A day at the beach

The beach at La Menounière on the Ile d'Oléron
on France's Atlantic coast — 18 May 2008

The first thing we did when we had gotten settled into our gîte in the village called La Menounière on the Ile d'Oléron last week was take a walk to the beach. It was only about a five-minute walk from the house. The weather was fairly warm and kind of breezy.

You can see the mainland across the water.

I thought the ocean was very calm at that spot on the island's southwest facing coast, and I don't know why there weren't bigger waves. There's nothing to protect the coast from the ocean at that point, and this side of Oléron is called La Côte Sauvage, or the Wild Coast. It didn't seem very wild to me.

By the way, Oléron is about 70 square miles in size and is the largest French island after Corsica. (For comparison, Harkers Island in North Carolina is only about 4 sq. mi.) Oléron is about 20 miles long and 10 miles wide at its widest point. (Bogue Banks in N.C. is about 20 miles long but much narrower.) The population of Oléron is 20,000 or so. There's a satellite view here. The island is flat and sandy.

Walt and Callie on the beach at La Menounière

The beach itself is sandy. But after walking on it I realized it was not really sand the way the beaches are where I grew up on the North Carolina coast, or around San Francisco in California where I lived for many years. At Oléron, the "sand" is actually finely crushed seashells — limpet shells, I think. Even below the high tide line, where the beach looks flat and hard, it's actually soft and your feet sink into it slightly When you walk on it.

There was a lot of seaweed on the beach at this time of year.
Wonder if there always is?

The rock jetties that have been built to stabilize the beach are made up of blue-colored boulders, and the dunes are covered with vegetation that is a pale gray-green color. The beach has a reddish cast. All the pictures in this post were taken when the tide was fairly high.

You can see how red the beach sand is where it's wet.

I guess I'm fascinated with beaches because I basically grew up on the beach and in the water in North Carolina, at the southern end of the Outer Banks. The Ile d'Oléron reminded me very much of "home" even though the language and architecture are so different. Another difference: half of Oléron is covered in grape vines and people make wine and cognac there.

Au revoir, Oléron

I think the reason I've spent so much time posting about the île d'Oléron is that it reminds me so much of home. Home for me is the coast of North Carolina. I'm so glad I went home in October 2019 to spend a couple of weeks with family members and friends. To walk on the beaches. To smell the salt air. I don't know when I'll get to go there again. As for Oléron, it would be easy to go spend a week or two there, and maybe Walt, Tasha, and I will someday. Meanwhile, I have memories and photos. Here are few random pictures I took on Oléron when we were there.

I like this one because if you look carefully, on the horizon to the left you can see one of the bridges that links islands including Ré and Oléron to the mainland (you can enlarge it). It's not an old stone bridge like the one in Saint-Aignan or some of the bridges across the Seine in Paris. It's a modern high-rise bridge like the bridges along the North Carolina Coast. And how about those blues? It's hard to tell what's bluer, the sea or the sky. One reflects the other.

I saw this chicken — rooster — in the Marais aux Oiseaux bird sanctuary on Oléron.

It's interesting to see how these French houses are built. No wood framing, just hollow bricks. I suppose they put sheetrock — plaster board — walls up inside nowadays, not just plaster on the bricks as in our house in Saint-Aignan. (Here's a picture of the same house in much more recent times that I found on Google Maps.)

Translation: « Charentais Chowder — One of the region's best dishes. It is to the Charentes what bouillabaisse is to Provence. It's a generous fish soup, for which there are many recipes. Our version includes cod, skate wing, pollock, salmon, squid, and a whole Dublin Bay prawn (Norway lobster). It's a garlicky chowder with potatoes cooked in the broth. »
  That sounds a lot like the clam chowder people make and eat on the North Carolina coast. No tomato or cream in the broth. Just broth and potatoes and seafood. I have a recipe and I might make the Chaudrée charentaise soon.

This is a peahen. It took me a while to recognize it as such when I started looking at these old photos again a few weeks ago.

Saint John on a stained-glass window in the église Saint-Denys on Oléron.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not sure where I'm going next with this blog. Maybe it's time to move on from the "pandemic posts" that have been I kind of lifeline for the past year. I found out a few days ago that I now qualify for a Covid-19 vaccination. Walt called the doctor's office yesterday and asked for an appointment to get himself vaccinated. Somebody is supposed to call us back with a date and a time. I need to do the same.

