Roy's Tour de France pix, hang in there, nearly finished

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Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 10:14 pm

I'm not going to post loads of these, just a few of the better ones, there are about 550!

We went by ferry to Bilbao, then drove up the left side of France, in a Jaguar I bough by accident on eBay. We were going away on the Harley, but some muppet bitch wrecked it in June, and the parts are coming from america on snailback, apparently.

I took this waioting to set off in Portsmouth, from the back of Pride of Bilbao. The other ferry is coming in, turned out to be the one we eventualy came back from Le Havre on. taken without a flash, it was a long time to keep the camera still, but the cunning image stabilizer gyros in the Canon lens helped.

This is Henday, on the Spain France border, the whole population were doing the evening passagiata thing along the beach.

Lastly, some amazing sand sculpture on the beach at Biarritz. No idea who made it or why, but it was very good.

Thats it for now, more when I get time to host them on Boatofucket.

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:17 am

When I was 16, and bicyles had just been invented, I was stupid enough to cycle to Biarritz with the school cross country champion, who was er.. a little fitter than me. Part of wanting to revisit the place was to see if I'd imagined it all, or if I could remember anything. As well as the old hotyels, I remeber a lad walking in front of us suddenly climbing on the wall and jumping into the old harbour, clearly some things haven't changed:

Next day we packed up and moved into the Pyrenees. St Jean de Pied de Port is where all the pilgrims, seeking absolution in the west of Spain, had a pitstop before tackling the mountains. The area is a strong Basque region, there was political graffiti and a kind of curvy swastika that is their symbol everywhere.

This is the valley out of St Jean, leading to the spanish border.

We went for a drive around, and apart from feeling lost because the road numbers had been changed, and worrying that the Jag had mysteriously used up all its petrol with no more in prospect (nothing to do with me thrashing it around, with the aircon on full) we had a lovely day out. A typical Basque village. we'd had to stop for the cow, who was quite happy in the middle of the road until we came along. The villages were having a festival, here we had to wait while they all noisily marched from one pub to the other one.

A quick view taken in St Jean:

Like a lot of old places, the digital clocks, which used to be constantly recarved to show the time, had all broken:

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:22 am

As usual, great pics Roy.
You seem to have a knack for taking quality snaps.
I am still waiting to see the finished photos of the kitchen, or perhaps I missed them while our computer was down. Confused

Love to see more of your photos from the tour de france... Smile

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:26 am

Roy - Not only is the technical quality of your pics superb, that pic of St Jean with the diagonal flag bunting is perfectly composed too, almost 3D. It would make a fabbo postcard. You really have a gift for making mundane subjects interesting.

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:21 pm

Hell, I just take lots of pics and bin the average ones. I do know 'it' when I see it though.

@Bella, I dunno if I ever posted, or even photographed the finished kitchen, I cant find any so I just nipped down and took a couple. Hell, you made me tidy up Sad

Anyway, on with the tour, a couple more from St Jean de Pied de Port

Too tight to buy the postcard, so I took its picture:

A hostel for the pilgrims:

Dunno what he's so happy about.

Last one for now.

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:28 pm

Roy- Eduardo did an excellent job of the kitchen!! I hope hayley is happy now!

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:33 pm

@MM, Now she wants the bathroom doing, but so do I. Every time I see those tiles I think 'bolster chisel'. It'll have to wait till next spring though, when I get another 2 month 'quiet spell'.

Edmundo is happy, he has a lad holding his nickname on a card for a screensaver.

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:13 pm

A couple more from Henday, the light was amazing. Hunderds of people sunbathing in the background did not seem to mind huge aeroplanes flying low over the beach and landing behind them.

I like the reflections, and the two people running in opposite directions in this one, my favourite.

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:16 am

Fantastic holiday pics Roy and the kitchen looks great!! Smile

Love the cupboard doors and the bench top.
You've done well. Thumbs up

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 9:27 am

Cheers, Bella. sadly when Hayley showed me the 'special offer' sparkly granite tops and I saw the price and had a good laugh. we decided upon worktops with a photo of a piece of granite.

feeling hogsick, this photo of a passing Harley was very rushed, the camera was switched off in its case when the bike came round the corner. I got mine back yesterday after it got squashed by the muppet bitch, btw.

We moved on the next day, down empty country roads, avoiding the holiday rush, until we hit the coast at Dune de Playa, the largest natural sand dune in Europe. On top was a good plave to sit and watch the sunset

We stopped at this lovely C17 Auberge, where they served huge omlettes for lunch.

I took way too many photos of the sunset, heres just a couple.

Got to go, time and tide wait for Norman.

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:03 am

A couple more, then I can do some work.

I posted a couple of the U-Boat pens at La Pallice in another thread. this is where they filmed Das Boot. Poor Hayley, she does put up with a lot, she had to tramp around this until I'd seen it from every angle.

The pens are near a huge bridge leading to Isle de Re which replaced a ferry. The toll was Eu 16.50, but it was such a nice place, and had better weather than where we were camped at Morans, so we went twice.

