Market Day

Art mingles with a picturesque reality, on the quayside. The foreground still life; the background true life.

Saturday is market day in Honfleur. The stalls surround the Vieux Bassin - thronging with browsers, shoppers, sightseers and traders. There is a pervading background murmur of animated conversation. Above it, the cultivated chimes of the harbour clock ring out - like those of a long case clock writ large. An, unseen, busker wafts a summer haze of accordion music across proceedings.

It is mid morning. The waterside pavement cafes are already filled with coffee drinkers and brunchers. Although the harbour itself has emptied of boats. Stargazer shares the visitors' berths with a lone local gaffer - over from Le Havre for the weekend.

Our travelling companions (since Boulogne), aboard the Dutch XC 42 'Xciting' and the German Breehorn 44 'Lyonesse,' began their homeward passages in the golden light of dawn. The Dutch crew calling out 'remember, we own Chatham!' as they leave, laughing. It is our running joke - since they learned our home port. A reference to The Royal Dutch Navy's rout of the British Medway fleet in 1667, under Admiral de Ruyter. 

The market is in full song now, under the midday sun. The art works, and a flower stall, cater for the needs of the soul.

A hat stall bridges the divide between the decorative and the functional.

Whilst food stalls galore, cater for the needs of the flesh - in the forms of meat. . .

. . .and, vin de pays, drink.

We're out by the Avant Port, now. Where spiritual needs, too, are provided for.

And where a trawler, converted into a Bar a Huitres, lies. A  reminder that the sea, beyond the lock gates, is a provider of nourishment to the body as well as inspiration to the mind.