Anyway, the next trip for which we rented a gîte rural was a few days in the Cantal département, in the Auvergne region, in September 2009. Less than a year ago I re-processed and re-posted a lot photos from that trip — you can see them here (about 10 posts). Click the link and then scroll down. That area couldn't be more different from the île d'Oléron. It reminded me very much of the western end of North Carolina — the green mountains and valleys of the Appalachian chain.

Fishermen on strike!

We left Saint-Aignan about noon last Saturday for a week in a gîte rural — a little vacation rental house — on the Ile d'Oléron. We had never been down there before. Oléron is just south of La Rochelle and Rochefort, and not very far north of Bordeaux, on the French Atlantic coast.

The island is linked to the mainland (le continent) by a high-rise bridge (known on the Ile d'Oléron as le viaduc). It's about a four-hour drive from Saint-Aignan and we left at noon. At 3:30 p.m. we drove through Marennes, the last town on the continent, and were ready to cross the bridge and enjoy being on the island. No such luck.

A plume of black smoke along the highway
leading to the bridge at Oléron

As we drove out of Marennes, traffic came to a halt. We didn't know why, but we saw a huge plume of dark black smoke off in the distance. Was it a fire? An accident of some other kind? Why were cars just inching ahead? Why didn't we see any firetrucks, ambulances, or other emergency vehicles? We turned on the radio, but we couldn't get any news.

This was the traffic back-up caused by a protest
last Saturday at the Ile d'Oléron bridge.

As we sat there in the car for about an hour, wondering what was going on, we would see the plume of smoke thin out and then suddenly thicken up and get blacker and uglier every few minutes. I thought things like tanks of fuel or cans of paint might be exploding in a big fire. Traffic wasn't really moving, and very few cars were passing us heading in the opposite direction, coming off the island.

This was the commercial fishermen's protest banner. It says:
"Fishermen on strike. Fish not expensive. Diesel fuel too expensive."

When we finally had advanced far enough, we found out what the problem was: a protest. We had heard about France's commercial fishermen, les marins-pêcheurs, being on strike. The labor action was just starting late in the week. But on Saturday, a group of fishermen had set up a protest site at the foot of the Oléron bridge. They were stopping cars and letting them through just one at a time, and they had built a big bonfire. They were burning old automobile tires. Every time they threw another tire or two on the fire, the smoke blackened and thickened.

Luckily for us, oysters and clams
were still available at markets on the island.

We finally arrived at our rental house about 5:00 p.m., an hour later than we thought. For the whole week we were on the island, the fishing harbors were closed. There was no fish available for sale in the supermarkets or at outdoor markets. For the entire week, we didn't try to leave the island because the demonstration and big traffic back-up continued (but that was okay with us).

French fishermen were protesting the high price of the diesel fuel they need to run their boats. The boats stayed in port all week. The only seafood available was the stuff that is not fished out of the open sea, since boats couldn't go out. No fin fish, no shrimp. We had to make do with oysters and clams. Poor us.

Low tide

The beach on the western side of the Ile d'Oléron at low tide

You're used to seeing vineyards on this blog. Now it's beaches. The same beach, actually, and it's on the Ile d'Oléron. When I walked back to the beach at La Menounière with the dog two Sundays ago, I was surprised to see what it looked like at low tide.

Tidal patterns in the sand

So the bottom is sandy only in spots. In others, it's covered with fairly smooth white rock. You couldn't call it "rocks." It seemed more like a very rough floor, covered with limpets, periwinkles (little black sea snails called bigorneaux in French), and bright green seaweed.

Callie running through the seaweed on the beach

Callie loved it. She was in discovery mode. She's not afraid of water, or averse to plunging in if she gets a chance. She also tasted seawater to see if it was good to drink. It wasn't. She went swimming twice during the week, but never when I was there. Both times, it was Walt who had taken her out.

Barnacles and periwinkles

A gray heron — un héron cendré — feeding at the beach

Meanwhile, the commercial fishermen were still on strike. We were staying just a mile or two from the island's main fishing port, called La Cotinière. It has a typical and picturesque little boat harbor, protected by high stone walls from the ocean waves. But no boats were going out fishing, and the little fish shops and stands in the village were closed. There was no fish to sell.

Callie at the beach on Oléron

Callie made the car trip without throwing up on the back seat, by the way. That was a relief. She does not like riding in the car, but I think she's getting better at it.

