We had to persuade the satnav that it wasn’t a good idea to cross the causeway at half tide as it would be under several metres of water! The more sensible, but apparently slower route (!) took us back across the bridge to the mainland. We drove north, stopping briefly to photograph some fishing huts suspended on stilts beside a river - unusually they had their nets out.
Our first destination was “Le Grande Blockhaus” at Batz-sur-Mer. It was still raining so we had coffee whilst we waited for it to ease - Emma picked up some WiFi so was soon happily reading the news and uploading photos! Lunchtime arrived and the rain was still persisting down.
After lunch the rain gave way to light showers so we had a quick look around the outside of the blockhouse. This massive building, constructed in 1942 was used to direct the guns at Batz-sur-Mer and to control maritime traffic over a large area. The reinforced concrete structure used 125 tonnes of iron and 1,800 m3 of concrete (equivalent to 300 concrete mixers). It is 28m high, has a floor area of 285m2 and walls over 2m thick!
Moving on we drove the short distance north to the walled town of Gurande. We arrived at the free Aire de Camping Car on the outskirts of the town to find it heaving - there must be 30 MH’s here. We managed to squeeze into a spot in the unofficial “overflow” area - ie: on the grass of the picnic area.
We walked to the old walled town and were pleasantly surprised to see how nice it was. The surrounding wall is complete and the old buildings are very well preserved. We wandered around taking photos before heading back to Kiki.
We had our evening meal before settling down for the evening.
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