There and back again, again

Ile D’Aix is reputed to be a beautiful island 30 minutes off the coast of La Rochelle.  Reading through our new guide to the region we thought that this week was a good time to hop on the boat and head over. It’s an island without cars and all in all takes about 3 hours to walk around it.

Bright eyed and eager we drove into the centre of La Rochelle, parked up and set off for the 10.45 ferry. All is going well until, in an extremely unstylish and “flop” kind of way Sheila falls. “Fall” doesn’t quite give you the picture in your head of Sheila, flat on her face on the pavement and the mix of expressions as she looked up around me.

As Sheila reports, ‘from the little boy who thinks, “ouch if I did that I’d get a telling off”, to a classically dressed French woman who thinks “clumsy foreigners” or to my darling husband who went “Oh feck!”

‘I blame the bad French workmanship, which we have all experienced over the years, wobbly pavements and the like. Anyway up I gets and hobble to the nearest chemist, where we know yer man’s French is going to be sorely tested. He had prepared for most eventualities but not quite this however, a few words and a point at the bloodied knee covers all that’s needed before the shop assistants pulls out an amazing assortment of ointments, plasters, gauze – the lot or in other words “woohoo I can sell these guys enough stuff to make my sales budget for the day!”.

‘Suffice to say that by the time we’d got me bandaged up and walked more gingerly to the port the boat had literally sailed. Whilst we appreciate that Ile D’Aix is not the in the Outer Hebrides or anything like that but we decided that a trip that day to the island might not be the best idea.

What shall we do now? Let’s stop at the supermarket on the way home, pick up lunch and head out of a picnic (“pique nique” in freanch – Ed). We knew it was not our day when we pulled into the shop’s car park to find yet another ferme expetionalle this time with the word “sinistere” in the poster.  One doesn’t need to be a fluent French speaker to know that is not a good sign.

Tuesday seemed as good a day as any to try again, wound re-bandaged by Dr McKay and off we headed. To avoid repeating ourselves from the previous day we took a totally different route and car park, one that was very close to the embarkation point and headed to the boat. As we approached we saw that we were not the only people to have had this idea as there were lengthy queues. The 10.45 was full, the 11.45 was full and the next ferry with space was 13.15. Now this is a small island and the idea that boat loads of tourists were descending, ok we might be two of them, did not appeal.

So we looked at one another and thought nah. Back to car, back to la ranch and a cycle trip of a few miles and stopping for moules + frites at Viviers cheered us up no end.

Looks like Ile D’Aix will be on our bucket list for next summer.