This memorial was created to confront Nantes’ history as France’s leading slave trading port, while honouring both the victims of slavery and those who campaigned against it. The project developed from the city’s broader examination of this uncomfortable past during the 1990s, with the City Council approving plans for a permanent memorial in 1998 and choosing the winning design in 2002. Construction began in 2010 and the completed memorial opened to the public on 25 March 2012.

Steps lead down beneath the promenade into a long, confined passage containing texts about slavery, resistance, abolition and human rights. The design is deliberately stark, with old stonework, bare concrete and a wooden walkway running through the space. It feels less like a conventional museum and more like entering the concealed structure beneath the city’s prosperity, which is presumably the point.

Along the Quai de la Fosse are around 2,000 glass plaques naming slave ships and the ports involved in the trade. They are embedded discreetly into the ground, meaning that visitors walk among the evidence rather than being presented with a single monument which can be admired briefly before everyone moves on to somewhere selling coffee. The setting beside the Loire is calm and attractive, but that is precisely what makes it effective: the peaceful modern waterfront sits directly above the place from which ships once departed on voyages built around the treatment of human beings as cargo. It was a vast system of kidnapping, forced transportation, violence and exploitation, with consequences that lasted long after abolition.

The displays beneath the riverside promenade set out the long and deeply uncomfortable chronology of the Atlantic slave trade, including the repeated attempts to abolish it and the repeated determination of those profiting from it to find reasons why abolition should perhaps wait a little longer. Nantes was France’s leading slave trading port during the eighteenth century, and the exhibition makes no attempt to disguise that history. France abolished slavery more than once, only for Napoleon to restore it in the French colonies in 1802, placing imperial and financial interests above the freedom that had briefly been granted. It was finally abolished permanently in 1848.

Individual plaques record the names of ships such as Le Saint-Jacques, which left Nantes in 1767. A ship’s name can otherwise sound rather romantic, suggesting distant ports, brave sailors and an adventurous life at sea, so the description “navire négrier” is an important corrective to any temptation to become sentimental. There are a fair number of online reviews noting that the memorial makes no mention of the Barbary slave trade. I cannot say that I noticed anything about it either, although much of the material was of course in French, so it is entirely possible that I missed it.

The memorial was free of charge, thoughtfully designed and was conveniently cool which was handy given the extreme heat in Nantes when I was visiting. There is perhaps a little more that they can do here, as I only found out more about the memorial after having visited and there were many more stories that could be told.

I have long thought that you can tell a fair amount about a country given the transportation arrangements at the airport. If you have an airport where taxi drivers are allowed to roam the terminal attempting to scam passengers, then there’s either widespread corruption or airport management taking a very relaxed view of its responsibilities. And if you have an airport where there’s an obvious convenient option which is more expensive and some complex and packed service which is cheaper, then that’s not a city in need of tourists. And there are cities that can manage to put up clear signage and others where they decide that passengers need to complete an informal intelligence test.

Nantes made a broadly encouraging first impression. Nantes didn’t have taxi drivers roaming free and it had excellent signage, so it felt like an adult had been in charge of the arrangements. The airport was, however, very keen to guide passengers towards the direct bus costing €10, while being rather less enthusiastic about advertising the number 38 bus, which cost just under €2. The cheaper option was not exactly concealed, but it had been placed in the category of information available primarily to people who had already discovered it.

I obviously wanted the cheaper of the two buses and I was pleased to note that the tickets were sold at the same machine and the process was clear only for those who had read up in advance. However, the driver of this bus fended off over ten different customer groups, using his knowledge of French, German and English, because passengers were muddled up over how the buses worked. I thought that the local bus company was price gouging, there was no need for the €10 fare when evidently the rest of the network works with fares that are a fifth of that.

