A most unpleasant swim

The day before Melanie arrived back Woody and I went for a bike ride to explore an area of salt ‘farm’.

In the middle ages this area to the west of Vannes became wealthy from its salt resources. There is a low lying area behind a peninsular well protected from the sea that the tide just covered at very high tides. Myriad little dykes were made to trap the salt in rectangular ‘farms’ then subdivided into little pools. The trapped water was then evaporated off in the sun until the salt could no longer stay in suspension and it settled out; the salt was then scrapped from the bottom of the pool, allowed to dry and barrowed off.

You can see the salt settled out in the picture to the left.

Incredibly this is still an industry today, done exactly as it was 500 years ago using the very same pools, beautifully maintained. This is the sort of thing you expect to see in the rice paddies of Asia, not first world France! Still, it must make them a living. Many of the ‘farms’ seem to be private, a few of them selling salt at the side of the road at £1 Euro per kg – hardly gold dust!

I picked up Melanie from the train station in Vannes on Friday and we went to explore the city of Nantes. It was rather disappointing after some of the beautiful old places we have seen so far in Brittany. 

There was however this rather supper castle built in the 1500’s that took over as the base for the final years for the dukes of Brittany.

France has an odd attitude to dogs. The majority of people shy away from Woody and we heard one mother telling her child to keep away from him. We guess because they are worried about rabies. No dogs on beaches, no dogs in castles and certainly no dogs in cathedrals. However, we have a solution! Bought to carry Woody on longer walks as puppies should not walk more than half an hour in the first six months, we have a dog ruck sack that has become our Woody smuggling bag. Once tucked up inside you would never know he was there; it got us into the chateaux no problem and has even had Woody inside Notre Dame in Paris – not a lot of dogs can say they have been in there!

We locked the bikes on the dockside overnight as we were going to use them the next day. In the morning my heart sank as we rounded the corner in the dinghy to see my grey bike hanging over the water by the lock and Melanies bike gone except the front wheel still secured by the lock. I had taken the precaution of removing the saddle posts to make them useless to a joy rider. With no seat, no wheel, useless to anyone I decided Melanies bike could not have been stolen but must have been thrown in the dock just for the hell of it. I was very puzzled that they had managed to get the wheel off Melanies bike; I realised later that they had found the spanner in my bike bag and used that. What lengths they had gone to for this mindless vandelism.

The corner of the dock was a smelly mess of froth and rotting detritus. If I was right then the bike was below that lot. The bikes are too precious not to have on board; I knew from the boat depth gauge the water was only about 12' deep, I was going to have to try and retrieve it. Ear plugs in and mouth firmly closed I slipped into the stinking water after brushing a dead eel out of the way. Taking a deep breath I went down feet first, dreading what the bottom was going to be like. I didn’t get very far, I bottled it. Back on the surface I gave myself a stiff talking to, took another deep breath and duck dived down, down – it went dark – my hands touched the bottom - I groped around – nothing – back up. On the second attempt I touched a metal frame – bingo! I tied my rope around it, shot to the surface in triumph but as soon as I started to pull I knew it was not the bike, it was too heavy – I had found a portable railing. Check the spot – down again – more metal – this time I knew I had it, I felt the spokes. Tie the rope on and back to the surface – I had got it.

Back on the boat I cleaned the bike up and all was well. Not so with my bike sadly, the back wheel was badly buckled, it would need a new wheel. Still, if there’s one thing that can be repaired anywhere in the world it is a bike. I soon had a new wheel from the local bike shop, new rear cogs as well because my cogs didn’t fit the french wheel and we were back on the road.

When Woody had been with us for a month or so we went to dog training classes. One of the things we were told about was to brush a dogs teeth from time to time. Yeh right. Can you imagine – open and say aaahh while I scrub you teeth and gums! You can imagine the result, it wasn’t going to happen. 

We are realising that Woody can be quite smart when he wants to be, usually when food is at stake but he must have taken on board some of this talk. A toothbrush is a good cleaning tool to get in awkward places on the boat and I left mine on the deck one day. Woody spotted it and – yes, away he went -top teeth, bottom teeth, molars – !

After a few days with this tooth brush however he decided it was not for him, he found himself a real mans tooth brush!