At the end of the island, 3 generations of lighthouse. Meanwhile, the locals were stripping the sea bed of anything edible. The night before we came back from the pub to find our tent surrounded by excited Frenchmen with torches. Not a dogging convention, they were on a snail hunt. 'Zut alors Pierre, l'escargot is getting away very slowly...' We had one between our flysheet and tent, which saved it's life.

I recognized the reef as a fossilized coral reef, pretty much the same as the live one we saw in Australia. This is some kind of sea slug, it looked like a dog poo lying on the sand, but swam with grace, like a black angel.

Later we sat on a sea wall until threatened by the tide, I'll subject you to some of my wave photos later when I've done some work...

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:54 pm

Have we made it to page 2 yet? That way you dont have to wait for them all to load....

Sploshiness at the seaside. At last a chance to use the 300mm lens. We had been sunbathing at the bottom of this wall half an hour earlier. As the waves bounced off the seawall, they ran into the next wave, causing a huge explosion.

This guy was fully dressed when the waves caught him out, lucky he wasn't swept away. He did think it funny when I showed him and his wife the picture on the camera screen:

Closeups of the waves 'exploding' using the zoom lens, the second one is my favourite:

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:58 pm

that 2nd wave shot is amazing.

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:46 pm

Quickie today, cos the sun's out, here's St Martin, the main town on Isle de Re. Nearby is Fort Boyard, still big on French TV, apparently, remembered in the UK for being staffed by Melinda Jugs and Dirty Den.

This van got stuck with a sickening crunch. I took my picture when the driver went round the back to look, I didn't want a camera lens where the sun don't shine...

Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 6:12 pm

Back after eater's walkabout, here are some of the Loire Valley.

This is Richelieu, home of the cardinal. It was a masterpiece of C17 town planning. Behind me should have been his huge chateau, but his descendants scrapped it for the stone.

The fields were full of sunflowers, all a bit wilted, I'd love to see them in their full glory.

The guy who built this chateau just happened to be France's tax collector. He did a runner when the auditors turned up to have a look at the books...

The snooker room...

This is King Fred I's 'hunting lodge' at Chambourd. It was only used for 40 days during his reign. You can see why the starving masses kicked off in the end.

A not at all gay figure....

Hayley wants me to do the bedroom like King Fred's here...

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 1:37 pm

dunno if anyone ever looks at these, or has the time for them to load, but I'll soldier on and see it through, 'cos I'm nearly finished. A couple more from Chambourd:

Another view of King Freds bedroom:

This spiral staircase has 2 spirals, so your wife can go up one as your mistress descends the other one.

Of course I had to see what it was like from in the middle...

well it was ahunting lodge, so as well as the hall of dead things,

Here's the wall of dead things...I love the shadows.

i love the sky on this, looks like something out of a Harry Potter film.

Up on the roof...

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 4:37 pm

Thanks!

Great job on the pics and I love the flowers. Wink

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:42 am

A final push, this is the last day in the Loire valley before we headed for Le Havre and the ferry home.

Fearing the weather, and weary of camping, we found a B&B in an ancient farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, run by a fearsome looking old girl who looked like Mrs Richards in Fawlty Towers, who didn't like the view of Torquay. This was the view from the farm..

After a strange dinner with 2 other guests, where not one word of English was used, other than me trying to translate for Hayley, I got the camera to get a photo of a pear in a bottle. I showed our host some of my pix, she commissioned me to take one of the farmhouse for her brochure...

WARNING: May contain traces of history:

Up and about the next day, we were going to camp again, till the weather turned nasty. In the morning we went to Fontevraud Abbey
WIKI LINK

To give you an idea of scale, here's Hayley in the doorway, making a rare appearance on Eater

Plenty of headroom, they could have had pet giraffes...

What sold it to me was Richard the Lionheart, he had a TV series when I was a kid. He was King Richard I of England for a bit, but didn't go there much because of the weather (can't say I blame him). He is bottom right here, next to Isabella of Angoul�me.

Above him is his mum, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her 2nd hubby, King Henry II of England. Elanor was Queen of both France and England, spent 15 years in prison, went off on the crusades and lived to a ripe old age, under the care of the nuns at the abbey.
WIKI LINK

Varios views of the abbey and monastery follow. They must have been pirate nuns, there were skull and crossbones all over the place.

Outside the gates, I waited for hayley who was in the wine shop. I spied this snooty but immaculate Maitre D' waiting for customers. He shot me a filthy look and went inside.

The weather turned ugly, and we fled to a Lodge De Travel for the night rather than camp. A passing chateau lurks above the river in the rain..

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:48 am

Good stuff Roy, and as punishment for all that download time, I shall force you at gunpoint to view my Dubai photos in 3 weeks!

Some nice shots..... mais, ou sont les cyclistes? C'est un thread "tour de France" n'est pas? Wink

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:56 am

Une cycliste avec le petit chien dans le basket.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Dec 2005 Posts: 3551

Roy, those are awesome pictures. Thanks for sharing them.

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