Belle, Belle Ile

July 15, 2016

Bastille Day + 1

On the kindness of the BelleIleois

Belle Ile is an island and it's a marvellous, marvellous place. Because there are few people here normally, people just make things happen and help each other out all the time!  (I have heard 4,000 or 5,000 permanent residents, and 40,000 to 50,000 from Bastille Day until the end of August.)

This island, according to Google, is 86 square kilometres -- about a quarter the size of Quadra Island, which I used to live on. 

I have mainly been posting my photos and ideas on facebook for the last six weeks... it's just so much easier and quicker than Blogger. So there aren't really enough photos in this post, but it's a taste, anyway.

Let me give you a little orientation: there are four larger villages (i.e. large enough to have a store and a pub or two): Le Palais, Sauzon, Bangor, and Locmaria. We love them all, in different ways. 

Le Palais is the main town, where the ferry docks and there's a hospital and larger grocery stores and a market every weekday morning. There are several bars where you can get a rosé or a coffee (well, or other drinks too, but most people drink rosé here). Yesterday I went into the café that we call "the starey café" because the first several times we went there we got stared at, but now we get greeted and chatted to by the patrons instead. :) The owners have always been super-lovely, which explains why we frequent it. (For those of you who don't know me that well, we/I spend a lot of time in cafés writing/working, or making Yarrow write/work.)

Yesterday we went into the starey café and I asked the barman/owner if I should have a coffee or a rosé because I couldn't decide, and he said, "well, the rosé is cheaper..." and I said exactly and had one of those. There is a bakery beside the starey café and you can bring your food to eat with your drinks, no problem. They usually have the horse races showing (which also explains the occasional stareyness, there are some Irish-style gamblers about, but not as many, but the people who bet on the horses here, few though they be, go to the starey café.)

Another café, called Le Poisson Rouge, has a great view and is down by the port on main street ... but also tourist prices. The Starey Cafe doesn't have tourist prices. :) And from there you can see HUGE boats going through the tiny lock/drawbridges to unload at the warehouses. Also very pleasing.

Many of the businesses in Le Palais have punny names, like "Belle Il et Elle" (cosmetics), Le Palais au Marin, (a shop for mariners to get their stuff), Le Fourn Ile (a fournil is a bakery). Also, many signs are hand-lettered, which I love. This place is just so honest and not corporatized.



Another cool thing about Palais is the city walls and fortifications, done in Louis XIV's time by his special fortification dude, Vauban.

The photo above is from the "enceinte" of the city. I think that's hilarious because it's the same word as pregnant... anyway, it certainly does surround and protect! Multiple layers of walls. They have parties in between them, and also courts to play boules! Yay, boules. We just got the balls for it yesterday, though we learned it at Conrad's place (Castle Creagh) in Ireland.

Sauzon

Sauzon is also an enchanting little place, with a harbour that reminds me of St. John's, Newfoundland (though smaller of course).  We went there to try to find Acadian things on the 251 anniversary of Acadians coming back to Belle Ile (yes, immigration FROM Canada), but we didn't find any Acadian events that day but we found a school fundraiser which was a lot of fun.

The formula for parties seems pretty standard here on Belle Ile:

1. The smartest thing: you get your beer/wine/soft drink in a souvenir cup that costs 1 Euro, and you keep your cup and reuse it. So smart. So much better than all those wasted plastic cups!! Drinks include rosé, vin blanc, or vin rouge, or kir, which is white wine with fruit syrup in it (yep, I tried it -- yeck. In Ireland I was smart enough not to try the blackberry syrup in the stout but here I got crazy and tried it, well, now I know!) or "softs" -- orange juice, Orangina, Breton cola.

2. There's music. At the school thing in Sauzon it was kind of traditional music (by a DJ) but there are some good DeeJays on the island too.

3. There are sausages and French bread, and/or crepes.

The first time we went to Sauzon, when we had the car, we went to a seaside-y touristy hotel place (locals were there too, the first six weeks we were here, there weren't many tourists to speak of) that had chairs by the water. There is a seafood stand there where you can get all range of strange things, spider crabs and other crabs and oysters and some other stuff and these tiny little shrimp. Yarrow got some, but they give you like a hundred in a saucer (like a teacup saucer) and they take ages to eat. We watched the locals doing it enthusiastically but usually 3 or 4 people shared the saucerful, to cut down on the munching time. Strange snack if you ask me. I had oysters.

