Vannes

We had a lovely couple of days in La Trinite last week - the marina offered us bikes for the day but skipper decided it was too unsettled so we braved public transport again and set off for Carnac, visiting the standing stones and the little town itself. John spent a while in the prehistoric museum - I gave it a miss and saved 6 euros, probably a good call as he wasnt impressed! Had a fab meal at Le Quai on the quayside - best of the trip so far.

Thursday saw us shooting a few miles along the coast to Port du Crouesty to pick up provisions before exploring the Gulf du Morbihan - what a size of marina, over 1500 boats of all shapes and sizes. The supermarche was quite a walk so we decided dinghy was quicker option - first time I've gone shopping with my lifejacket! Later we also braved the tides around Port Navalo in the dinghy - not an experience the crew enjoyed but skipper thought it was great fun as we surfed along through the eddies etc. Met another Scottish couple whilst having dinner, they keep their Moody down here - Papillon.

The weather being set fair for the weekend we entered the Gulf on Friday and found a glorious little anchorage on Ile aux Moines - there were some mooring buoys but it was pretty shallow - 0.5m! - so decided to drop the hook and there we stayed for the next 2 days, using the dinghy to explore the other islands.

Sunday saw us heading up the river to Auray - its much more of a 'working river' than those we've travelled so far and we had some difficulty finding a visitor buoy which looked big enough to hold Cabernet securely, eventually we just 'borrowed' one but that meant we couldnt really leave it for any length of time in case the owner returned - which in fact didn't happen.

After reviewing the weather forecast we decided to head to Vannes for a few days - skipper wasn't very keen but I wanted to revisit it after an absence of many years. The trip up required us to go through a swing bridge which only opened every half hour - skipper wouldnt exceed the speed limit and we missed the bridge by just a few minutes, which meant a lengthy wait on the holding pontoon. Getting ourselves on to this was 'tricky' - the wind was behind us and also blowing us off so although I managed to jump off it was incredibly difficult to get the line secured and I ended up hanging on to this 8.5ton boat for dear life as skipper tried to bring us alongside - which eventually he did.....I was regretting my insistance on coming to Vannes. However its been a lovely couple of days just wandering around the old town and sampling a couple of excellent restaurants - we hear the £ has risen to 1.20e so that makes us feel better!!

Forecast now pretty stormy for next few days so we've decided to head back to Port Crouesty to sit it out before scooting into River Villaine on Saturday and into the marina there on Monday where we've arranged to leave Cabernet whilst we drive up to Calais on Tuesday for the ferry home.

Lots of people here are saying the marinas further south are still closed after the severe storms in February so one of the main tasks whilst at home will be to find somewhere we can leave Cabernet for our longer trip home in August - we're hoping for Royan which will enable us to fly back from Bordeaux.