Yesterday I found this really interesting and comprehensive site about the Ile d'Oléron. It's in French. Some pages describe and show pictures of all the fish and shellfish that live in the waters around the island. The site also has an extensive dictionary describing the local Oléron patois or dialect.

Oysters on Oléron

As you might know, when we were on the Ile d'Oléron in May, the commercial fishermen were on strike against high diesel fuel prices and the boats were not going out to fish. So there were no or very few fish available for purchase. Even the restaurants ran out.

OUT OF FISH
FISHERMEN ON STRIKE

While it is an important fishing center, the Ile d'Oléron is especially known for its oyster beds and ponds. The oysters are farmed; they are gathered in the offshore waters, separated into what in North Carolina we call "singles," and then placed in salt ponds to fatten up. After that, they are taken to market.

Here you can buy oysters, mussels,
and wines made on the Ile d'Oleron.

One of the prime oyster-raising areas is on the north shore of the island, north of Saint-Pierre d'Oléron and between Boyardville and Le Château d'Oléron. It's an area of canals, ponds, and little wooden oyster shacks. In the ponds lives a particular variety of green algae that the oysters feed on (I think) and that gives their flesh a pretty green color.

OYSTERS

Oyster shacks

All this reminds me very much of the North Carolina (and Virgnia and Maryland) coast, at least the way it was 25 to 50 years ago. It's changed now.

The busy time

Everything is suddenly so busy that I don't feel like I have the time to blog. We are working madly to get the kitchen finished as soon as possible. Then on Wednesday our friend Cheryl arrives from California.

Next Saturday, we pack up the car, which will include putting the dog on the back seat, and drive the four hours down to the Ile d'Oléron, on the coast between La Rochelle and Bordeaux. We've rented a gîte (a small house) for a week's stay there.

Saint-Aignan is on the upper right-hand corner of this
map, and the Ile d'Oléron is in the red box on the coast.

We plan to walk on the beach with the dog, eat seafood, and watch birds. It'll be a great week, but with no Internet connection in the house.

Enlarge the map

Here's a closer-in view of the Ile d'Oléron.

It's time to get back to the painting. And there's a garden to be put in too, somewhere during all this time. Don't be surprised if you don't see a post here every day for a while. And then you'll surely see lots of pictures from the Ile d'Oléron and La Rochelle in late May and June.

The Chassiron lighthouse on Oléron

Le Phare de Chassiron on the Ile d'Oléron

Out at the far tip of the Ile d'Oléron there's a lighthouse called Le Phare de Chassiron. We drove out there one afternoon and Walt and I climbed to the top to take in the view. It looks a lot like a lighthouse you would see in my native North Carolina.

The view from the top of the lighthouse back over the island

Cheryl decided to stay on ground level with the dog. Somebody needed to dogsit, and going to the top of the phare meant a 224-step climb.

Cheryl walking Callie along the cliffs
at the base of the lighthouse

There were cafés, restaurants, and shops, plus plenty of parking, as we arrived at Chassiron. We weren't the only people visiting that afternoon, but it wasn't really crowded. The landscapes and seascapes were beautiful on a beautiful day.

Windswept trees at Chassiron

As we were leaving, we drove along next to an amazing field of artichokes. It was very tempting to go pick some. But not possible, of course.

Artichokes and typical houses on the Ile d'Oléron

I'm off this afternoon for three days in Paris. Walt came back last night; it's his turn to watch the dog. Let's hope the weather turns nice.

We had violent thunderstorms yesterday in Touraine, and the Cher River is out of its banks in spots. People's basements are flooded. Luckily, we live on high ground. There was bad weather in Alsace too, according to radio reports, with damage and injuries.

L'église Saint-Denys dans l'île d'Oléron

Oléron is not a rocky island, but that doesn't mean it's all sand, dunes, beaches, marshes, and oyster beds. There are also some old stone churches. There used to be more, but they were sacked and burned during the 16th century wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants. The church in the town of Saint-Denis-d'Oléron dates back to the 12th century, and some original features and details remain today. There's another old church in the town of Saint-Pierre-d'Oléron, as well as a modern church in La Cotinière.

There is also a château on the island, and Protestants were given permission to hold religious services there during and after the wars of religion...

