Honfleur Salt Cellar 29.7.25
It is a shorter coach journey today for a half day excursion to Honfleur which is where the Seine reaches the sea.
Between the mooring point and our destinations yesterday and today our coach crosses all three modern bridges in the area easing communication between the two sides of the Seine. These are Pont de Brotonne (close to Caudebecquet), Pont de Tancarville and Pont de Normandie which links the Honfleur (south side) to Le Havre (north side) of the Seine and which we once used many years ago to gain the ferry to return to the UK after a holiday in the Loire.
Honfleur town was once famous for salt cellars, three originally, there are now two. They existed because the salt was needed to preserve the fishing catch. The cellars are constructed of great blocks of limestone with wooden vaulting ceilings erected by craftsmen word worker who were normally ship builders so the roofs echoing hulls of ships.
Old Harbour Honfleur 29.7.25
The complexity of the various buildings on the side of the Old Harbour which is at the heart of the town came about by the need for money of the owner who sold the right to build on the land adjacent to the Harbour and the properties were built with direct access to the Harbour. When the owner later ran short of money she then sold the ability to build a further four or five stories above the earlier construction with access from the street away from the quayside – so the properties had two owners. This trickery did not go down at all well.
St Catherine Honfleur 29.7.25
The church of Saint Catherine burned down and the replacement wooden church was again designed by local people versed in the art of shipbuilding giving another opportunity for those hull like structures to be deployed.
The fishing fleet of small boats is now virtually extinct (rather similar to the position in the UK) and the harbour is now rather more full of modern luxury sailing boats.
We return to the MS Jane Austen for lunch and in the middle of the afternoon we start retracing our steps along the Seine towards Paris. It is very restful to once again watch the countryside pass by. As with our trip along the Rhine a few years ago this is also a working river so we are passing other working vessels.