Sauzon is a boaty place (well, aren't just about all of the coastal towns here, but Sauzon especially).
Here's a mural on the side of a building.

I posted this one on my Facebook page, and one clever friend wondered if that wasn't rather a lot of sails for such a wee boat. Another clever friend (Very boaty himself) said the name of those ships and that they were often used by pirates as they're so fast. :)

Speaking of pirates and boats, you also find military fortifications all over this place. Once the English won possession of this island for three years, but the French got it back again. Pesky English.

Locmaria

Locmaria was the first place we had a dinner invitation, from a couple I met at the beach. It has two nice swimming beaches, and a creperie, and an old lady bar (owned by an old lady, that is, an old lady who I like but Yarrow's not entirely fond of), and a friendly bicycle seller-renter guy. (When the car got a little hole in the oil pan, we thought of buying bicycles, and the guy in LocMaria suggested we might find more variety with the guy in Palais. Ha ha ha. The guy in Palais didn't really want to sell us any bicycles. When we went in to ask, he started ranting about some woman at the mayor's office who had bought a bicycle from him and didn't like it. He told us to go buy the bicycle from her. So we went to the mayor's office and tried to find this woman with a bicycle she didn't like, but nobody there had any idea at all what we were talking about. :) It was funny. We decided we didn't really want bikes anyway, hitch-hiking is so easy.

Anyway Locmaria also has many great parties in the street. There were the Euro Cup footie watching parties, there are dance parties, all kinds of things. The church in LocMaria is special for some reason, I don't remember why. First one on the island or last one of its type or some such. Anyway I really like it there.

Bangor

Bangor has a market on Sunday (the weekdays it's all Palais, and Helena told me there'll be some more evening markets soon too) and it's on the way to Kervilouen, where the music is. They have a bar there with lots of tables outside and a grocery store beside it. When they (defiantly) are in the hours when they aren't serving food, or even if they are, you can bring your own food and eat it at the tables and buy your drinks there. I really like that place because of the way the town square kind of  hugs in.

Bangor also has a dance/concert hall, where a man took me for one folk dancing club evening (and danced with someone else until the last song, urg), and then Yarrow and I went another time for a folkdancing night and it was really fun. Everybody dances, I mean like everybody. One lady who recognized us from hitch-hiking pulled us into the dance one time and another time when she saw we had joined but had no clue, she came to stand beside us to count out the steps. We had mostly gone to listen to the music (it was the same crowd as I see at the Kervi on Sundays), but dance studying happened too. :)

And then there are several other awesome places.

Kervilouen is probably my favourite other place because it's where the music happens, at the restaurant there, which is called Le Kervi. If I was going to pick a place to live here on the island, I think it might be that village.

Also, our friend Helena (see photo)

lives there and has her candy-making kitchen there, so we visit Kervilouen a lot. As you can see, she laughs a lot. She also is very passionate about her food, like Yarrow is. She's a lot of fun and very very kind. She has a daughter (she was a single mom) who lives in Belgium, and the daughter is very very happily married and has a daughter too. That's good news that kids of single moms can get happily married, isn't it?

(note: the photo actually shows her in Palais on Bastille Day, with her market setup for selling marshmallows, not in Kervilouen)

Close to Kervilouen there are Port Goulphar and Port Coton, which I think probably make up the most gorgeous of coastal walks that I've discovered so far, though it's a tight race. There are coastal walks all the way around the entire island.

Yes, the entire island. Through extreme intelligence and wisdom,  the island authorities have limited/almost forbidden big splashy development. There are a couple of larger hotels at Port Goulphar (one is Castel Clara and the other one is "The Grand Large Hotel," which makes more sense after someone translated for us –"large" means a big vista, which The Grand Large certainly has!), but mostly all the houses have to follow the same template.  Like this photo:

 

There are no large obnoxious mansions. There are a few smaller older mansions close to Palais, but seriously only a handful, that sneaked in before the regulations to make everything the same. Overall, it's been a good move. Since some people add sunrooms or large patio doors, I think I could totally live with it too. Pretty small problem really. People seem happier here with the smaller houses than the material-obsessed people with their massive houses in North America. Sure, you don't have as much housing choice, but you have street parties and friendly people and the feeling that you can make happen, whatever you like.

There are also a handful of houses made out of the old windmills. The sails aren't on them any more, but they must have been an amazing sight, when they were!

