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Belle-Île-en-Mer, 14 kms off the coast of mainland Brittany, our last port of call in France.

As sunlight slowly breaks through the clouds, the morning brightens revealing a sea so still, like a mirror. I can’t wait to get aboard the zodiac to shore. There’s not a breath of wind as we head off hardly breaking the surface of the sea and round the bow of the ‘Silver Cloud’.

It’s impossible to get to Belle-Île except by ship. Sailing through the entrance to the little harbour, boats rock gently in their moorings and pretty white fishermen’s cottages dot the shore. Le Palais is the island’s main town with a 16th century fort standing guard near the harbour.

Out for a morning walk in the sun on the cobbled streets of Saint Malo’s old Breton town.

Later to meet-up with Hilary and Rupert who come across from Île de Batz to join us for a seafood lunch.

The gang’s all here in zodiac life jackets before going ashore at St Peters Port at our unscheduled stop at Guernsey in the Channel islands. The easterly winds in the Scilly Isles off Devon made it unsafe for the zodiacs or for the local wooden boats to come take us ashore.

With ‘Secret Mission’ accomplished in St Peter’s Port, Guernsey, the A Team bounces through the choppy sea back to home base aboard Silver Cloud.

The first stop on our expedition voyage is on the Island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel. It’s an Expedition landing by zodiac on this remote island with very little infrastructure.
We walk for a kilometer and a half up fairly steep paths over rough rocks to get to the little village and other sites on the plateau. Time for a pot of tea at the Marisco Tavern before returning down the hill to the zodiacs and back to the ship for lunch.

Not quite 40 shades of green of the Emerald Isle but who’s counting? And it’s good to be on the road again and here in Dublin after three years of Covid confining us to barracks.

On Saturday, we’re heading out to sea again for three weeks on Silver Cloud Expedition ship sailing first to a couple of islands off the coast of Devon, England, and then down the western coast of Brittany in France and on to the north of Spain, around Portugal to Lisbon and Up the river to Seville, across the Mediterranean to Algiers and Tunisia, with the final port of call in Sicily before disembarking in Malta.