Singing among the Oyster Beds

25.5.2013 – Cancale

The sun is shining!  White, soft, coasting slowly past us - clouds against a deep blue sky.  At last the air has a soft warmth, the grass shines, the wind has gone, the trees green and still.  Long golden French bread, yellow honey, white butter. 

Cancale is a seaside resort – restaurants line the seafront, sunshades out – red, green, dark blue.  Even black, outside the contradictorily called ‘La Maison Blanc’.  Postcards on twirlies on the pavement, buckets and spades, beachballs nodding by shop doorways – just as our little shop in Millport used to do (and does now under its excellent new management).  There’s a long shallow beach, from which the water drains with scary rapidity, and a long pier with a little grey lighthouse. 

To one side, little stalls with blue and white awnings shade people selling oysters and mussels, fresh from the beds one the beach.  People are buying them and eating on the spot, squeezing lemons and swallowing with a delight that I simply cannot identify with - I have never liked seafood.  Discarded oyster shells lie in piles on the beach, pure white interiors reflecting the sun, rough rumpled exteriors, purple, tan and grey.  I collect some to put in the garden.  As the tide continues to drag the sea towards the horizon - balanced on which I can just see Mont Saint Michel – tractors begin towing strange craft down the muddy sand to the water’s edge.  These are boats with wheels as well as propellers.  Soon they are cruising about among the rapidly appearing nets and poles, harvesting yet more mussels and oysters.

 

And then ice cream – the first of the holiday!  It must surely be summer now!

A wander along the promenade locates an unexpected concert.  On blue plastic chairs, we sit in the sun, sea shining to our right, barbecue sizzling to our left, while in front, first an Irish band, then a Country and Western, lastly a traditional Bretonic group sing and play to an ever growing crowd.

Back at the campsite, it’s now warm enough to take the side walls of the tent off, and dine alfresco on Provencale Rattatouille and saur kraut – yes, we know, and odd composition but enjoyable all the same.  Tonight, the sun sets leaving a lilac gloaming and the promise of more and better to come tomorrow.