We spent an interesting couple of hours the other night weaving through the convoy, all of whom were showing lights except us. It was interesting from our point of view, but I imagine it would have been even more interesting from the other ships, as we were radar silent at the time, so all they would have seen was the sudden blotting out of the stars as this great grey shape (us) eased past. Trouser-changing time, I suspect.
Useless statistic: the cost of main engine, diesel and aviation spirit for the Illustrious while on this exercise is approximately £58,000 a day. I’m rather glad I don’t have to pay for it. One of the very few compensations (jumping to a different subject) of working in the silent hours, as the Navy rather touchingly calls the hours of darkness, is that we get to see some very spectacular sunrises and sunsets, and last night was no exception – the sun looked just like a vast glowing orange as it sank beneath the horizon in an almost cloudless sky. Beautiful.
Friday 17th June 1983
ENDEX. A lovely word – END of EXercise, in layman’s terms, and it meant that when I was relieved in Flyco by John Lamb, at about nine this morning, that I had done my last night watch of this deployment. Unfortunately, what it didn’t mean was that I could go to bed, as the blasted report on the Sea Harrier had still to be processed, so I stayed up all day doing that.
The ship left the exercise in the early morning, punched the clocks two hours forward (so we are now one hour ahead of UK time) for France, and headed straight for Brest, though the exercise continued rather longer for our Sea Kings, as they were tasked with continuing to provide an anti-submarine screen for the JFK until we were almost in Brest, after which they all poked off to Culdrose for a very short break before joining the Invincible for her deployment. The ship arrived in Brest at about eleven this morning, in Procedure Bravo, which means just the odd handful of people on the upper decks and a few aircraft dotted about the place. Very painless way to arrive, from my point of view, as I had to do exactly nothing, just get on with the blasted A25 report, which I thankfully did get finished by late afternoon.
We had an official reception in the evening, starting at 1830 and finishing at 2000, for some of the local Frogs, and very bad it was too. It was held on the quarterdeck, rather than in the hangar, as we were only expecting about a hundred guests, and I don’t think more than about seventy turned up. A very quiet, very boring affair, and I was really quite delighted that it ended on time, as I was then able to crawl gratefully into bed, having been working more or less continuously for just over twenty-nine hours. A bed, a bed, my kingdom for a bed!
Saturday 18th June 1983
Eleven hours of sleep worked wonders, and I woke up this morning feeling several hundred per cent improved over last night, to my great relief. I spent the morning still chasing the A25 round the ship, trying to pin down various people who had to sign sections of it, then off to the office to duplicate it – altogether we have to prepare about seven copies of it, and send them off to various organisations involved with aircraft accidents within the Royal Navy.
What I was pleased to see was that although the pilot of the Sea Harrier got a bit of an ear-pounding for not doing the right things when he suspected that he was lost, he did also get a brisk round of ‘well-dones’ for actually managing to recover the aircraft intact from an almost impossible situation. Reading his version of events, it does seem that he really had the dice loaded against him, with both his radios U/S, and his navigation equipment defective, and his radar on the blink, and I really felt for him as I read his description of the last five minutes of the flight.
I had a fairly early lunch today, got changed, and then appeared on the jetty by the ship with a select company of other fun-lovers, intent on catching the 1315 bus into town. The French, typically, have put the Illustrious about as far from civilisation as is humanly possible, while still keeping her within the geographical confines of the naval base, and we are about a mile and a half from the dockyard gate, so a bus certainly seemed to be the best idea. Just looking around the base, as we walked towards the bus stop on the jetty, I was very struck by the sheer size of the place. Brest is France’s premier naval base, and is far, far bigger than Portsmouth and Plymouth put together, and is, I must confess, a good deal cleaner and tidier than either of the British ports. There are none of the odd bits of machinery, coils of wire and piles of rusting metal which are so characteristic of Royal Naval dockyards – possibly the French establishments are not run by the same bunch of ludicrously inefficient unions that are in charge in Britain…
The bus, or rather coach, arrived on time (something else that would never happen in Britain), and there then followed a brief period of hilarity as all of the seventy-five or so people who had gathered expectantly tried to get into the thirty-two-seater coach. To my great surprise, we all managed it, though there were far more people standing than sitting. The coach driver (a Frog Corporal) expressed no surprise, or any other emotion. He simply closed the doors, though not without some difficulty, and drove off.
The journey in passed in something of a blur, mainly because it was quite difficult simply breathing, without worrying about where we were going or trying to look out of the windows at the passing scenery, and it was with some relief that we finally stopped near the centre of Brest and were able to get out and into the fresh air.
After a brief discussion along the lines of ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do?’ we split up into handy-sized units and wandered off in different directions. We walked first of all around the area through which the bus had driven, as Peter Glew wanted to have a look at a castle which we had passed. Brest, obviously, is on the coast, and is also built on high ground, so there are some fairly lofty bridges in the town, and the castle was visible from one of these. We then went on a bit of a general meander, looking at the residential areas, before making our way into the town centre itself to look at the shops. Brest is quite a large town, very much along the lines of Portsmouth, but Froggy, and I was interested to see that there were very few things for sale in the shops which were not also available in Britain (except for things like flick-knives, which are legal here, but illegal in Britain), which I presume is in part due to the Common Market. Prices, too, seemed reasonably comparable with the United Kingdom. The things which did impress me were the food items on offer – the cakes in particular were absolutely mouth-watering, and it required the combined influences of will-power and the recent memory of a large lunch to resist them.
