« Quantum physics and water | HomePage | A cry for help »
09/24/2007
England 44 Samoa 22
The weekend had been in the planning for 3 years with Rollo bringing over a bunch ex rugby players from Bude and I was to provide the transport so last Saturday I left home at 7.00 and took our Boxer 9 seater to Roscoff to pick the lads up from the ferry there was 7 of them so there was a place for Max who was also the backup driver. A quick coffee/croissant stop at Plestin then onto the N12 direction Rennes/Nantes. It was a 3 hour trip and well signposted into the various parking lots where a bus service took us to the Beaujoire stadium. Outside it was like a beer festival with lots of white shirts milling around supping beer and munching a baguette filled with chips and sausage. Amazingly there were no toilets they were inside the stadium where there was no alcohol,strange. We all had tickets for different parts of the stadium mine was near the roof level with the dead ball line next to a Breton Nationalist who cheered every time a decision went against England finally his day was ruined by the result. For the apres match entertainment we headed back to Rennes with a change of driver, Max sporting his new white shirt. In 15 years living in Brittany I have never been into Rennes the centre is really old and interesting a bit like Lannion x 10 lots of timber clad houses and cobbled streets. We found an interesting restaurant and ate outside on the pavement which was a bit tricky only one incident ,Chris doing a backward somersault with the waitress serving the dessert. She was excellent and didn't even drop the plate in her hand. During the meal large groups of people wandered pass as there was some sort of theatre in the street happening concerning witches. The lads needed a beer after the meal ( I was only drinking perrier water ) and the first bar they went they remarked how friendly and chatty everyone was it wasn't until Max pointed out to them it was a gay bar that they clicked.We looked for another bar and was directed to "rue de la soif" which is the heartland of Rennes a large cobbled square full of bars with their tables outside and hundreds of people just sitting around talking and drinking, but our destination was the Webb Ellis bar in keeping with the weekends theme a rugby bar. The sight of 8 English shirts entering the bar caused a lot of booing but after a few hours of socialising there was a communal singsong at 2.00am in the streets where the Bretons were taught the subtleties of Cornish rugby songs such as Camborne Hill and the nuances of Swing Low Sweet Chariot.Finally we dragged them away or carried in the case of Derek (the granddad of the group who should have known better ) back to the truck and home. Its around a 2 hour trip and arrived just after 4.00am where the lads crashed out in one of the houses and I went to bed but inadvertently had woken Paulien who wasn't too happy.
A few hours sleep then Sunday market where I met Oliver a local Irishman and wound him up about the rugby especially as he had been to the match at Stade France. I was amazed how quickly the lads recovered from the previous night they had to be taken back to ferry in the afternoon and as an appreciation of their company ( and slow down their improvement ) I gave them one of my vintage bottles of calvados which under Rollo's instructions they all had to sip every hour so they shoud be in a good state for work Monday morning.
08:40 Posted in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: brittany, gite, holiday, coat aillis, comments