May 19th Rest Day

19^th Rest Day.  St. Nazaire

Before the next stage of the ride where I turn south east to reach the Loire Valley a detour was essential to St Nazaire and today was ideal, a rest day being welcome after three days of more than 100 kms each day, and  the weather further deteriorating to heavy rain and cold; more February than May.

But the grey, misty morning seemed appropriate for my first visit to this huge port. Seventy years ago my father  was a part of the daring commando raid on the dry dock and the submarine pens which effectively made the trans-Atlantic convoys much safer. For years  I have wanted to visit St Nazaire and my choice of route for this journey was partly dictated by this wish, just as my ride to John O Groats two years ago allowed me to visit the impressive monument to the Commandos at Spean Bridge in the Highlands.

Driving in the dull misty morning the forty or so kilometres to St Nazaire from Blain I persuaded myself that I was on a wild goose chase. However, nothing could have been further from the truth. Despite their town having been virtually razed to the ground by the allies the townspeople still remember the night of 28^th March 1942 when the decrepit old battleship Campbelltown destroyed the huge lock gate to the dry dock in the port.  The gigantic, cavernous, submarine pens,  the gun emplacements, and other fortifications are still there and it is perfectly possible to trace the events of the desperate raid and the movements of the soldiers.  The dry dock is still used for ship building and it was by a complete coincidence that this Saturday was the inauguration of the cruise liner MS Divina, and its departure on its maiden voyage. It was moving to watch this enormous vessel be guided out of the very dock that seventy years ago it had been so necessary to destroy.  The monument to the Commandoes is even more dignified than the one at Spean Bridge, being a four metre high shard of granite, presumably to symbolize strength. The fact that it stands not 50 metres from the children’s playground on the beach, nor that la Place des Commandos is mostly a carpark did not diminish its significance for me.