But, I had my front row seat and I was pleased that the journey into a relatively central part of Nantes took just over 35 minutes. The bus was clean, comfortable and professional driven and I was pleased at my thrifty ticket which cost me under €2. And not everywhere can compete with cities such as Wrocław, Warsaw and Gdańsk, where ordinary public transport reaches the airport without the authorities deciding that the final few kilometres require a special financial contribution. Those cities appear to regard an airport as part of the transport network rather than a captive market with runways, but I mustn’t sound like I’m complaining as the service I did catch was affordable, timely, clean and with a friendly driver.

I mentioned this to some of my friends who like heavy metal type music and they had heard of this event, although it’s not really within the realms of my musical knowledge which becomes uncertain when it gets loud.

Located around 30 kilometres south-east of Nantes is Clisson, home of Hellfest, France’s largest extreme music festival and one of the biggest metal events in Europe. Founded in 2006, it now attracts more than 280,000 visitors across four days, with stages devoted to metal, hard rock, punk and hardcore music. For most of the year Clisson is an attractive little town of vineyards, medieval buildings and riverside scenery, before June arrives and it is temporarily occupied by several hundred thousand people wearing black T-shirts and discussing which form of screaming is the most musically sophisticated.

I’m sure it’s very lovely and I had a look at the food vendors at this year’s festival and they seemed quite appealing. At least that’s something that I would have properly understood.

The gate was called which meant it was time to traipse off to the furthest part of the airport which is where all my Ryanair flights seem to depart from. I suppose that the airport charges them a cheaper rate per gate for flights that depart from the very boundary of the terminal.

Ryanair aircraft everywhere, waiting patiently to transport people across Europe for less than the cost of buying lunch in the airport.

Gate 34, the same gate as I boarded from a couple of weeks ago and I’m not sure it’s possible to get a gate further away from the main terminal with a shuttle bus and an overnight expedition. Boarding was a little muddled, they didn’t put the “boarding” line on the screen and a confused gate agent came over to ask why people weren’t boarding. She said that she had been shouting, but as she was around 20 metres away, it wasn’t entirely a surprise that no-one heard her. A passenger then had an argument with her about the whole arrangement, just to add a little drama to proceedings.

We were then held up as another passenger was trying to take a backpack that looked like she had somehow fitted a hippo into it. The gate staff, who were letting some quite large bags go through, could hardly turn a blind eye to that and so that was another £60 for the airline in fees.

The walk to the aircraft, during which there was ample opportunity to reflect on whether Nantes was actually closer than the departure gate.

I’d never noticed this on the side of an aircraft before and Wikipedia tells me that “they measure undisturbed ambient atmospheric pressure. It is a vital component of the pitot-static system, supplying static air pressure data to the altimeter, vertical speed indicator (VSI), and airspeed indicator”.

I asked AI to explain this to me as though I were an idiot, which is a setting I have already spent considerable time training it to use. It replied that they were basically measuring altitude, so that was another aviation mystery comprehensively resolved without the inconvenience of obtaining a pilot’s licence.

As always, I like these steps that fold into the aircraft before departure. The aircraft is EI-ESS and I looked at how many flights that completed today and it’s eight, which shows considerable efficiency. By comparison, I had managed to get myself from Luton Airport’s waiting area to Gate 34 and already felt that I had achieved enough.

As I hadn’t had any sleep I was getting a little tired by this point and was slightly pre-annoyed that the seating Gods had given me a middle seat.

Fortunately, there was no-one in the window seat and so I was able to move across. The flight was around 30% empty and so it seems the only reason I had been allocated a middle seat was to encourage me to pay to move to a window or aisle. In fairness to Wizz Air, they don’t seem to try that tactic on me, which is sensible as it doesn’t work on me at least.

I’m sure that there was a reason that I took this photo, although I can’t now remember what it was. So, here are some fields to look at. They appear to be functioning correctly in that role.

And safely landed on time into a very hot Nantes. The fare was more than I’d usually pay at £15, but the whole arrangement was efficient, the crew members were friendly, the aircraft was clean and everything went as I had expected. A smooth flight gives me less material for this blog, but it is probably best for all concerned and I remain entirely satisfied with Ryanair.

