Day 425 – Le gouffre de Plougrescant

If you’re going to build a house on a windswept peninsula jutting out into the North Atlantic, you’re going to have to find some way of making sure that it stays safe when those North Atlantic storms come rolling in.
I found reference to just such a place on the internet today. And how cool is the protection in question?

Obviously, that’s not the North Atlantic in the foreground. You wouldn’t need too much protection from that.
No, the ocean is behind the house, which is situated on the North coast of Brittany:

Castel Meur, a small stone cottage in Plougrescant, France, was built in 1861 in a precarious position at the tip of the peninsula. To protect it from the frequently violent coastal weather, the house was positioned with its back to the sea and flanked on either side by two giant boulders.

Just as well, really, because the next stop due west from here is the coast of Canada. And that’s a lot of Atlantic to have to hide from. The house itself faces South-South-East, meaning that the rock on the left (as we look at it) is doing the hard yards as far as storm protection goes. The one on the right is clearly just there for the photographers. Although, its unique setting did become a problem at one point:

The unusually located cottage became known as the House Between Two Rocks. It has been passed down through the generations and is currently a private home. Its use in tourism campaigns to attract visitors to Plougrescant – specifically one world-famous postcard – became a problem when the house gained fame as a tourist attraction and tourists treated it as though nobody lived in it, some even climbing on it and damaging its roof.

The owner took legal action and won image rights for the house, which can no longer be used in advertising to draw tourists to the region. This is a private residence, and visitors are not welcomed onto the property.

Found via Atlas Obscura dot com, whose lead story (at the time of writing) is:

[link]

…and includes Passages in the Isle of Man, but not Meisho Maru 38 at Cape Agulhas. And that’s a bit odd, given that they have already written about the Meisho Maru 38 previously on their site. Surely just click the ADD button for a nice round 19, no?

Day 220 – Death by beach run

With the moon so full, the tides are fairly hefty at the moment and so we decided to make use of low water this morning to head down to the shipwreck. I decided that I’d combine this with a morning run, and meet the rest of the family there. It’s not too far – just over 3km on the road, so I decided to make a five of it by doing a couple of laps of the village and then heading down there via the coast.

The laps around the village went very well. Fast, fun and happy on the dirt roads. And then I went around the corner onto the beach – and into the 50kph headwind.

Eina. Ouch. Aïe. Huy. Autsch. Ey.

The combination of beach sand, pebbles, that southeasterly wind and yes, some (or more) beers yesterday evening, has actually killed me. Dead.

However, when what remained of me did eventually reach the shipwreck, it was all worth it. The kids had a climb and it was great to be out and about in the (very) fresh air and sunshine.

If you can find somewhere out of the wind, it’s a glorious day. It’s just sad that we’re heading back to Cape Town and reality again in a couple of hours.

But this wasn’t a bad start to the day at all.

 

I still can’t feel my legs.

Heritage weekend photos

Yes.
Belatedly, but still: weekend photos.

Some proteas (not from the weekend, but who’s checking anyway), a specific startrail (despite the brightest moon EVER!), some shipwreck (I didn’t know which one I liked best, so I shared four) and some birdage (taken by my daughter).

Here’s an example:

And here’s the link.

Knock yourselves out. (Not literally.)

Photo gemors

Gemors being Afrikaans for a mess. Because that’s what I can like to be in with my photos right now.

The photos from last weekend still aren’t done. I just haven’t had chance. When I did have chance, I was away taking more photos in a place with no computer. And now I’m all mixed up, because some of the photos from this weekend are done. That’s because there are far fewer of them, so I just grabbed a couple (well, five) of the shipwreck ones and did a quick tidy up on them.

I took these with the Mavic this morning – the wreck is the Meisho Maru 38, and it lies on the coast halfway between L’Agulhas and Suiderstrand.
We’ve mentioned it here before, and we’ve mentioned why it has some of the name it has… well… it had, here.

But now my (usually very orderly) photostream on Flickr is all messed up.
I will edit those photos from last weekend and the rest of them from this weekend in the very near future.

UPDATE: You can start here!

Got it!

I’ve been after this photo for a while. And then, yesterday evening, as we headed down the dirt road from Agulhas to Suiderstrand, I finally got it.
It was one of those few moments that was worth halting the journey for, albeit that it was only for a few moments.


This is posted unadulterated and raw. No filters, no cropping. As it was. Lovely. Try it with the lights off for an even better view. That thing poking towards the bottom right hand corner of the sun is the forecastle mast of the wreck of the Meisho Maru 38, and on top of that is a cormorant, wings unfurled.
All planned, obviously. Obviously.

Sadly for you, I’ve been taking quite a few photographs since we’ve been down here, and you can look forward to them late tomorrow or on Monday.