Spoony

Vannes sits about bang in the middle of the curve around the Golfe du Morbihan, a large bay which houses dozens of islands. We'd headed to Vannes for the morning market, hoping to avail ourselves of some more local produce than in the last couple of trips, partly due to the fact that Brittany being a bit more populated has more towns, with more regular markets. Ergo packing into the boot some live langoustines, bread (naturally), and various other bits and bobs. Oh, and a new weatherstation (our's at home is broken) and light-up dragonfly (er... yes...) from Nature et Decouvertes, which I can remember being one of my favourite shops when I was studying in Lyon.

Vannes itself was very pleasant, although we're starting to doubt the veracity of the Lonely Planet (which I've always thought to be slightly better than the Rough Guide) which proclaimed it's sheer beauty. Anyway, being on the Golfe we had to head round for more views of the bay of islands, did a bit more swearing about road signs (especially the disappearing and reappearing 'Route du Golfe' markers that actually take you away from the coast road), and drove round in a couple of circles before finding the Duer bird reserve, which brought about a couple more bird firsts after yesterday's wee Egret. Green Sandpiper was unexpected; as was Snipe (neither being on my Brittany-birds-to-see list); the Great Egret gave me the pair after yesterday's Little Egret; but I was dead chuffed with a first Spoonbill. And not just one, but a whole gaggle of them.

All of this was found out with the help of a lovely French guy in the impressive hide, who got his spotting scope lined up on each to show me. It took a bit of checking back and forth on names for me to work out the French-English translations (Spoonbill, for example, is une Spatule Blanche, in French), but we got there, and I made sure to thank him as we made our way to map-guess the route back 'home'.