Straight after my day out with Roy and Jen to numerous north Norfolk pubs, but more on that later, it was time for Liam to pick me up on his way to work whilst dropping me off at Stansted Airport ready for an early morning flight. I’m not ideally sure that going straight to the airport straight after visiting several pubs was entirely sensible, but Liam made his car nice and cold for me. Richard still hasn’t got a car with seats which cool passengers down, but I suppose he’s not a VIP like Liam. And many thanks to Liam for his assistance, although he gets the excitement of my company for nearly two hours, so I can see why he’s keen to help.

I was the only person on the shuttle bus from Stansted medium-term parking to the main terminal, but that’s not entirely surprising as not many people feel the need to arrive at 01:00.

The main terminal effectively closes now at night, other than for a small section at arrivals, but the bus station terminal seems to always have space.

That there were people who thought feeding birds in the waiting room was a good idea annoys me.

Just before 03:00 I meandered up the main terminal which had just opened. Sleep is something of an optional luxury for me when a cheap air fare is available.

The security area opens at 03:00 and is always well staffed with friendly members of the security team. Despite the number of people queueing here I was able to get through within ten minutes, which was all rather efficient.

The airside’s main seating area where I took the opportunity to charge my phone.

This shows the scale of the Ryanair operation at Stansted Airport.

I get £18 to spend at Camden Bar & Kitchen with my Priority Pass. The Escape Lounge is closed at the moment, so this is the only option without spending my own money.

It’s getting more challenging to decide what to get with the £18 as the menu prices keep edging upwards.

The venue opens at 03:30, so I got there at 03:35 so that I didn’t look overly keen. I got a table with a power point, but I knew from past experience that I couldn’t order with Priority Pass until 04:00. This gave me 25 minutes to sit quietly and pretend I had not planned the entire operation around receiving breakfast at the earliest permissible moment.

I went for this, the poached eggs on avocado toast with an Americano coffee, coming in a few pence under the allowance. It was suitably delicious, with the eggs being lightly runny, and sufficiently filling for that time in the morning. I’m not sure that I’d spend £18 of my own money, but as it was free with my pass, it was a convenient place to get a little rest before departing for my gate. Airport pricing is much easier to tolerate when somebody else’s accounting system is absorbing the emotional impact.

Anyway, with that I was ready for my flight to Nantes with Ryanair having been allocated the middle seat…..

After a little break in proceedings, and I would like the pun there to be properly acknowledged, it was time for another league match and we were playing the International Brigade in the sauna area of the King’s Head. We had a new strategy that we were deploying, namely Ivan, to beat them thoroughly in practice so that their confidence was damaged. Our advanced sporting psychology is what will set us apart from the other teams in the league, although the results so far have been reluctant to support that theory.

The teams had arrived, so it was time to think about doing the draw.

Somehow we managed to have PJ kicking off proceedings for us again, this seems to be a regular thing.

And off we go!

Cool, calm and confident. Anyway, we lost that game.

I was up second so thought I’d better get a quick pint to ensure that I was at peak performance levels in the sauna area.

It was a close second game and I decided to do a very brave 200 shot in the middle of the game as I kept sitting just a bit behind. I saw Luke’s face of horror and that wasn’t quite the look of encouragement I had wanted. But my thunderbolt shot worked so I surprised and delighted myself, before reminding myself I would now just settle for 10s. It remained close though, going down to the final ball which I’m pleased to note I got in, but the peg wobbled just a little more than I would have liked.

Ivan, our new head coach, came over with marshmallows that we could allocate to all the players fairly. I ate most of them if I’m being honest, but leadership sometimes requires difficult resource decisions. Ivan was also the referee for two games and he was entirely competent, not smashing up the table like he did last time he was referreeing.

