Kingsbridge has been twinned with Isigny-sur-Mer in Normandy for over 50 years and the latest visit was this May. Despite its name, Isigny is not actually on the sea. It is on the river Aure, just south of where the Aure joins the much larger Vire, the border between Calvados and La Manche.
Normandy has huge tides: they are often around 7 and never less than 5 meters. Isigny’s small harbour gets water for the top 3 metres or so but the Aure flows fast through it, forming steep mud banks. One or two trawlers sit on a concrete hard but the 8 or 10 pleasure boats, which are moored at right angles to the pontoon and the stream, are held tight onto a bow fender by stern springs without a stern chain. Mooring in Kingsbridge is easier.
The economic life of Isigny centres round its famous Cambembert, Pont-l’Évêque and Trésor d’Isigny cheeses and, of course, its butter – all of which you can buy in Kingsbridge. Isigny cider is good as well and close to where the Vire runs out, there is a thriving oyster and mussel fishery (which we could have here if only we had cleaner, phosphate-free, water). One sound which you hear in Isigny is the cuckoo: there are plenty in Normandy and they seem to speak much the same language.
This was a very well-organised visit, with much eating and drinking and, of course, events to mark the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landings when Isigny was badly damaged. So there were lots of flags and we attended a special performance of Karl Jenkins’s Armed Man at Bayeux Cathedral in which some Kingsbridge twinners were singing. Of course the Normandy landings are marked in our Harbour – with the Normandy pontoon, the memorial on Whitestrand and at Mill Bay, which is our Utah beach with slipways built by the Americans for their landing craft. The Americans who liberated Isigny set out from Dartmouth.
I should also mention (quickly changing wars) that at 1800hrs on 28 June all boats in Salcombe Harbour are asked to lower their flags to half-mast and sound their siren to mark the end of WW1. Perhaps I should add that, in the UK, the correct way to fly a flag at half-mast is two-thirds between the bottom and top of the flagstaff, with at least the width of the flag between the top of the flag and the top of the pole (except for ensign staffs).
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.