Just to let you know that we arrived in La Rochelle late pm after a gloriously sunny and mill pond smooth journey from Les Sables d’Olonne.

If anyone wants to check where we are real time, you can click on the following link to get an update. \240This is fed directly from our ships navigation /AIS system. Click here

For some reason it’s incorrectly reporting our size and as we all know, size matters! \240We are 18m and not 17m LOA. (Length \240overall)

Wow La Rochelle is lovely. I suppose I had heard of it before as an upmarket destination but not known much more. The old town is just lovely shabby chic with yet another spectacular market hall full of the most delicious looking food. All we have done so far is walk to and around the town from the marina (4.5k steps just to get there so Andrew pointed out). Andrew was happy because he found me a table top ironing board so that I don’t have to improvise and iron on the cockpit table \240😅. We had another Andrew happy lunch of \240plateau de fruit de Mer which was excellent despite being torteau not araignee 🦀.

On our way here yesterday we did our first bit of fishing and managed to catch Maddie mackerel (see below) who was small but very tasty & made a good starter for our duck salad last night.

This week (Tuesday) marked our fourth week away from home. This is the longest either of us have been away from home but VA is starting to feel like home (especially since I now have an ironing board!!). We have done over 500 nautical miles since leaving Cherbourg and have visited 8 ports so far, all of which have had their own uniqueness.

We are flying back to the UK for a couple of weeks on the 6th and hope that when we return to France to continue our trip that some of our friends& family come out and join us on bits of our adventure. Especially now that the weather is improving it will be lovely to host on board.

We will be here though for the next week because there is lots to do, see & eat & it is slightly possible the engineering work we need doing to the tail lift will finally be done next week. So no doubt we will make a few more posts from here & nearby Isle de Re.

Today we are on one of our bus trips, this time to the beautiful town of St Martin de Re on the Isle de Re. It is a really pretty Port town with cobbled streets, shabby chic cottages and lots of very dangerous shops full of nice things. I already have 2 lovely new handbags 😀 but luckily the shops have just done that French thing & shut for lunch before I can do too much more damage. The photos hopefully do it more justice than I can with words but if you are ever in this part of France it is well worth a trip over the bridge from La Rochelle.

It is finally confirmed that the work we need to fix the hydraulic lift will be done this week. We are moving into another part of the marina tomorrow ready for VA to be lifted first thing on Weds am. We hope that the spare parts that are being sent from Prestige today arrive tomorrow & our engineer will arrive from England to do the work. If we don’t get it done in a day Thursday is yet another bank holiday here inFrance (we thought we had it good with 2 holidays in May but the French have 3!!!) so we may not get put back in until Friday if they can fit us in. So we will be here for a few more days & will have to move into a hotel for at least one night (oh please let it have a lovely spa 😋) .

Today we are being lifted and the engineers from the UK are arriving to fix the hydraulic lift - yippee. It has taken a lot of organising & cajoling from Andrew to make this happen so we are happy. We need the hydraulic lift so that we can easily drop the tender in and out as well as launching the paddle board and kayakers etc so it not working is a problem. Andrew & I will be spending the next couple of night on land at the Ibis Hotel which will feel very odd after spending 5 \240weeks on board.

Great news 😀 we are back on board, back in the water and back in our home - thanks to the work of James & John the 2 Ancasta engineers who travelled from England. We are moving back to Les Minimes Marina later today until Sunday when we will continue our intrepid travels southwards.

Much as we have loved being in La Rochelle we now know it like locals & have seen every thing we want to see & almost tried everything in the market \240so it’s time to move to somewhere new.

It’s June !!

Our last night here in La Rochelle & today we had 29 degrees clear skies & it’s been beautiful. We did a last lovely trip to the market this morning on our bikes. We are still sitting out at 10.30pm and it is warm which is a first and exactly what we were looking for when we planned this trip.

We also had drinks with another English boating couple tonight - Andrew & Linda from Weymouth - \240again a first for this trip. So far British boats have been sparse & British motor boats even sparser so since the yachties don’t like to mix with us motor boats it was nice to meet some like minded souls. We have missed the usually friendly social life of boating but perhaps the warmer weather will make it easier now & there will be more people along the way to meet & chat with. We have talked to lots of other boaters along the way - \240French, German & English but not had any chats that ended in drinks so it made a lovely change.

Tomorrow morning we are heading out to Port Medoc (not in Wales) at the south of the Gironde River.