Here’s me waiting to referee whilst hoping the marshmallows didn’t melt in the extreme heat. I queried with Oli that perhaps, as a team captain, she could have made a contribution towards getting air conditioning in the King’s Head, especially as she’s one of the top four staff members that they have. She shouted back in a jovial manner that she didn’t feel obliged to pay for air conditioning. This was disappointing, although at least the pub’s climate policy is now clear.

Luke found himself 900 down after the first shot, which is a sub-optimal place to be.

It was Luke’s birthday this week (the same night as Julian hit 70, although Luke didn’t fall over) and so we celebrated with cake and strawberries. We had assumed that John would arrange to throw some of the games to allow Luke to have an enjoyable birthday, but he didn’t. Luke and I didn’t say anything of course about this lack of sporting behaviour.

Let’s just say that we were 5-1 down after the singles, so we had lost the match. I had a little sit down outside for the fourth time to cool down and reflect on whether we just didn’t have enough chalk. There is always a technical explanation available……

Back to the doubles, and Vaughan and I were successful in a very good game, so I was hopeful of turning this round to be a loss of just 5-4.

We lost 7-2, but look at those scores, but Luke put up a valiant performance against big shot Marcel, with Kirsty and Terri getting closer than their score looks. But losing 7-2 is not that bad in such hostile weather and I was saddened not to be able to take Ivan up on his offer of a game, but I had to rush to the Weaver’s to check that Julian didn’t have another fall. I’ve very much realised that bar billiards captaincy does sometimes involve wider pastoral responsibilities.

But, the main thing about all of this is having fun and it was a very enjoyable evening and the International Brigade are a lovely team. No game next week, but then we have two in a row after that in the Artichoke, so what could possibly go wrong?

And, in other news, we have our next cup game confirmed, which is against the Lionhearts. Nathan, their captain, and I would never comment on this ourselves as we’re very modest and entirely free from competitive vanity, but it is hard to deny the evidence that this will be a game featuring the two best captains in the league. Between us, we have certainly had enough experience of challenging bar billiards encounters so this is a proper battle of the titans and I know there’s a chance of it being a major motion picture on YouTube. And, I might have mentioned, I’ve beaten Dave Brewer so I’m ready to take on Oscar as I have a score to settle. But, it’s just a game obviously, although I’m hoping Nathan is bringing his worst players.

This is what I consider to be one of the more ridiculous local Government debacles to have taken place in North Norfolk, and it has not exactly enhanced the reputation for competence of some of the politicians involved. This is the old bus shelter that a fair number of residents wanted to keep, which is an entirely reasonable position to take. It is, after all, a bus shelter rather than a nuclear facility, although the administrative response has occasionally suggested otherwise.

Norfolk County Council was going to demolish it with the support of Sheringham Town Council, then Sheringham Town Council decided they wanted to keep it. But now, Sheringham Town Council have decided that they don’t want to keep it and Norfolk County Council are going to demolish it next week. So after all that expense, unnecessary meetings and damaging public confidence, Sheringham Town Council has ended up at the decision they made initially.

The whole matter could have been resolved rather more sensibly by extending the pavement into the road and changing how cars move through Sheringham. There are far too many vehicles using the main street, and reducing that traffic would not be especially difficult without removing access for those who genuinely need it. Instead, there appears to have been a deep institutional attachment to preserving a wide carriageway and a narrow pavement, as though the primary purpose of a town centre is to ensure that cars remain emotionally comfortable.

So there will now be a new bus shelter, which is at least better than the nonsensical and exposed arrangement they constructed in Cromer, and this one will be demolished all at a huge expense. Perhaps Count Binface might be available to unveil the replacement.

This watercolour is Views Along Cromer Cliffs and Beach by Catherine Buxton, painted in around 1860, and the artist was the daughter of Catherine Gurney (1814-1911) and Sir Edward North Buxton (1812-1858). This meant that she was brought up in the wealthy and very well-connected Quaker family, so she would have had access to education, travel and money.

