I’ve decided to leave Rouen at the weekend. I’ll sort the photos out later.
I can’t put up with the constant sirens anymore. It’s every single day without fail, throughout the entire day. There was a period where sirens were sounding continuously for over 20 minutes. I’ve seen emergency vehicles pass each other going in the opposite direction to each other with sirens going and blue lights flashing.
It’s 95% fire vehicles and although I have never seen a fire, I have never seen a fire vehicle being driven without sirens or lights, so I assume there is a policy that when being driven, even if they are just going to the post office, they use sirens and lights. It’s the only explanation.
I quite like Rouen but this policy if that’s what it is, has ruined Rouen for me and I can’t wait to get back to some peace and quiet.
I found this church in Rouen, called St Maclou’s. Turns out that it is named after a Welshman called Mac Low. Not only that, but the town in Brittany called St Malo is named after him!
Anyway, not by any stretch of the imagination is this church the nicest one I’ve come across, but it did have something about it and I enjoyed my visit so much, I stayed for mass.
I love the way the French sing during mass, and I love the way they turn and shake hands with anyone who is close to them during the sermon. Despite being brought up catholic I’ve never seen this happen before although friends of mine say they have.
I’m going back to take some more pictures later as the ones I have got were taken on a very high ISO and Canon hadn’t sorted out a decent noise filter for the 5D grrrr!
**Update …. I went back and got some. Here they are but I may yet go back and get even more lol
What the heck is the Sucata run? Well, sucata is Portugese for junk. Here’s an explanation from the sucata website at http://www.sucatarun.com/
‘The Sucata Run is a bargain basement banger rally tour where teams of up to 4 people drive to Europe’s most westerly point in 4 days, in bangers costing no more than £250. It takes place over the August bank holiday weekend (27th – 31st) and culminates at the breath taking Guincho beach on the Portuguese coast.
I met up with some of the boys on the quay at Rouen. Pictured are Lindsay, Ross and Richard from the Top Gun team. Their Volvo is cleverly disguised as a fighter jet and they are cleverly disguised as Maverick et al lol
The lads say they saw the challenge on Facebook and decided to sign up for it as Richard so eloquently explains, “Well it seemed like a bit of a laugh and raises a few quid for a good cause so why not. ”
The boys were very tired when I met them but were all set for a night on the tiles in Rouen later. I couldn’t help but grimace when, as I walked the dog next morning, I saw them being roused and moved on by French cops at 5:30am. Ohhhhhh their heads!
It just occurred to me that since I came to France, I’ve rarely seen the police or other emergency services and rarely heard a siren, even in Paris. But since I came to Rouen on Sunday I’ve heard nothing but, every single day without fail, at least a dozen times a day. When I can spot them, it’s a fair mix of fire, police and ambulance.
I don’t know if they have a different policy in this city that they must always use sirens, but it’s weird that when I first drove in I had the feeling of not liking the place for only the second time since coming to France. (The other time was Reims) There was a period today where for 20 minutes solid there was a siren sounding. Weird.