After sitting on the street for four days, our rental car is getting a workout. We packed a picnic lunch and headed north up the Medoc Peninsula to Verdon-sur-Mer, not for the wines but to visit the site of an obscure military operation from World War II and to get a distant look at Cordouan Lighthouse, a World Heritage Site.
Phare de Cordouan, the oldest lighthouse in France, lies about four miles from the estuary. It is also the last inhabited lighthouse in France. Cordouan can be visited only by boat but the ferries stopped running ten days ago. Never fear—at 225 feet high, Phare de Cordouan is the world’s tenth tallest “traditional” lighthouse and we could see it plainly from atop the WW II bunkers—even without binoculars. Through Connie’s 10X binos we could see more detail—even my 300mm lens brought it close enough to count as our 700th World Heritage Site.
Chris—For He is an Englishman!— knew all about Operation Frankton and he wanted to visit the memorial to his “Cockleshell Heroes.” In December, 1941, a small unit of Royal Marines unbelievably paddled tiny Cockle kayaks from the Gironde estuary up the Garonne River to Bordeaux where they sank two German blockade runners and damaged four other ships. Only two of the five kayaks made it the entire 70 miles and only five of the thirteen men who set out returned; six were captured and executed and two died of hypothermia.