Cabanes d'ostréiculteurs et les huîtres de Marennes-Oléron

Here's a slideshow made up of a lot more photos that I took on the Île d'Oléron in May 2008. The oyster farming area is on the marshy bay side of the island and is called Marennes-Oléron after the nearby mainland town of Marennes. The last photo in the slideshow is one that Walt took of an oyster dinner we had in our gîte on the island.

The oysters that are farmed in France are not a native European species; those are flat-shelled oysters (huîtres plates). The cultivated ones are "cupped" oysters (huîtres creuses — scientifically, Crassostrea gigas) from the Pacific Ocean (huîtres japonaises), which account for most of the production worldwide. They are hardier than the flat-shelled oysters (Ostrea edulis) that are native to French waters (called belons after a coastal river in Brittany).

French oyster-farming accounts for about 90% of total European oyster production, and very few French oysters are exported. The oysters are "raised" off-bottom, on tables or trestles that are covered by seawater at high tide and left high and dry at low tide. Often they are kept in mesh bags. Letting them grow on the sea bottom and then dredging for them is a less common practice than it used to be because bottom-dwelling oysters are more vulnerable to predators, including starfish, and diseases.

Before the oysters are put on the market, they are transferred to man-made salt ponds (claires) along the coast and left to fatten up for a few weeks. Leaner, less meaty Marennes-Oléron oysters are called fines de claires, and fatter, meatier oysters are called spéciales de claires. In France, oysters are almost exclusively served and eaten raw, on the half-shell.

Lunch at the beach on Oléron

During the week we spent on the Ile d'Oléron on the French Atlantic coast, we ate in a restaurant exactly one time. Most of the other days, we cooked oysters and clams that we bought at the outdoor market at La Cotinière. The first day we were there, we were able to buy fresh fish (ling cod was what we got) but then the fishermen went on strike. One day we made steaks and green beans; another day we went to a charcuterie and got some pâté de campagne and a cold baked salmon fillet rolled and stuffed with mixed vegetables in a mayonnaise sauce.

The outdoor terrace at L'Albatros is right on the water

The restaurant we picked for lunch on Tuesday May 20 was called L'Albatros in the resort town of Saint-Trojan-les-Bains. We sat outdoors in the nice weather and lunched on seafood of course. The restaurant had been recommended to us by some friends who live here in Saint-Aignan.

The day's specials at L'Albatros

The daily specials listed on the blackboard pictured above included, as a starter, a tartare of oysters « spéciales Gillardeau » — spéciales are oysters that are fattened in salt ponds for several weeks before going to market, and Gillardeau is the name of the producer. I'm not sure what the "tartare" would have been, because none of us ordered it. I, however, did have half a dozen « spéciales Gillardeau » oysters on the half shell as my starter course. They were incredibly fat, filling their shells almost to overflowing, and they were tasty. They were served with bread, butter, and lemon. I didn't take a picture.

Fresh sole grilled with herbs

The first of the two main courses listed that day was fresh sole grilled with herbs. That's what Walt had. He said it was very good. As you can see, the fish dishes were served with what the British call "jacket potatoes" — big baked potatoes with cream and butter and herbs, called pommes de terre en robe des champs in French. "Potatoes in field dresses" — doesn't that sound nice. The little black pot on the plate contained a purée of topinambours — Jerusalem artichokes, which are the knobby roots of type of sunflower called a girasol.

Croaker fillet with truffle butter and spring vegetables

The second main course was Filet de maigre grillé au beurre de truffes — a fish fillet grilled with truffle butter. When we got back to the rental house after lunch, I looked up maigre in my dictionary on CD to see what kind of fish it was. The translation was "meagre" — obviously a British name, and it didn't mean anything to us. It was only after we got back to Saint-Aignan and had Internet access again that we could look it up. It turns out to be a kind of croaker. Cheryl said it was very good, and the accompaniment of pasta with truffle butter sauce was excellent.

Céteaux breaded and fried,
served with a sprinkling of ground cumin

I decided to order a local Ile d'Oléron speciality called a friture de céteaux au cumin after I asked the woman taking our order to describe it. Céteaux turned out to be small flatfishes that live in the waters around the island. Here's a description and photo I found on this site:

Here the word is spelled with an S rather than a C, but that happens with local terms and names. The description says the fish resembles a sole but never gets bigger than 12 or 13 cm (5 or 6 inches) long. It also says that the fish doesn't do well in shipping, so you never find them except right along the coast where they are caught. So you should try them if you are in the area (it says). They were very good and reminded me of good seafood I might eat in a restaurant in coastal North Carolina.

