OUTING TO SAINT MALO - MAY 31st 2022
On Tuesday May 31st, we took the bus with the European class to go to St-Malo. It was a quiet journey as some of us slept.
We met our guide, Alexandra, at ’place Bouvet’ our meeting point. It was market day. She introduced herself to us and then we started our guided tour.
We walked towards our first stop, the Ar Zenith, a fishing boat which was used by young men from Brittany to join the resistance in England after the call made by the ’General de Gaulle’on June 18th 1940. It left France from Audierne and arrived in Plymouth.
Then, we walked to the entrance of tunnels. 2,000 workers volunteered to build this 1,350 km network. We couldn’t visit the tunnels, but you can watch a video ( follow this link ( [1]) if you want to know more about it. These tunnels are part of the Alet peninsula, a fortified place built by the Nazis to defend St-Malo. When they wanted to free St-Malo, the allies bombed the wrong city because of a problem of translation : ’la cité d’Alet’was translated into ’the city of Alet’, so the allies bombed the old city of St Malo instead ot the Alet peninsula.
We were really impressed by the armoured bells damaged by the impacts of shellings. You couldn’t work there if you were taller then 1.60 so the Nazis sent teenagers there. Just imagine the young guys in there…
We also saw two giant craters where our guide took a photograph of all of us. We had our picnic in front of the sea, next to the Solidor Tower. We were very lucky : the view and the weather were great.
On the beach, we saw a man who was building a small tower (a cairn) with some rocks. He took many photos (maybe one thousand !). It was fun to see so we clapped for him. A less funny anecdote : some sea gulls stole our food and frightened some of us !
It was a really interesting visit. The guide was really nice, with a good English accent : we could understand easily what she was saying. This day was awesome, but it was a bit short for us : it should have lasted longer.
Thank you for this outing ! Pupils from the Euro option
teachers : Mrs BONIN LORRE & Mr KERNEIS
