A taste of the Orient

More mossies, and I was so disturbed by them (it?) that J removed herself to the sofa-bed!

We made our way in Lorient to see the huge submarine base there, but also to see the museum of the French East India Company. Le Base is only accessible because the French Navy pulled there subs out a few decades ago, and since then as been turned to creative use, mostly by yachting and boating interests, but also as a music venue! If you like lumps of concrete it's up there with the best of 'em!

Now a massive covered marina, this is just one pen in one of the blocks. Note the huge lock gates.

This is K3. K1 and K2 were built away from the sea with access by slipway. K3 had direct access to the sea. I had hoped to get a tour around the complex but it doesn't run on Fridays (or not this Friday - the ticket office was unclear due to language issues). Given that it would have been in French only anyway we decided not to come back the next day. Shame though.

A lot of racing boats were evident. This style of maxi yacht was common both tied up and on the water. 

There was German concrete all over the port area.

You can see K2 on the left and K1 on the right. This sub is a post war French one: the Flore. It sits on a cradle that was used to move U-boats from the slipway to one of the pens you can see in the blocks on either side. Ingenious!

Two blockships - Crapaut and Strasbourg, ex French - were sunk in front of K3 to prevent torpedo attacks directly into the pens.

We walked around to the ferry terminal via a fishing dock that was the initial German U-boat serving area. It's built like a locomotive turntable except ships come up a slipway, then are lifted onto cradles that radiate from the central point. The Germans built bunkers on two of the spokes.

The walk was through a docks area and like most of these areas there are many derelict parts. However, they've been given a bit of a spruce-up. (If you value street-art like this.)

It was a short ferry ride across the harbour to Port Louis, the home of the French East Indian Company. Lorient is a city formed from 5 ports, but it was greatly boosted in size and importance by the FEIC. 

Interesting weathering of this statue. I wonder what caused it?

Lorient under the FEIC. The museum had some excellent models on display.

Some of the spoils

The museum was interesting though almost entirely in French. (Note, I'm not complaining - why should it? I should learn French. However, it was a barrier to understanding.) What English there was was clearly not a full translation of the French panels either. The museum was in another fort that controlled the entrance to the harbour so we wandered around it for a while before returning to Lorient and Reggie.

As we weren't going to tour K3 we drove on to a place called Hennebont, a little way up the Blavet river. We noticed it was high tide but we didn't realise it was a spring tide until the banks overspilled in a few places!