St Valery sur Somme

On Wednesday afternoon, we cruised in to St Valery and tied up at a free mooring. Electricity and water were available but, at €2 per hour, far too expensive! We hopped on our bikes and went to see what the marina was like. To enter the marina we would have to go through a tidal lock and we wanted to see what the procedure was to get through. Boats of all sizes go through it frequently but it looked pretty intimidating (especially when we saw it first with the river gushing through it). It could only be done once a day - on the high tide - and it was over €20 per day for all services at the marina. Although that would have worked out cheaper than the €48 per day we could have paid to take water and electricity at the “free” mooring (go figure!), we decided we could manage without both, stayed on the free mooring and saved our money. The Office de Tourisme gave us good information and provided free wifi which was a big help.

Our little pontoon mooring was just outside St Valery proper and, as on so much of the Somme, there were very few people around, so it was quite astonishing for us to travel the last kilometre into St Valery to find ourselves almost swamped by the number of tourists and holiday makers. Having come from the deserted back-of-beyond, we couldn't work out where they had all appeared from! St Valery is a seaside resort town and, of course, most of the people there didn't come by boat!

St Valery is on the Baie de la Somme, a tidal estuary on the edge of the English Channel; Le Hourdel is the point at the southern sea edge, and Le Crotoy is tucked into the northern part of the bay.




Our favourite day
On Thursday, with the weather looking more promising than usual, we cycled the 10km to Le Hourdel, all but 100m of it on a dedicated cycle path. (Have we mentioned how much we LOVE cycle paths?!) The way was mostly flat and, although there were a couple of long gentle inclines to challenge us, no-one had to get off and walk. As we cycled along, we noticed there were things to harvest and we decided to do that on the way home. (How many times have we told ourselves to take a plastic bag or two when we go cycling?) When we arrived at Le Hourdel, we locked the bikes and walked out to the beach which is on the open sea. C had to dip her toe into the water so that we would be able to say that we have boated/biked from the eastern border of France to the west. You will notice in the photo that the beach is millions of tonnes of colourful stones, quite a bit bigger than pebbles.



We went to a cafe and had a coffee and flicked through the local paper. What we saw was a full page about the Rugby World Cup complete with basic NZ statistics and the words and actions of the haka. That was a surprise. We lunched on our cold chicken legs stuffed with our boat-made basil pesto, which freed up one plastic bag, and the wet flannel (for cleaning sticky fingers) was in another plastic bag so we had some containers for harvesting after all! On the way back to St Valery, we picked lots of blackberries, some hazelnuts and quite a lot of berries, which C thought were sloes. These we put in a 'box' J made by tearing and folding a map the Office de Tourisme had given us. Pharmacies in France provide a wonderful service and for free will identify plants or fungus that you have gathered, and verify whether or not it is safe to consume (especially important with the mushroom family). Indeed our collection were sloes, “prunelles” in French, so when we got back to the boat, (via the supermarket to buy jam sugar) we made 2 jars of blackberry jelly, 4 blackberry tartlets, and prepared three bottles of sloe gin, which will be ready to drink when we return next season. Perhaps Liz and Brian, who introduced us to sloe gin, might be able to join us to taste our brew? The nuts were added to the ones we'd already gathered, although even from here I can hear some people muttering under their breath that there were enough nuts on our boat already.

Train trip to Le Crotoy
A steam train runs from St Valery to Le Crotoy and back four times a day. €11.50 return per person, (€10 one way) and bikes are free. We decided not to cycle there as the weather was looking iffy. The old train was fun to ride on, even more rattly than the ones on the Hutt line! We took the bikes with the idea that while we were there we could see more of the place than if we were walking and boy, we are glad we did. It was a wee way from the station to the sandy beach and town centre, and the morning market was just closing. It would be a fabulous place on a fine, sunny day but we had only just started to have a bit of a look around when the predicted rain arrived. (Hence no photos of Le Crotoy, but there is a train one!) We found the busiest café and spent the rest of our savings from the marina mooring fees on a three course lunch: (€10.90) shrimps, fish (a ray wing) and chips, cheese or ice cream, all helped down with a carafe of rosé. Very nice it was too! The rain, which had bucketed down while we were having our entree, stopped completely in time for us to cycle back to the station and stay dry.



Before the train trip, we had our only opportunity to watch a boat going through the tidal lock and out to sea. It was great to see how it actually worked. The principal is the same as for river or canal locks but the space between the gates at either end is much, much larger – perhaps 200m, maybe even more. There is no place to tie up but there is plenty of width as well as length, so you just keep the boat in the middle while the level of the water is gently raised or lowered. Instead of having paddles in the gates, as is usually the case, there were separate paddles out the sides. This is what we'd seen the water rushing through at other times. When they were closed off for the locking down process, everything was much, much calmer. It would need to be!

The first photo shows the top of the lock when the paddles are open (i.e. when it is not operating and just letting the water run through); the second shows the bottom of the lock when in action.




On Saturday we left and headed back up the Somme. We are now at Cappy just 13 km from the junction with the Canal du Nord. We will head there today, to Peronne, where we'll take on a few more provisions and perhaps visit the WW1 museum before heading north once again.