Another view of the terrace at L'Albatros restaurant

With our lunch we had a bottle of the local Oléron white wine that was very dry and very fruity at the same time. It was served well chilled and was perfect with the fish.

I'm posting this food report especially for a friend in California. She knows who she is.

Oléron oysters, Portuguese beans, and the local vino

It's going to be a busy morning. We have to get everything together for our drive down to southern Touraine for a New Year's Eve dinner — load up the car, get the dog psychologically prepared (she hates riding in the car), and make sure we don't forget anything. Cameras? Check. Batteries? Check. Android tablet? Check. Power supply? Check. Dogfood? Check. Leash? Check. Dog? Check...

And then there's the food and drink. We got oysters. It turned out that there was no special New Year's market in Saint-Aignan yesterday. There had been a market on Monday Dec. 23, and we assumed there would be one on Mon. Dec. 30 (the normal market day is Saturday). We drove down there yesterday morning and we were disappointed.

Two kinds of oysters (4 doz.) spending the night in our dirt-floored cold pantry downstairs

But suddenly our mood brightened. While there wasn't a full market, there was a truck parked on the main square. Out it it, a young man was selling oysters that he had brought up here from the town of Marenne and the island of Oléron, which is about 4 hours southwest of Saint-Aignan. On était sauvé. We bought four dozen Marenne-Oléron oysters, as they are called — two dozen of the ones called pleine-mer (open sea) and two dozen of the ones called fines de claires.

 Like me, you probably can't tell which variety of oyster these are...

They are the same oysters, but they are treated differently. The pleine-mer [plehn-MEHR] oysters stay in seawater until they are harvested, sold, and served. They have their own particular taste. The fines de claires [feen-duh-KLEHR] are gathered in the sea and then put into salt ponds (claires) to spend the last three or four months of their life. They have a different taste because of that method of "finishing" — they're called fines because they are extra "refined". Millions of oysters from Marenne-Oléron, Brittany, and Normandy will be consumed tonight at New Year's Eve dinners all over France.

Bubbly wine made from grapes grown in our village

As I mentioned yesterday, before going to get the oysters we went down to the village hall and dropped off a CD we had burned after gathering up a total of about 130 photos. We figured the mayor or whoever on her staff is in charge of organizing her New Year's ceremony could pick out whatever photos they wanted to use for their slideshow or whatever. We hoped they wouldn't feel completely overwhelmed.

Right after lunch, the mayor came by and rang the bell at our front gate — she's our neighbor. Walt went out and talked to her. She said they were thrilled with the photos and had decided to use all of them. It was nice of her to stop and tell us. She urged us to attend the event on Saturday. Embarrassingly enough, we've never attended before. We'll have to make a big effort to get ourselves there this time. To thank us, she brought us a bottle of the local bubbly, which is made like Champagne but using local grapes like Chenin Blanc instead of Chardonnay.

Cornilles or black-eyed peas imported from Portugal, cooked

Finally, I cooked up a big pot of black-eyed peas yesterday for our New Year's Day dinner. For people from the U.S. South, it's considered good luck to eat black-eyed peas (called « cornilles » [kor-NEE-yuh] in France) on January 1. I love the old superstition, because I love black-eyed peas. Most French people seem never to have heard of them before. Luckily, they eat them in Portugal, so I can always find them, either dried or in cans, in the Portuguese products section in all the local supermarkets.

Beans bubbling in boiling broth on the stove

Black-eyed peas are beans, actually but they have much thinner and more delicate skins than other beans. And they have a distinctly different flavor compared to white beans like navy beans, French lingots, or Italian cannellini, or like red kidney beans and pinto beans. It's hard to describe, but the taste is kind of grassy and rich. It resembles the flavor of lentils, I think, and goes very well with duck, including the slow-cooked confit de canard that we'll have with them, and with pork and pork sausages. I cooked my "peas" in a broth flavored with onion, garlic, spices, and bay leaves in which I had simmered a big slice of salt pork to have with our Christmastime feast of collard greens.

Walnut biscotti by Walt, great for dunking in wine or coffee

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Walt made a big batch of crispy walnut biscotti to take to the friends who've invited us for dinner tonight. There they are.