Life on the sea bed (19 August 2009)

We stopped for lunch in the Héaux de Bréhat islands off the end of the Sillon de Talber, a low strip of glacial moraine protecting the southern part of the Ile de Bréhat from the bigger Atlantic swells. The tide was low, still dropping and approaching springs and we found ourselves in a rocky, mountainous landscape which would normally serve as the sea bed, a hunting ground for seals in waving forests of seaweed.

We busied ourselves lifting large rocks to hunt for crabs, Bertrand showing us how under pretty much every big rock a crab would be hiding – tourteaux (Cancer pagurus the “edible crab” you get in the fishmongers) and a blue crab called etrille (liocarcinus sp) with an elegant patterned shell and back legs like fins for swimming - then set up a complicated system (we were already becoming practised at this) to keep the boats in place as the tide rose. The boats are anchored with a long rope to something on the sea bed such as a rock or sand-filled saucepan. As the tide comes in they float upwards and can be retrieved simply by shaking the “anchor” free. It doesn’t work in rough, exposed conditions but is a godsend when you want to relax over lunch without constanly moving the boats up the beach every few minutes.

There is something unsettling about sitting down to eat your lunch on a piece of land that doesn’t really exist, which makes you feel like an interloper, as if you have landed on the surface of the moon, this isn’t your element and you have no right to be there. And the tide came in fast and inexorably, the boats rose on their tether, the lanscape where we had been hunting the crabs drowned, vanished and gave way to become just another patch of ocean. It was with a sense of relief that I got back into the familiarity of my boat just as the tide breached what not long before had been a mountain pass. We paddled off through the newly created gap, as if down some vast Himalayan river, heading towards solid ground and real land with trees and grass and houses.