I wrote this as part of an earlier thread about St Nazaire and the U-Boat pens. It really is worth a visit...
We rode over the massive bridge as you enter St Nazaire with a large police presence at both end of the bridge. I waved and they all politely waved back. I thought it was really nice of them to turn out to greet us.
So, we arrived at a modern hotel on the outskirts of town which had lovely bedrooms but fuck all else, so after unloading and having a freshen up, we took the tram into town – except for the fact that the last tram back was at 22.00, it made a nice change.
Someone in the bus queue mentioned something about the QE2 but he couldn’t speak English and we couldn’t speak French, so most of the conversation was lost. We could though hear lots of bangs and explosions as we entered town.
As we walked towards the town, we met loads of folk walking towards us.
We’d just missed the departure of the QE2 heading back to the USA. She’d visited to celebrate 100 years since the last Queen visited, so the Police presence wasn’t for us after all and the fireworks must have been tremendous.
We’d arrived about lunchtime so took time to walk round the town a bit, which was covered in white feathers. These were from a concert the night before near to the U-Boat pens
We had a good look at them and then we found somewhere to get a bite to eat.
One of my mates is an ex-Marine Commando and so we decided to visit the monuments a little way round the harbour.
Sadly, one of them was above a U-Boat pen where ‘Espadon’ is moored up still and so we decided to stay another night but this time in the centre of town, so that we could see it the next day.
Following morning, we went in and looked at the U-boat pens again before walking round to the pen where the Espadon is housed and went aboard. Thank god they’d made steps in and out as it really was claustrophobic.
How on earth those guys lived aboard those things is beyond me. The bunks were tiny and the gaps between minute. Really thought provoking.
And then we went up onto the roof of the building for Dave to pay his respects to the fallen marines who raided the harbour all those years back.
There are photo links on my thread but you need dropbox to see them. No idea how to get them to display.
You really should visit...