Gallery Rally 2016 — Jersey to San Sebastian - Day 6

Rochefort to St Malo

Welcome to the final day of the return trip from the Gallery Rally!

Today saw us get us up from a reasonable night's sleep, somewhat hungry due to the lack of anything decent for dinner last night - so as you can imagine, we were excited to get downstairs to the restaurant to feast ourselves on the famous Campanile 'all you can eat' buffet breakfast.

Imagine our disappointment when it turned out there was little more on the buffet table than there had been at last night's dinner!

Still, whilst some people think we have done nothing but eat on this trip, we managed a couple of peices of bread each and decorated it with Ham and stiffened cheese, washed down with Orange Juice and Coffee.

We may have been disappointed, but hey, we soon got over it once we hit the lovely French roads...

We had decided to head for St Nazaire on our way back today to have a longer better look around the whole area without the pressure of needing to solve clues this time, so we reversed off our personal vehicle transporter..

And headed North by North-West.

Unfortunately for us, it appears that most of France's attractions close on Mondays, so having spent the best part of 3 hours driving there, it soon became apparent that a tour inside some of the pens was not going to happen.

However, we did manage to walk around the entire area and across the other side of the basin and take some better pictures to share with you all.

This is the submarine pens where they open onto the basin...

 

This is the enormous dry dock, more of which below....

 

There was even a rocket....

Which to be fair, might not actually be a rocket - not sure if this gives any clues or not...

Anyway, enough of the random pictures, I will now hand over to Mike who is going to provide you with some information about St Nazaire, for all you history buffs. Take it away Mike!

 

Hi all, so we did eventually find a submarine by peering through a very dark window into one of the submarine pens...

This is actually a French Submarine called the l'Espadon (translated as SwordFish) which was in service from 1960 until 1987 when it went on display at St Nazaire. Here's a better picture, sadly not taked by us....

The other major reason for returning to St Nazaire was because we wanted to visit the site of one of the most extraordinary episodes of World War 2, and also because we like to inform our readers as well as entertain them on our trips - you are all entertained, right? It's not just about photo's of food. OK, so there is a LOT of food photo's, but there's also the occaisonal bit of history thrown in. (Hang on, maybe we should do a history of food section next time Garry?)

Anyway I digress, back to the raid.

The below extract from Wikipedia details the raid on St Nazaire and explains what happened.

"The St Nazaire Raid or Operation Chariot was a successful British amphibious attack on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France during the Second World War.

St Nazaire was targeted because the loss of its dry dock would force any large German warship in need of repairs, such as the Tirpitz, to return to home waters via either the English Channel or the GIUK gap, both of which were heavily defended by British units including the Royal Navy's Home Fleet, rather than having a haven available on the Atlantic coast.

The obsolete destroyer HMS Campbeltown, accompanied by 18 smaller craft, crossed the English Channel to the Atlantic coast of France and was rammed into the Normandie dock gates. The ship had been packed with delayed-action explosives, well hidden within a steel and concrete case, that detonated later that day, putting the dock out of service for the remainder of the war and up to five years after.

A force of commandos landed to destroy machinery and other structures. Heavy German gunfire sank, set ablaze or immobilised virtually all the small craft intended to transport the commandos back to England; the commandos had to fight their way out through the town to try to escape overland. Almost all were forced to surrender when their ammunition was expended and they were surrounded.

After the raid 228 men of the force of 611 returned to Britain; 169 were killed and 215 became prisoners of war. German casualties were over 360 dead, some killed after the raid when Campbeltown exploded. To recognise their bravery, 89 decorations were awarded to members of the raiding party, including five Victoria Crosses.

After the war, St Nazaire was one of 38 battle honours awarded to the Commandos; the operation has since become known as The Greatest Raid of All within military circles."

Jeremy Clarkson did a fantastic documentary about the raid if you would like further information, just follow the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXusKM5uX0s

So now that I've sent you all to sleep, it's back to Garry and some more food photo's.

Thanks Mike, we hope you found that interesting; if you did, we recommend you go and visit it - but not on a Monday!

So after leaving there, we decided to press onto St Malo, where we had (once again, through the wonders of mobile internet) pre-booked the Hotel Logis La Grassinais .

We checked in, and unloaded our bags..

Once done, we jumped back in the car and rushed off round the corner where we had to resolve a small criticism that had been aimed at us via the Guestbook...

At this point, we would also like to write an open letter of apology:

Dear Audi UK,

Please accept our sincerest apologies for not keeping your wonderful German beast clean like you have come to expect of us with the Evo in years gone by. It wasn't deliberate, but we acknowledge how it must have made you feel.

With this in mind, we have just spent the last 2 hours cleaning, polishing and vacuuming it.

Please could you send us a model of an Audi RS3 now??

Yours sincerely.

Garry and Mike.

After that important job was done, we crossed the road and went in search of Buffalo's..

As luck would have it, we found just the place, and we both enjoyed a small snack (somewhat more fulfilling that last nights dinner!).

So now we were refuelled, we returned to the Hotel to write up Day 6 (well, and Day 5, but I've probably already confused you enough trying to explain how this is working on Day 5's update)

We would just like to take a moment to thank everyone who made the effort to send us messages of good luck (and abuse) via the Guest Book - we always love reading them - in fact, sometimes it is the only thing that gets us out of bed in the morning after 5 hours sleep!.

Thanks to John and James (the father and son cyclists we met at Royan Ferry on Friday) for adding their entry to our guest book. We are delighted to hear you have made it as far as Toulouse with your bikes - good luck with the rest of your trip and keep us updated on your progress!

Chip; we're sorry we are never home to answer the door when you come round for parties; thank goodness you have a key and can let yourself in. Make yourself at home!

Martin; I'm sorry, I know - but we CAN gag him if he ever mentions it, right??

Claire; if we had realised how much you were going to like the 80's shower head, we would have taken it with us!

And finally, we're so sorry if we've put anyone off watching Titanic. I doubt we'll ever be able to watch it again without breaking down in fits of laughter.

So draws to an end another Gallery Rally, which has seen us cover about 1200 miles - and surprisingly, we've not had to fill up as often as we remember in previous trips. Well, except for the two years we were in a diesel Golf - but lets not go there!

It's been great fun, we've laughed so much we've actually cried on most days, so we'd like to say a massive thanks to Phil and Emma Balderson (our 2016 first time Clue Masters)...

Richard Gilpin.... (he's the one without the beard...)

 

and of course Ben Davies from Gallery Magazine...

...for arranging such a great trip. And to everyone else that has helped out - it takes a lot of organizing and we're sure there are other people behind the scenes doing a lot of running around to make it all happen!

And of course to you all for reading it!

If you are reading this on Wednesday late morning, we'll probably already be back in Jersey!

Until the next time, goodbye from Garry and Mike!