Atom heart mother
27th July 2018
Didn’t do much exploring on foot round last night’s sleep-over location until early this morning as the heat from the sun was very powerful right until it finally dropped below the Atlantic’s western horizon at about 9.30 pm Paris time. However, an extensive walkabout at 06:30 in the refreshingly cool morning air revealed a large area of sympathetically managed lakes, teeming with wildfowl and peppered with discrete underground hides from which to observe them. Said hides appear to be in private ownership and some are quite elaborate, more a day living space than just a twitchers lookout. All very well done as the place looks 100% natural from the coastal track and I am pleased to say it was also a very quiet location last night, wildfowling being a winter occupation? - is my assumption, anyway. As per the previous overnight location just a few km to the north the lake area also teems with large juicy rabbits which made Amy a very happy girl for a couple of hours!
After the morning walk it was back down the road to Eu for another visit to Lidl and this time we also had a look round more of the town. Very Dutch was my impression - tall red brick houses in the Flemish style and arrow straight waterways with parallel cobbled roads. A few nice small parks scattered about gave the town a very relaxed feel. A pleasant town which, if I’d been parachuted in there blindfold, I would have guessed I was in Holland or Belgium.
From Eu west a short distance to Le Treport, a seaside town that somehow manages to give the impression of a 1950s Teddyboy heyday with a very light 21st century makeover. It actually works rather well and I quite liked the look of it but, nevertheless, didn’t stop. Not really an Amy sort of place as there were just a few too many small French pooches strolling about - a bit too close in size to juicy rabbits for comfort!
From Le Treprort we navigated south along the clifftop coast road for several km and although pleasant enough countryside there was nowhere to gain access to the shore or even pull over for a while. Not until we reached Penly where we found an utterly isolated lane amidst delightful pastoral French countryside. We spent a tranquil couple of hours there under some good leafy shade, up to and including lunch and a post snack siesta.
We eventually pushed off again about 2pm to quickly discover we were literally next door to an EDF nuclear power station - no wonder the surrounding countryside was deserted! The adjacent villages were very quiet too - very clean and prosperous in the French Nouveau 1960s genre with many tasteful floral displays of civic pride. I guess the big thing about nuclear power is it doesn’t create dust or noise in it’s manufacture - so-called ‘virtues’ much lauded by bryl-cremed haired middle age men in white lab coats, complete with a row of fountain pens and a slide rule in their top pocket, who made all those cosy and reassuring 1950s Public ‘Information’ films about nuclear power. Don’t know if you have ever seen them? - in patronising tones the great unwashed were told by the narrator that the future was a golden one of practically free and certainly unlimited power with no down side and nothing whatever to worry about. A couple of years later the same chaps in white coats were telling pregnant mums that morning sickness was now a thing of the past thanks to the new wonder drug Thalidomide!
Today, of course, the grandchildren of those boffins have discarded their white lab coats and become techno-savvy fiddling about with genetically modified foods and DNA. As there grandfathers might have said don’t worry mums, design your own baby and feed him or her with cheap, nutritious and unlimited food, nothing whatever to worry about!
Just a stones throw south of the EDF nuclear power station there is a non urban access road to a bit of undeveloped beach directly under a sheer chalk cliff face. Just four people on the shore when we arrived and even during the course of the late afternoon and early evening only the lightest smattering of folk coming and going. The access road down by the shore is no good for wild camping as there is not any part of it that is even vaguely level, but back up the road about half a km there is a large, leafy, flat area of good hard standing that we have all to ourselves, possibly helped by a bit of an isolated thunder shower that has sent everyone on the shore scurrying for cover elsewhere.
The GPS coordinates of where we are right now and hope to remain all night are at the end of this report.
If I wake up in the middle of the night to see Amy’s eyes glowing iridescent red I’ll know we camped too close to the power station!
Actually, I’m all for nuclear power (as I may have mentioned before) always provided it’s core is about 90 million miles away and, as good fortune would have it, we do in fact have one such facility already!
Perhaps if today’s boffins could figure out just how photosynthesis actually works (they still don’t know much important detail) we could indeed eventually produce safe, clean energy as the planet is literally already awash with sunlight! I can only guess that the trouble is there is no obvious super-weapons spinoff from the research so governments don’t want to know.
In the meantime, All Hail the Mighty EDF.
Google Maps
atitude : 49.95597 (49° 57′ 21.5″ N)
Longitude : 1.1718 (1° 10′ 18.49″ E)
accuracy of signal : 9 m