La Rochelle to Port-Medoc

We are now definitely more than half way down the French Atlantic coast - suddenly it feels like we are making progress.

A 5 hour mostly calm & mostly sunny trip here yesterday except at the mouth of the Gironde river where the currents and shifting sands make arrival a little bit more interesting than it needs to be. From quite a distance we could see a wall of huge crashing waves at the entrance to the river but we took the advice and followed the channel in and only experienced mild friskiness!

We haven’t explored much here yet but the marina is pleasant & people very friendly & helpful particularly since we had to move VA 3 times to get a suitably sized berth that we are happy to leave her here for 3 weeks. In doing so Andrew managed to break a toe on a cleat 😱 so nurse Emma has administered nurofen & sympathy (not much else I can do). I have added a picture of it this morning - ouch!!

Our flight back from Bordeaux is on Thursday so we will do a bit of site seeing between now and then. We are in the Bordeaux wine region so it might involve visiting a few vineyards & tasting & buying some rather nice wines 🍷🥂🍇 .

A day trip by boat over the Gironde river to Royan. We nearly came to the marina here but I am pleased we chose port medoc instead. Royan is another town that was obliterated by the allies in 1944 so has been brutally rebuilt. However we found another fabulous market albeit in a 1970s ish building and a delicious lunch with a nice Bordeaux white. Now heading back on the ferry to Le Verdon sur Mer which although there isn’t much there, it is set in beautiful tranquil pine forests.

The Cockleshell Heroes

After a mostly wet day doing boat based jobs like cleaning, washing & ironing I finally managed to get out for a walk mid pm (Andrew stayed at home due to continuing pain from his still very broken toe). I walked to the Point de Graves at the mouth of the Gironde and found this amazing memorial to the Cockleshell Heroes of 1942 followed by this plaque to 2 of them.

On my return I read the whole story & it really is an amazing one. 10 specially trained royal marines were dropped by submarine at the mouth of the Gironde in December 1942 in 2 man kayake/canoes. Their mission was to row down under the cover of darkness the 40 odd miles to Bordeaux armed with limpet mines to disable German ships in the port. The sea conditions were very poor & 2 capsized at The Point de Graves and clung on to the other canoes but were stopped on the shore, they were quickly caught by the Germans interrogated and then shot. The remaining 8 continued with 2 more being lost and bodies washed up later. 4 made it to Bordeaux and they managed to damage up to 6 ships 4 more were caught & shot & only 2 made it back by getting across land to Spain & then back to the UK. All in all an audacious plan which succeeded in part but at the expense of 8 highly trained Royal Marines. Having seen the really tricky conditions in the Gironde I can only think that canoeing in it in December was incredibly treacherous. This story was particularly poinnent to me because my finding this memorial was yesterday on The day before the 75th anniversary of D Day.

The 2 who survived lived a good and long life dying in 1995 and 2004 - all of them amazingly brave men.

We have just spent a lovely day in Bordeaux ahead of our flight back to the UK tonight. Our last day here for two weeks. We secured Verano Azul with some extra ropes before we left her because it looks like there will be a big storm at the weekend.

We got an early train from Verdon-sur-Mer that travelled through all the Bordeaux vineyards including Pauillac & Margaux & we passed by the large wine Chateaus. We passed miles & miles of vineyards making more wine than even Andrew will ever drink.

Bordeaux is a very grand city on the banks of the Garonne river ( the Garonne & the Dordogne rivers merge just upstream to form the Gironde River where we are berthed at the mouth) \240with lots of beautiful squares & old buildings.

We noticed the little boat you can see below - just a tad larger than VA. A bit of \240investigation by Andrew unearthed that it belongs to John Henry the US billionaire who owns Liverpool FC and a few other things!! We particularly liked the infinity pool on the back which is not dissimilar from our own passerelle into the sea swimming option 😂. Other similarities are that this boat has ropes and so does ours. We did even see the Henry Family enterage and their 2 bodyguards leaving their little boat for a guided tour of Bordeaux.

After this excitement there was nothing else for it but to indulge in a delicious lunch washed down with a bottle of Margaux of course.

It feels odd to be back but am sure after a couple of days it will feel normal again. Everything here is looking great thanks to Victoria.

Anyway a small break from our Gap Year blog until we return to Port Medoc in 2 weeks time. In the meantime we have our lovely view of the Thames instead of the sea.

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