The beautiful island

Off to a new island

After a bouncy night in our now unpleasantly exposed bay we headed across to Belle-Île-en-Mer, a couple of hours upwind and to the south west. This headwind was the precursor to yet another big storm sweeping in from the Atlantic and on Belle-Île-en-Mer there were a variety of options available for riding the storm out in comfort. We were headed for the biggest of these; Le Palais.

Three harbours in one
Le Palais is a wonderfully impressive place to arrive. The harbour is built into the cleft of a river gorge that cuts through the ragged cliffs that run along this stretch of the island’s coastline. A pair of high, stone seawalls reach out, pincer-like, to enclose a narrow harbour entrance and a small ‘outer’ harbour.

On the landward end of the northern seawall the broad expanse of the smooth, high stone walls of the Citadelle Vauban (yes, our old mate) rise steeply 30 or 40 metres out of the water, while on the southern side the town rises up along an unseen ridge line. A narrow channel takes you from the busy outer harbour, squeezing between the old town and the walls of the Citadelle, into the middle (‘fishing’) harbour.

Here the 18th and 19th century buildings are packed in along the harbour and the many tiny fishing boats moored bow-to along its wall. A lock that is only open with the tide separates the fishing harbour from the narrow stretch of river that is the inner (recreational) harbour.

A harbour with instructions

We arrived in the channel between the outer and fishing harbour half an hour before the lock opened. A brisk breeze was gusting between the buildings and around the Citadelle, and we found ourselves to be just one of a handful of boats that were trying to hold their position in this cramped space while the wind pushed them first from this direction and then from another. Some, like us, kept the bow into the wind and did their best to stay in one spot, while a couple of other boats took up all the extra space by doing some very slow and tight circle work. It wasn’t chaos but chaos was just one misjudgement away.

Happily, the harbour master took pity on us and the lock began opening a little bit early but, frustratingly given the conditions, he was only allowing two boats at a time into the recreational harbour. The reason for this Noah’s ark approach became clear once we were finally inside – if we had thought that the outer and middle harbours were small, well this one was a far tighter spot to squeeze into.

Once our turn came to head inside, we were directed to what looked to be an impossible spot; too short for Yuma and buried deep between boats rafted two deep on one end and four deep on the other end. Shit! We didn’t have enough room for positioning for a better approach and, with the blasts of wind coming from here and there and everywhere, there was no time and probably no chance that we’d have been able to manage it anyway, so with a deep breath and not much forethought we just went for it…as slowly as we could without losing steerage or being taken by the gusts. We went in at a steep angle, secured a bow line and quickly reversing off that got Yuma alongside nice and smoothly in a space that was not much longer than her. To the casual observer it might have even looked like we knew what we were doing! Phew.

The question of how we were going to get her out of that spot lingered there in the background, but it wasn’t one that needed our immediate attention.

A cozy place to be

Our berth was a terrific spot to be. On our side of the harbour the hillside rose up to a park and the Citadelle itself, while 40 metres away on the other side an assortment of tall narrow buildings of various vintages were tightly packed along the single lane road that ran along the harbour wall and into the town centre.

Here we sat in our cockpit tent and watched the rain bucketing down in wind driven sheets, fog drifting through masts under the faint outlines of the Citadelle, and the bright lights of the houses and the street in the close darkness of wet nights.

Vauban on steroids

From here too we walked through the town to explore the massive Vauban fortifications that dominated the seaward side of the hill top on the southern side of the town.

These double walls with their wide internal killing field are now a very peaceful park that separates the old and the newest parts of the town. This is such a lovely, shady space with a forest of big, old, and moss-covered trees on the old battlements and between the walls and a web of walking tracks and play areas.

Sadly, the Citadelle and its museum were closed for renovations, but we explored the parts of it that are accessible and then took the clifftop track northwards to a headland where, in the midst of a WW2 German gun emplacement, we stood leaning into the wind and watched the surf rolling onto the rocks below us, while herring gulls cruised along the cliff edge in the nearly horizontal rain.

Exploring the other sights

Once the storm eased up somewhat, we cracked out our bikes again and spent a day exploring the island. This island had also been recommended by our French Douanier friends, and it certainly delivered. We headed first to the lighthouse at the northern-most point, Pointe des Poulains.

Here there was some dramatic rocky coast scenery to take in, in addition to Sarah Bernhardt’s Fort. No, this isn’t some form of operatic coastal defensive fortification, not in a military sense at least, but rather a former fort that the opera singer transformed into her coastal retreat. She clearly had a penchant for wild and windy spots and, in her lifetime, it would have been about as remote and wild as could have been found on France’s Atlantic coast. It must have been lovely.

Heading south, we visited a number of beaches, took in a few menhirs (one of which graced a bus stop), and a couple of small villages and generally enjoyed the agricultural and coastal scenery.

All up, Belle-Île lives up to its name, it is a lovely spot.