snake of folk queuing to climb the tower. Not likely! It was bad enough just cutting through the shop! In there they had displayed the best array of Héron cards and posters I've seen in years and a cabinet of models (below left) of French phares as comprehensive as those once displayed in that shop in Roscoff from where my model of Bodic came from. In my snap the large poster catching the light is NOT by JBH, but someone by the name of Emmanuelle Étienne who mimics Jean Benoît's style and output producing perspective elevations of Fr. phares. Good, even very good, but not as good as the master! I would have liked to have lingered, but toooo many folk! But I did check the JBH stock: I had it all excepting the single light postcards… I expect at least sympathy to go with the pity you must feel for me concerning my obsessive quest for Héron's work in print…

The camera held up well enough to get at last my own half decent image of Les Baleineaux through the rags of an approaching storm. I also feature the 1682 tower in my montage above, which preceded the improved lighthouse of 1854. We could have climbed this former lighthouse instead I suppose. We didn't, but took in some beach before having a sandwich lunch on the Pointe de Grouin.  It was from that vantage point that we were able to see another feu, north-east from the point,  Les Islattes. A mere feu of course but Madame M was able to capture the rather fine composition that heads this post-post. I didn't think the cardinal was showing a light but M caught it doing just that… is it the sun reflected in its optic? Discuss. Anyway. This part of the post links to phares sighted post number 55. 

We motored off the island and drove on through deteriorating weather to Les Sables d'Olonne. Raining. By the time we found our hotel, sorted out where we were in relationship to the port and the sea, got our stuff into the hotel, it was getting close to dusk, so we confined ourselves to a walk down to the leaning light at the end of the north mole (Jetée des Sables) before finding somewhere safe enough to eat our supper. 

The lighting system for the harbour and port which I alluded to in the post that covers Les Sables became to some extent, more easily understood when seen in action. Good to see the mole lights come on one by one and then the other lights associated with them, and each other. Despite some reservations I had  concerning the hotel (dashed expensive, no parking etc) I think we will return in a happier time — post pandemic, post crisis. We like Les Sables.

This last part of the post links to phares sighted post number 53.