Day 70, Wednesday 23/5:

After nice hot showers we headed down to breakfast and had a long conversation with the owners. They suggested that we should go and check out the beach at Contis, with a well-known lighthouse that was built in the middle of a pine forest, at least 300m from the water. We were also perplexed by the seemingly recent construction of houses (and all of the associated infrastructure) atop a line of sand dunes, overlooking the beach. Personally I would have thought that this would not only completely stuff up the coastal ecosystems, but that sand dunes (particularly those right on the beach) would not be an overly stable medium on which to build a house. With our final destination at Nantes, we had to push on, taking motorways all the way. We arrived at Carquefou, where we met Patsy and Philip’s friends Jacques and Fanfa. Carquefou is a suburb much like Springfield, with large mansion like houses on large blocks of land. All the houses must conform to strict planning guidelines. They must be white clad with slate rooves. No fences are allowed – only hedges. The net result is the feeling that one is in the middle of a forest, you can’t see the other houses or roads. We sat outside for our aperitif on this warm day – the first day of the year they have been able to open all the windows and turn off the central heating. Later, Fanfa prepared a proper gourmet meal – scallops and truffles, no less, for the entrée followed by extremely delicious roasted kid, with the meat falling off the bone.