Finally, we returned to the area where the coach had dropped us off, and found a pleasant cafe in which to while away a bit of the afternoon. And very pleasant it was, too, just sitting there in the sun, mind in neutral, and watching the world go by. There were five of us in the group; two had black coffee, one white coffee, and I and the Met Officer had Coke (I’ve had French coffee before). The black coffee was literally like tar when it arrived, and I really don’t know how the two of them forced it down. I also asked Peter Lavis, who had bought the white coffee, what it was like, and he said, ‘It’s very nice. I’ll have a Coke next time,’ so I assume that the white coffee was of about the same standard.
We sat there, soaking up the sun and the atmosphere, for about three quarters of an hour, before deciding that it was time to head back towards the ship.
The journey back was quite something. Henry Cooper, Sub Lieutenant Royal Navy, an engineer, elected himself as leader and navigator, as he claimed to be the only person who had any idea of the route home – I had seen almost none of the outward journey, so I was very much in the dark about the route. However, my own personal plan was to walk to the waterfront, and then simply follow the coast round, until we reached the dockyard. ‘Oh, no,’ said Henry. ‘I know the way,’ and led off.
Well, we followed, uttering doubting comments at intervals, to be rebuked each time by Henry, claiming that he recognised odd bits of roof or wall or street name or shop name or something. We finally emerged from Brest entirely, findin
g ourselves in a country lane, with almost no civilisation in sight. I would not have been in the least surprised to see a sign saying ‘Paris 40 km’ or something – the one thing I was sure about was that we were not en route to the dockyard (or, at least, not the direct route).
Finally, with Henry (now dubbed the ‘Navigator’, but more in hope than expectation) still leading, we walked past an elderly Frog leaning on a walking frame. ‘Allo,’ he quoth. ‘Good afternoon,’ said someone. ‘Oh, you are English. Vive Margaret Thatcher. I fought with the Free French. You are from London?’ ‘Yes. Well, close. Do you know where the naval base is?’ (This lot really has to be said with the appropriate accents). ‘The naval base? Oh, that is far, far away,’ and he pointed back the way we’d come! Anyway, he gave us directions, and off we walked. ‘Henry,’ I said, ‘I’ll speak to you later.’
The old boy was quite right, too. It was a hell of a long way to the base. I think it was about a mile and a half to the wall of the dockyard, and then a further mile to the gate, and another mile and a half after that to the ship. When you add that lot to the three miles or so we had walked before (fortunately) responding to the ‘Allo’ – if the old Frog hadn’t been there, we might still be walking – you end up with quite a route march.
The relief I felt when I finally got into my cabin and could lie down and take the weight off my feet can hardly be described. My feet ached, my thighs ached, and when I took off my shirt to get ready for dinner, I found I was sunburned on my arms as well. The final straw came when I took off my socks, to find my left foot covered in blood – caused, fortunately, by nothing more serious than one toe-nail cutting the adjacent toe – when I vowed never to follow Henry anywhere ever again. My feet would have been better if I had been wearing walking shoes or training shoes or something, rather than the ordinary shoes I had on.
The day finished well, though, as CCTV was showing Smokey and the Bandit, which I watched for about the tenth time and still thoroughly enjoyed. My bed has rarely felt as good as it did tonight.
Sunday 19th June 1983
And today was the big day – the day of the tour of the countryside. I went down to the office first thing, in order to have a bash at my in-tray, which has been increasing in volume over the last week or so. As we are now out of the exercise, the volume of signal traffic has died away to almost nothing, relatively speaking, so that at least has reduced the work I have to do. I then got changed, collected Mike Vine (the Met Officer), and off to the jetty for the coach, upon which this time I had a seat.
We drove through Brest, and out towards the south and Quimper (which is, I understand, pronounced ‘Sharmpear’ or jolly close to that), starting off on a dual-carriageway, but then branching off onto quiet little country roads. My over-riding impression is how very much like Britain the whole place is, with farms and green everywhere – the ‘green and pleasant land’ of dreams – and I really think that if you took a photograph of most bits of Brittany and showed it to someone, asking them where it was, they would probably say the Cotswolds, or Surrey, or the Downs. It really is that similar, even to the Frisian cows about the place. In fact, I understand that when Roman Polanski wanted to film Tess, he filmed in Brittany as he would have been arrested for something if he had tried to film in Britain, and I don’t suppose anyone noticed. Of course, they drive on the wrong side of the road over here, and the cars are rather different, as are the houses, but apart from that, it really is quite uncanny how British it all is.
