We’ve been in St Malo for three days now and we’ve really enjoyed it here. On our first night we were lucky to stumble on a live music venue which had a sign in the window just were we sat (no dogs), but unknowingly as we approached, the owner (must have been) was smoking a fat cigar and waved us in and up the entrance steps clearly seeing Zibbs with us. The music was amazing and it was a great way to finish off the hard day.
The next day we set forth to explore and began with an old fort (bastion) up a steep set of steps just at the end of the marina car park. In the middle of the wide path is a collection of what must be WWII turrets on the cliff side which have striking marks on them. They must have been hit by numerous large shells and smaller bullets leaving something that resembles indentations in butter. Each shell carving out a scoop from the solid iron dome as it made impact and skimmed off or became absorbed into the turret. From this vantage point the many forts of St Malo are visible that (according to wikipedia) were used by the occupying forces.
Later, on another hilly walk we ventured into town up to the Place du Theatre and joined hundreds of locals exploring the different goods on display inside the farmers market. The market place was full of vibrant colours and a hive of activity as locals politely queued at each counter for their favourite vegetable, fruit, cheese or butchers cut. We quickly filled up our rucksack with tomatoes, asparagus, artichoke, cabbage, chicken, a few other things and then came across the dairy counter selling slices of butter from large cheese like drums, the lady explained that one had fine salt, the middle none, and the third was more granulated salt, we took a modest slice of the latter. The cheese was amazing, the white sausage less so.
Wanting to venture further we outed our bikes for the first time, leaving Zibby sleeping comfortably on the boat in her afternoon food coma, and we zipped around the road system to explore the old fortified town mixing with swarm of tourists, many it seems must have disembarked from the cruise liner moored up in the bay. Looking above the busy string of shops inundated with the modern day consumer we marvelled at the condition of the buildings today compared to how they must have been left after the war. The city walls must have done a great job to protected this warren of cobbled streets over the centuries as pirates and privateers profited from its location and trade. As we left the hustle and bustle behind us returned back to our homely marina and down the steep pontoon to find pooch still fast asleep. Not a great guard dog!
As the tides ebb in and out we watch the height gauge near the entrance to the marina rise and fall from 1m up to 12m. Such an extreme tidal variation during springs such that the access up and down to the floating pontoons from land become incredibly steep, what feels like close to 45 degrees. As a result we begin to time our adventures in and out around high water to ease our ascent and descent each time.
Towards the end of our stay our mooring has become calm with the winds now from the east, but over the past two nights we’ve had a rather rocky sending off to bed as the westerly winds stirred up the seas and with our end of pontoon being positionned close to the marina entrance we have little shelter from the chop. We increased the number of our mooring warps to something that resembled a spider web to reduce the holding stress across both boat and pontoon cleats, and on the second night copied local boats by installing some rubber shock absorbers into the warps, they look rather phallic but they made a big difference on night two which softened our holding and gave Janine more comfort in the galley to prepare another fabulous dinner on board: this time yummy pea risotto.
On our last day we headed over to Dinard with our dinghy, our first adventure out in ‘little G’. With the fuel gauge replaced and the diesel fuel mix up sorted she got us there and back safely. We tucked her into a spot on the visitor pontoon for an hour as we walked around the pretty coastline to discover a posh parade with a casino overlooking a beautiful wide sandy beach. Unfortunately we lost the go-pro footage when the memory card got corrupted, but luckily we have plenty of photos on our cameras.
Next we head off to St Cast for a few nights.