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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2010 6:47:52 GMT
Cancale is a small fishing port between Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo. It is famous with the French, Belgians and Germans but probably not all that many other people, except for the Channel Islands residents. On the day I was there, I saw many cars with licence plates from Jersey and Guernsey, which are just off shore. I'm not sure how these towns grew -- from the top down or from the bottom up? Just about all of the coast along here has cliffs, or at least a sharp incline, with more or less space at beach level. Due to the massive tides -- this is after all the bay of Mont St. Michel with some of the hugest tides in the world -- it took quite a bit of work with seawalls and such to protect the houses at the bottom from exceptional weather. But there's no denying that it was much more convenient for the fishermen to live down by the water. Anyway, the towns cover both the top and the bottom now, but you arrive from above, where you will find things such as the town hall and the principal church. I'm not sure if the town hall used to be a private manor or if it just looks that way. The church is just the 'standard model,' probably half ruined after the war since so few of these towns escaped bombs, but it looks fine now. I didn't bother to go in. The square in front of the church has a fountain to honour the oyster wives. Anyway, I wanted to go down to the port. Cancale is a town that I know better than a few others in the area, because I had a friend whose father had a secondary residence in Cancale. A group of us went there for the weekend a few times and stayed in it. The place was more or less in ruins back then, but since then his father has retired -- sold his boulangerie in the Paris suburbs -- and now lives in the renovated house full time. (I have never been back to the house, but the photos I have seen are lovely.) The port has its usual collection of seafood restaurants. Some were closed for the season, but I would say that about half of them were open.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 30, 2010 7:13:44 GMT
Nice! Are you wending your way around the coast of Brittany?
So many hotels and restaurants, but no people in the pictures. Was that because you took them early in the day? It must be hard to decide where to eat, with all that choice. Lovely food choices.
Do people in the region all speak standard French now?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2010 7:17:35 GMT
The tide was going out while I was there. I would like to see some of these ports at high tide one of these days! The breakwaters are really reinforced to resist heavy seas. This man was down in the mud apparently doing something with fishing nets and seaweed. Our feathered friends were scavenging in the tidal sand. I wouldn't want to live here, but some of the houses seem cosy. The lower part of town is not very wide. It comes up against the cliff pretty quickly. Even on a Sunday afternoon, there is a small oyster market in operation.
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Post by myrt on Nov 30, 2010 7:33:28 GMT
I've actually been here! Years ago though.....looks very different when it's deserted I like off season seaside places personally - they have a quite other personality don't they?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2010 7:35:47 GMT
Nice! Are you wending your way around the coast of Brittany? So many hotels and restaurants, but no people in the pictures. Was that because you took them early in the day? It must be hard to decide where to eat, with all that choice. Lovely food choices. Do people in the region all speak standard French now? I think just about all of the hotels were closed, even when their restaurants were open. I am back in Paris; a snowstorm was threatening anyway. I have never heard a single person speak the Breton language anywhere. I would imagine that most people under the age of 60 probably have a Breton vocabulary of about 20 words. It is a fiction that the language is still "alive". According to statistics, about 1% of the people of Brittany can speak Breton and 9% can understand it. A town like Cancale is barely in Brittany anyway -- it is very close to the border of Normandy. The "real" Brittany is out on the pointy peninsula of Finistère.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2010 7:38:52 GMT
I've actually been here! Years ago though.....looks very different when it's deserted I like off season seaside places personally - they have a quite other personality don't they? Yes, in the summer you have to push your way through the crowds! Hard to imagine. Just take parking as an example -- they charge 0.50€ per 20 minutes from 15 April to 15 November! The rest of the time it is free and there are all the parking spaces you could possibly want.
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Post by bjd on Nov 30, 2010 7:57:06 GMT
Of the places on your map, I have been to Mont St Michel, Granville (to visit someone) and to Cancale. For some ridiculous reason we thought we could go swimming around there because it was a hot day in July. The water was freezing! The kind that makes your skin turn bright red as you wade in. Never again!
I agree those houses look nice, but certainly would never want to live up there. Just the pitch of the roofs shows how much rain the area gets. I also think of the area as Normandy, rather than Brittany.
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Post by hwinpp on Nov 30, 2010 8:10:27 GMT
What do they use those flat boats for, K2? Do they slide accross the mud or do they float at high tide?
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Post by tod2 on Nov 30, 2010 11:53:24 GMT
Your map brought back the memories of our car trip from Chartres to St/Malo with a night stop at Avranches before spending the night in the old city of St.Malo, then catching the ferry to Guernsey. Your photos make me want to do it all over again!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2010 13:19:24 GMT
What do they use those flat boats for, K2? Do they slide accross the mud or do they float at high tide? Looking at them, my imagination tells me that nets full of shellfish could be piled on the flat part. However, since they are clearly not meant to go far from shore, they might just be used for transferring the nets from the bigger boats and taking them to the dock.
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Post by fumobici on Nov 30, 2010 16:09:10 GMT
Beautiful photo essay, thanks. I doubt I'd be caught dead there in Summer but it looks well worth an off-season visit.
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 30, 2010 18:18:04 GMT
You're in my territory. We've (I've) been thinking about spending a week in Brittany soon, maybe way out in Finistère. Someplace barren in a cozy old cottage with a fireplace doing jigsaw puzzles and eating oysters and drinking cider for a week. Cold, snow and gray skies are OK (no rain though). Near the coast too. I want to get bundled up and go for a walk along the coast in the freezing cold with some wild seas crashing against the cliffs. Late in the afternoon with a glowing orange sun filtering through gray and purple clouds. Maybe walk to a small coastal village and spend a few hours at a café. I need an anti-civilization vacation.
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Post by mossie on Jan 30, 2011 14:43:21 GMT
Mnay thanks for reminding me of a fun couple of days we spent in Cancale while touring the Normandy beaches. We stayed in a harbour front hotel in a room at the rear with an outlook direct to the cliff behind. The fisherman had very powerful stern trawlers which they had great fun in roaring round the harbour.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 30, 2011 16:36:46 GMT
Very interesting K2...and a beautiful place. There's something fascinating about touristy places out of season.
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Post by sojoh on Aug 18, 2011 9:04:59 GMT
Kerouac, I was at Cancale eating mussels (not an oyster fan) on Sunday! The tide was out while I was there, too. I took some of the same pics - the oyster market, boats looking like stranded sea creatures waiting for the water to return, etc. The oysters seem to have been a bit less expensive when you were there and you were lucky enough to have missed all of the tourists. It was crowded! outandaboutinparis.blogspot.com/2011/08/cancale-oyster-capital-of-brittany.html
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 18, 2011 9:54:21 GMT
Just noticed the name of one of the bars... Tapecul?
Does it mean what I think it means or is that some local argot for something perfectly innocent?
And the oysters in Cancale are cheaper than here!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2011 10:53:36 GMT
Just noticed the name of one of the bars... Tapecul? Does it mean what I think it means or is that some local argot for something perfectly innocent? Yes, in the sailing world, a tapecul is a stern sail used for stabilization. However, there is another more literal meaning for 'ass-bumper' -- it is one of the words used to refer to a seesaw.
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