The painting shows the coastline looking down towards Cromer, with the church tower rising above the town and the jetty built in 1845 stretching out into the sea. It also shows a Cromer that has expanded slightly, but the rapid growth wasn’t until after 1877 when the railways reached the town. This was from a time when the town wasn’t burdened by hotels and people trying to eat fish and chips in a strong wind. It was also before Greggs reached Cromer, which makes the whole scene look calm, elegant and faintly deprived.

But what I found the most interesting is that in the foreground is the ruined tower of the old lighthouse, built in the early eighteenth century and already looking as though the cliff had begun making firm plans for its removal. The lighthouse finally disappeared over the cliff in 1866, only a few years after this painting was completed, with Trinity House having more information about the structure.

This bottle of Kola Champagne was one of the smaller exhibits at Cromer Museum, but it immediately caught my attention because “Kola Champagne” sounds like the sort of drink invented by someone who had access to both sugar and optimism. It’s a bit like Greene King saying that they’ve made a craft beer, the words are all technically present but I’d suggest a degree of caution.

The label describes it as “a tonic and restorative drink”, as well as “refreshing and pleasing”, which is quite a lot of responsibility to place on one bottle and I have a sense that it might have been a disappointment. Despite the name, it was not champagne and almost certainly had no meaningful connection with France and it would fall foul of labelling laws today.

The “kola” element would have referred to kola nut flavouring or extract, an ingredient associated with stimulant and tonic drinks long before cola became dominated by international brands and advertisements involving improbably happy people near swimming pools. It’s one of those bottles which has an internal closure arrangement at the neck, possibly with a little glass ball.

The local link is that this was sold by W. Everett of Bond Street in Cromer and they produced a range of soft drinks for supply locally. What I didn’t realise before writing this is that there is a drink still produced in the UK which has the same taste, namely KA Karibbean Kola, with Champagne Cola still being a thing in parts of Latin America. I wonder if I’d be restored after drinking one…..

I had a little time to spare in Cromer and so I went to the museum, which I’m not sure that I’ve visited before. There’s usually an admission charge of £5.30 for adults and £4.80 for children, but I had my national Art Pass card so I got in free. There was a friendly welcome from the staff member at the entrance who explained what there was to see at the site and didn’t seem alarmed by the prospect of me photographing most of it.

Cromer Museum is housed in a group of former fishermen’s cottages beside the parish church, so behind the modern frontage there’s an authentic yard. Inside, the rooms have been used to recreate aspects of life in a Victorian fisherman’s home, while the wider displays explore the history of the town, its fishing industry, its development as a seaside resort, the constant local difficulty of preventing parts of Cromer from entering the North Sea without permission and a mammoth. It is important not to forget the mammoth, as museums rarely improve by having fewer mammoths.

There’s a new room that has opened up this year and I feel that this might need some rethinking. It did though at least have the only cooling that I found in the entire museum, that fan in the corner which was struggling to be effective and more of a symbolic struggle against the reality that it was too hot in Cromer.

And it certainly is in the shadow of the town’s church.

There will now be a flurry of posts about the museum until I either run out of photographs or become distracted by another old building or a cheap Wizz Air flight. The museum is a rather lovely little place with a genuine sense of authenticity, although the displays felt slightly erratic in places, but there is a great deal of local history to cover and not much space in which to cover it, so some compression is inevitable. The welcome was friendly and the staff seemed genuinely keen to engage with visitors and explain the history, which always makes a small museum feel more alive.

I can’t help thinking that the admission charges are at the top of what is reasonable though, as it would cost a family over £20 to get in here. As someone who tends to spend far longer in a museum reading everything than is necessary (although not as much as my friend Susanna who it’s hard to prise out of the museum and staff normally end up turning off the lights around her) I would have been hard pushed to spend more than forty minutes here. But, it was a handy use of my Art Pass and, as I mentioned in my last post, it will allow me to surprise and delight my two loyal blog readers for a little while yet.