Concarneau

The marina at Concarneau is right under the walls of La Ville Close, so BV was very conveniently positioned for visiting the sights. We started with the Monday market and Les Halles and then did the standard tourist circuit of La Ville Close.

The food is always well presented in French markets and it is a real pleasure just to walk around and see what is available. We came back with plenty of fresh vegetables and some Merguez sausages which had caught our eye.

After lunch in the cockpit we visited La Ville Close. It was surprisingly busy given that it was a Monday afternoon early in the season but we managed to avoid the worst of the queues for the excellent ice creams. Food and stripy Breton clothes were the main themes of the shops in the old town. There were some lovely looking cafés and restaurants in the main square and cake and sweet shops aplenty in the narrow cobbled streets.

Having thoroughly explored and enjoyed the views from the ramparts of the Ville Close, we spent some time on board experimenting. We started with the Remoska, a low-wattage cooker which should be very useful for ‘oven’-cooking dishes when we have shore-power available, or when we are prepared to run the generator to provide 240V for half an hour or so. Though we have had it for a few months, we have not yet taken the opportunity to properly try it out. This time we used it for both practical and luxury purposes, using it to oven-cook / grill the Merguez and then using it to bake a Far Breton, having been inspired by some of the desserts we had seen whilst wandering in the town. The Remoska worked really well for both dishes and we will definitely be using it again, if only to save on Camping Gaz / Propane when we are in harbour. The only question is how often we will be able to hook up to shore-power in the furture? – only time will tell.

Whilst we were in the town we had taken the time to download some synoptic charts from the internet and saw that there may be a suitable weather opportunity for crossing Biscay from Thursday. Rather than have internet access for routine use on board whilst away from harbour, we have an HF radio to access weather information. Again, we have not fully explored its capabilities and today’s second self-taught tutorial was focussed on receiving weather faxes and synoptic charts.  Interestingly, we found that the charts from the Northwood (UK) transmitter came through with almost too much noise interference on them to make them legible. We had seen this before and were concerned that there may be a problem with our radio set-up. However, we also managed to download some synoptic charts from the equivalent German station at Pinneburg and these came through beautifully. Quite why this should be the case we don’t know but further experimentation over the next few month may help to answer the question.

The plan now is to move to the Odet River for a couple of nights and to watch the weather from there. If it remains favourable we intend to set out across Biscay early on Thursday, for a crossing that we hope will take us about 3 days.  If all goes well the next blog will be posted from Spain.

Concarneau, France