Paimboeuf parking on pier
We are parked right on the quay where the river Loire meets the Atlantic Ocean, just across from St Nazaire. It seems strange to see the end of such a mighty river with all its splendid chateaus and magnificent views. We were planning to stay at the aire at La Bernerie-en-Retz, but we didn’t like the location surrounded by houses, so we kept on driving through Pornic and north on the D213 to St Brevin-le’s-Pins, where there was supposed to be another aire by the bridge to St Nazaire, but it wasn’t obvious and, being just a car park, it didn’t have any emptying facilities.
St Nazaire bridge
So we carried on back east and upstream to Paimboeuf and have been admiring the choppy esuary, for it is a very windy day, and the fishing boats bobbing and rocking on the strong current. There are quite a few anglers too, so it seems to be a very popular place for fishing.
We were surprised to see how industrialized St Nazaire river bank is and we can see lots of factory chimneys and cranes from here, which is not very attractive, so we are better off on this side, even though a part of me really wants to cross that huge bridge, just for the heck of it!
Paimboeuf beach and St Nazaire in the distance
We stayed the night at quit Concourson-sur-Layon and enjoyed a couple of short walks around the pond, but it wasn’t very big and not long enough for a proper dog walk, so Bramble had to content himself with chasing the ball in the picnic area by the aire and the school.
Concourson-sur-Layon aire
We set off at 9.30 am this morning and followed the TomTom on the D960 to Cholet, where we joined the E62 to Nantes and finally the D751 to La Bernerie, but again, I had a couple of disagreements with it outside Nantes about which junctions to take and we finally switched it off when it told us to go right at a junction for Pornic just outside la Bernerie, when it was clearly signposted left! Thinking it knew something we didn’t, we went along with it only to tell us 10 seconds later to ‘turn around when possible’. That did it for me and I lost my patience with it, so I navigated the rest of the way, going exactly the way I wanted to go. Like I said before, Sat Nav is not without its flaws and cannot be relied upon entirely. Give me a map any day!
Paimboeuf pier and lighthouse
Fatima Saysell 