And, talking of houses, which I almost was, the houses in this area really are rather splendid, featuring most competent designs and some very attractive building materials. Most of the newer houses have integral garages, and are often of three storeys, with the main door on the first floor, reached via steps and a balcony – that may sound rather odd, but it really does look good in practice. They also use quite large granite blocks to frame the doors and windows, which looks most effective against the white walls, which are constructed of breeze blocks just as in Britain, and then concreted. The roofs are of a relatively steep pitch, usually, just like thatched roofs at home, and are then completely planked before the tiles are laid, which again seemed a rather odd technique.
The tiles and slates used are most attractive too, with dark grey being the predominant colour, but with a wide variety of lighter shades used as well. The roofs are often interesting, with all sorts of odd windows and other features moulded in. In fact, the only thing I wasn’t all that keen on were the windows, which looked to be about 25 per cent smaller than those used in British properties, and almost invariably fitted with shutters. I would think that this would make the rooms rather gloomy, and I personally prefer light and airy rooms. Overall, though, very attractive properties.
After leaving the main road, we drove through a place called Chateaulin, which was very pleasant, being built on both sides of a river, and with some most attractive buildings, wide streets and lots of interesting looking shops and cafes. We then drove on through a village called Cast, which was as unattractive as Chateaulin was attractive, with faded, peeling walls and a general air of neglect. We didn’t stop there either, which pleased me. Where we did stop, though, was Locronan, which was a rather strange place. Take away the church from Locronan, and there would be nothing left, as it’s really quite a small village. The church is old – it looks as if it grew out of the ground of its own volition, rather than was erected in the more usual way – and quite massive. Quite what the precise significance of the church, and of Locronan, is, I have no idea, but it is obviously a fairly major tourist attraction, with a huge coach and car park at one end of the village and a cluster of bars, cafes and craft shops, souvenir shops and so on encircling the church itself, selling the usual quasi-religious tat, postcards and drinks.
As by this time both Mike and I were feeling slightly dehydrated, we had a brief wander round the church exterior (there was a service going on inside it – it was a Sunday, after all), took a few pictures, and then retired to a bar where we consumed a Coke each, and then repaired to a different cafe/bar for an ice cream – quite delicious, very creamy and sweet.
Back in the coach again, and as Locronan faded behind us, our thoughts turned to lunch at Quimper. This, I regret, was no slap-up French feed – Illustrious, bless her cotton socks, had provided us all with bag meals, which were, in fairness, quite adequate, though desperately unexciting.
Quimper itself was dominated by its cathedral (I wonder if all French towns are apparently so religiously-influenced as these two?) though it had rather more to offer than Locronan. Mike and I took our packed lunches to a small garden alongside the main road through the town, and ate them there, watching the world go by as we did so. Quimper, like Chateaulin, is built on a river, which runs right down the centre of the main street, and it is all rather attractive, providing a pleasant aspect while our teeth got to work on the French bread which constituted the major part of our meals.
We then went off for a walkabout round the cathedral and other interesting looking bits and pieces in the local area before retiring to a cafe for a refreshing drink. In some ways, the drink in the cafe, which turned into two drinks, was the high-spot of the day, as it really was so terribly French. The waiter wore black trousers, black waistcoat, white shirt and a bow tie, and had a scrubby moustache and that rather lank hair so often affected by Frenchmen; all the other customers were French; we were right by the road sitting under a Martini umbrella, and there was even accordion music issuing from the bar. To make the day perfect, the sun was blazing down. I think I could very easily get used to that kind of life!
We saddled up again at two, and continued on our merry way south, passing through another most attractive town, this time right on the coast, called Audierne. Clearly fishing is her major industry, as there were dozens of boats secured alongside the jetties, looking most picturesque in the afternoon sun. Again we didn’t stop, but swept on through, now heading west, and finally arrived at Pointe du Ras, which is jus
t about the most westerly point of France, though I suspect that the bit which juts out just above Brest may actually be fractionally farther west, in reality.
Ras raised a laugh in the coach, as ‘Point du Ras’ will obviously translate as Point of Ras, or Ras Point, and we have a lot of RAS points on the ship. These are where members of the RAS teams stand during a RAS (Replenishment At Sea), and one or two people muttered that they could have seen a Ras point without all the bother of getting into a bus. The place itself was very reminiscent of Land’s End, but was rather more attractive, with a rugged coastline and cliffs, as well as the odd statue to relieve the monotony, and, just like Land’s End, it was a tourist attraction, with all that that statement implies.
There were the inevitable cafes and souvenir shops and all the rest of it – I was grateful for the former, as it really was quite warm on the coach, but I could have done without the latter – and there were hundreds of people there, just walking about, looking out to sea or sitting in the cafes and drinking. Another place worth seeing, but not worth going to see, if you follow.
We got back into the coach at 1630, and made the non-stop run back to Brest, retracing a certain amount of our route, as we went through Audierne and Chateaulin again. The weather was still quite beautiful, as it had been all day, which certainly made it a day to remember. I was rather surprised that there weren’t more cars on the roads, but we were not held up until we got back into Brest itself and had to slow down to a crawl to pass two minor road accidents (what the Americans would call fender-benders) in less than a mile. French driving certainly seems to be as bad as ever, with indicators being used infrequently (and then often in what appears to be the wrong direction) and the usual general disregard for all other road users which is characteristic of French driving.
H.M.S. Illustrious Page 7