Another common place for me to go is Port Salio on the way to the closest beach... which just happens to be past the beer-making place. ! Yay craft beer. It's fairly decent too, I like the amber one. Le Morgat, it's called. But rosé is way cheaper to drink so I usually have that or coffee when I'm out. But today to finish writing this blog, I went to Le Morgat (closest place to sit down for a drink to our farm). Now I'm in  Bangor with Yarrow and we'll soon go to the piano concert.

I don't particularly want to leave here, but I am conscious of time passing (we've been here six weeks already), and that we are going to need to go to Nantes on the continent to try to get an extension on  our standard 3-month-stay visa. I hope they give it to us easily. I've tried telephone and e-mail, but no luck. So, we'll go to the OFII office and hopefully the door won't be summer-vacation-locked! If it is, we'll take a 3-month sojourn to Britain and try again in the fall. (insert Gallic shrug here)

The many blessings of the car being broken (but we'd really like it back soon, please!)

Still waiting (5 weeks and counting) for the mechanic to get around to fixing our car. She got a tiny hole in her oil pan in our first week here due to a rock on the way to Herlin beach. (Update: July 16, he actually took the car out of the yard where we are staying -- progress! He said "peut-etre" it would be done Samedi. Our neighbour lady and Yarrow both are betting on Monday.)

That sounds  crazy to anyone off-island, doesn't it? It sounds crazy here, too, but in a way it has been a blessing, too. Hitch-hiking here is very very easy (usually the first, second, or third car, and many people will go out of their way to deposit you exactly where you are going), and because we have hitch-hiked so much, we've made even more new friends. Walking here is also gorgeous, and distances are so small (the island is only 19 km by 9 km) it is possible to walk supposing we didn't get a lift (though we always do, unless we decide not to). It's not horrible like being without a car would be in Alberta.

They even have special little turnouts on the road for hitch-hiking, affirming to all and sundry that it's an approved activity here.

Here's another one, with two French hitch-hiker girls (notice the stripes on the one on the right! Yay stripes) and a sign telling me I missed a horse show this morning. Rats. I love those handwritten signs but sometimes they should put them up earlier!!

Sometimes people even stop to offer you a lift if you don't have your thumb out! It's a really lucky feeling when someone does that. You just sort of count up your blessings when interacting with people on Belle Ile. (Another guy, who I met at music but who also gave us a lift, is one of the other wwoofing hosts, and he is very kind. He invites us along when there are things going on (such as story night at the goat farm), gave us a tour of the goat milking and cheese making, and arranged a "stage" (learning period) for Yarrow with the vet. So kind!!

Oh, I just casually tossed out "music" there -- there is traditional music Sundays (and it turns out, most evenings too, at the Kervi... also I wouldn't have known about that except that someone I met hitch-hiking, who later made us crepes and took me along to the folk dancing, mentioned the music.

Also due to hitch-hiking, word gets around that there are Canadians at Kerourdé (that's the name of the small village where we are staying). One morning, a guy walked up from Locmaria (one of the larger villages, down south) because he'd heard through the grapevine there was a Canadian there. He just sat down and chatted for an hour -- it turned out that he had taught at Brooks Composite High School, in Alberta, ten years before I did. This is pretty funny as there are not very many people at all who even know where Brooks is, never mind who have taught at the high school!

Another benefit that any hitch-hiker knows about is the randomness factor. One day we decided we would go to Donnant, Yarrow's favourite swimming beach (and the most dangerous -- the big waves mean dangerous currents to the unwary, but the surfers love it). We caught a lift with some people who were going a little farther, near Petit Donnant, to the Apothecarie. The beach there turned out to be not-so-swimmable, so we had a splendid, splendid walk on the cliffs all around the north end of the island, a splendid lunch, and eventually, at the end of the day, discovered a swimming beach (Which, miraculously, also did not have any jellyfish, as most of the beaches seem to right now). We watched a giant white jellyfish from the clifftops, and we discovered a merveille of hydrangeas that had clearly been planted decades or centuries ago and have spread, well, marvellously. This photo shows maybe a third or a quarter of what was there.

Magical days sometimes only happen by surprise.

Evening views when hitch-hiking home, for example from watching the Euro footy match in LocMaria, are also extremely pleasant. I mean, honestly, every where I look on this island is a feast for the eyes.

Here are some more nice pictures from my hiking-hitching around today (Saturday, July 16, 2016).