GOUVILLE SUR MER

Gouville Sur Mer is a small village right on the beach with a whole parking area just for campers. If you are quick then you get electricity but  we are a bit late in the morning but doesn’t matter. It is quite hot with a little wind as we back into our spot with a view of the beach behind us. The tide had started to retreat and the little kids were on wind buggies on the flat but unfortunately not enough to move much so the others had to push, bet there were some tired ones at the end of the day. As it is the holidays it is busy but really there is so much beach that there is tons of space and the tide now was too far out to swim.

We have lunch and go for a walk down to the beach and out over the flats towards the oyster beds. They just seem to stretch way into the distance and must produce so many but the oysters are nothing like the size of NZ ones that I can see. The ones here that we have had are a quarter the size of the ones we had in Northland & Coromandel in NZ.What seems close when the tide is out, such as the lighthouse, seems miles away and completely unreachable when the tide is in. At low tide you can walk out to it but is a fair distance so we hang around the oyster beds and watch the workers work the beds taking away the bags of oysters and bringing back the bags that we think have been graded and cleaned and the smaller ones bought for another period of time. It is crazy that this whole area will be under water in just a few hours as the workers race against the tide. Tractors do all the work and also go out and tow in the boats which I suppose the owners pay for if they don’t want to hang around for the high tide.

When the tide comes in you can see it moving it comes in that fast. No wonder people, like at St Mont Michel, get trapped in the mud or sand by the tide and have drowned. As you can see in the photos the lighthouse is so far away you can hardly see it. We are really enjoying the salt air and sun as we walk back to ‘shore’. We ponder whether to get frites (chips) with tea but in the end we can’t be bothered going back and opt for boiled spuds instead. An hour after we are back we look outside and the tide is already way in and the lighthouse which looked close now seems miles away. I reckon if the tide is in like this in the morning I will go for a swim.

We wake to the beautiful sound of waves crashing instead of screaming two strokes which makes us happy but unfortunately the temperature has dropped, it is raining and a bit windy so I wuss out on the swim but know I will regret it – where is the bear grylls mentality when you want it! We are heading to Cherbourg via the coast road right around the top of the peninsula so hope we get some fantastic views.

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