Fuzzy Logic

Fuzzy recollections revert to sharp focus, as I walk up the hill into Treguier town. I moored Goblin here, it must be fifteen years ago. All that remained, of that visit, was a collage of impressionist mind's-eye images. They conveyed only a blurred sense of the river's meandering beauty and of a proud historic town at its head. When I sought more detail, the images dissolved - dreamlike. Leaving only the exhortation, to return some day, echoing in the air.

The town square looks instantly familiar. I have no need to study the "you are here" tourist map, on its wall, to know where to wander. I do, however, discover that, in my fuzziness, I have been misnaming the river. It is properly called the Riviere Jaudy, not the Treguier river. 

The cathedral dominates the square and the town. It has done so since the sixth century, in one form or other. Much of this incarnation is mediaeval.

Its spire is pierced by openings, on all sides. From within it must outshine the starriest of nights. Daylight lancing down from the dark firmament overhead.

The square is open and leafy. It is easy to imagine it filled with the murmur of worshipful pilgrims, come to pay homage to St Tugdual. The Celtic born Welshman, driven from his home by the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. He found shelter, safety and a meditative tranquility at the head of the Riviere Jaudy. Protected from seaward by its rock strewn entrance and from landward by its hilltop perch. With a rugged beauty of its own.

In those times, the straggling streets jostling their way onto the square, would have serviced the needs of religious travellers and monks.

Now they furnish the requirements of a different kind of traveller. Many an English accent is to be heard, and red ensign to be seen, in the town and harbour. Alongside French and Dutch.

The Riviere Jaudy - which started it all, brought St Tugdual here and some of his pilgrims too - laps around the crag, on which Treguier is built. The sandy beaches, of its sheltered coves, issue an invitation to loiter and to linger. To watch the boats come and go, whatever the motivations for their voyages.

 Tomorrow the west bound tide starts to flow at zero six hundred hours (French time). We will have to squander an hour of it. It would be foolhardy to navigate out of the river without the predawn glow of light, with which to pick out the channel marks. The wind is forecast westerly force four. We will be able to get a slant on it, by tacking inside Les Sept Iles, down towards Perros Guirec, and later into the Baie de Morlaix - where the local flood should lend us a helping hand.