Recycling...

This spot of 'recycling' was at a restaurant at Saint-Martin-de-Re on our visit to Île de Ré last summer.

Lack of cairn on Île de Ré.

Back to our visit to Île de Ré... Some of the main tourist attractions on the island are its soaring lighthouses. We visited the ones at the most  northerly point, la Phare des Baleines which stand proudly beside its smaller predecessor.

The 57-metre high 'The Phare des Baleines ' (left) - was built in 1854 to replace the original lighthouse at 21 metres high built in 1682. The lighthouse has a 257 step spiral staircase which you can climb to reach the viewing balcony at he top where the views are, we believe, spectacular. We decided against the climb,tempting as it was, as after all the tower climbing and street trawling in La Rochelle our legs and feet weren't up to it.



The beach immediately behind the lighthouse has become haven for cairn (a man-made pile of stones) builders with hundreds of examples built by a variety of people and changing from day to day.

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On the day we visited the tallest cairn we was pretty impressive and finely balanced, towering over all who surveyed it.

That is until this bunch came along and they all proceeded to pose beside it, individually, in pairs, trios and every possible combination, If they took one photograph they must have taken 20 - its a pile of stones for goodness sake!  As soon as they started leaning against and touching the stones everyone around them knew what was going to happen- and it did. The picture above shows them trying to keep the remnants of  it balanced. They failed, so what did they do?

Take more pictures of course -

"This is us by the best cairn on the beach after we reduced it to insignificance." 

People!!

Île de Ré

When we went over recently to visit La Rochelle (yes I know it's not in the Loire Valley) we spent our last day over in the picturesque Île de Ré . It was a short drive over the impressive bridge, built in the late 80's to what has become an island, of mainly holiday homes for people from all over France and beyond It costs 9 € from 12th September to 19th June and 16.50 € from 20th June to 12th September for a return ticket over the bridge.

The island's population increases tenfold during the summer months, from 20.000 to over 200,000, so October was a good time to visit. We visited the main port of Saint Martin which on arrival did not seem very appealing, but as we made our way down,  past the Gothic Église St-Martin, to the harbour we immediately understood its allure. When the harbour area opened up in front of us full of bobbing pleasure boats and surrounded by shops and restaurants, picturesque and inviting, we thought we had arrived at a film set!

We had a pleasant lunch looking on enviously at a lifestyle quite beyond our means.

It could have been the height of summer, are we lucky or  what!