Touring east of Cherbourg

Today we had the second partly-sunny day in a row, with no rain in the forecast until the evening, so we decided to rent a car and do some walking in the harbor towns east of Cherbourg. We have visited these before, but under less-than-ideal conditions, so being able to get out and walk without (much) fear of being rained on was really nice.

Our first stop was Gatteville Lighthouse (Phare de Gatteville), the second lighthouse east of Cherbourg. This picture is actually from our earlier visit, made shortly after we returned from our trip to Dusseldorf for the big European boat show.

The tide was very high, with waves crashing over the seawalls on the access road.

[See the update to this, below.]

From there we drove to the nearby town of Barfleur, which has a harbor with a nearly 10-meter tidal swing during spring tides (which is what we had today). Katy took some pictures (not shown here) of the boats actually floating; the last time we were there, they were sitting on the seabed.

There is a lovely church at the entrance to the harbor, which has this sad, if attractive, memorial.

In memory of the fishermen of Barfleur and the surrounding area perished at sea

It seems that all French towns, no matter how small, have at least one very nice Catholic church.

Our next stop was Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, which has an much larger harbor but, unlike Barfleur, well protected from the raw tidal swing by a lock at the harbor entrance. We walked around the harbor and through the town, and had lunch and coffee. Between lunch and coffee, we discovered this nearly-hidden semi-public garden. I just loved the rooflines from the interior.

We also shopped for some specialty foods at Maison Gosselin, which our landlord, Christian, had suggested we visit, and took in a shop near the harbor that had lovely hand-painted postcards. It also had a serving dish with this image, which really captures life on the Cherbourg peninsula in winter.

By then it was almost supper time, so we drove back to Cherbourg and our apartment, making a second, low-tide stop at Phare de Gatteville on the way. Fittingly, it started to sprinkle just as we were walking from the parking lot to our front door.

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So much for the travelogue. You may be wondering how we are. Well, life in Cherbourg is quite pleasant. Our apartment is cozy (small, but comfortable),  there's an excellent farmer's market on Saturdays (and other days, too, but that's the big one), and our boat is coming along well. Katy and I are, IMO, adapting well to being together nearly all the time. We get pissy with each other occasionally, but actually less so than I think we did in Cambridge. We really enjoy cooking together, and with the excellent fresh ingredients we have here, we've been eating very well. We both have folding bicycles, and I've been riding at least 10km most mornings, and usually much more. I've lost a lot of weight, and feel great.

I am loving being retired.

That said - we miss our friends and family pretty ferociously, and that's been aggravated by the scary news we get regarding COVID-19. Given our somewhat solitary live style, I think we're unlikely to be stricken by it soon, and since we're both in pretty decent health, we're not terribly worried about it. But we do worry about all of you back in the U.S. It seems like this will hit the dance and music communities very hard -- not necessarily the illness itself, but the knock-on effects of cancelled dances and concerts. 

It's also strange watching the presidential election season play out from the other side of the Atlantic. We both voted via absentee ballots in the primary and will vote in the general election, but we don't really discuss politics much with each other. That's perhaps a good thing, since it's so generally unsettling. But events in the U.S. feel remote and somewhat unreal. 

We enjoy getting email from y'all, and we're also available on WhatsApp and Signal. Ping us!

-- Jerry

Update to our visit to Gatteville Lighthouse

The day after this entry was posted, we drove back out to Barfleur and walked up the lighthouse - 350 steps or so. The actual light is really nifty.

The view from the platform is pretty incredible.

Towards Cherbourg

Towards Balfleur