C_B_2015_05_

JM ENAULT

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2015 63

ONBOARD

COTENTIN PENINSULA

Clockwise from

above: Vauville

beach; Chef’s-eye

view from Le Pily

restaurant;

the day’s dishes at

L’Antidote.

Below: fresh

seafood from the

Café de Paris

a Michelin-starred restaurant, the ‘formule’ menu

won’t leave you doing the washing up and the locals

and visitors alike give it “le top” as the inventive chef

Pierre Marion concocts dishes such as roast scallop on

dark boudin sausage, or bream with pork and oysters.

Indigestion can be burnt away by the variously

priced but excellent local Calvados and drinking can

continue in earnest in The Black Dog Café inland to

the west, while lesser mortals can shop in the shopping

mall Les Éléis, on the east side of the swing bridge.

During the day one can simply wander about. Inside

the botanical gardens you’ll find the eclectic Muséum

Liais full of rare and some comically-stuffed animals

and Egyptian and Inuit artefacts put together by a single

Victorian nutcase with a lot of time on his hands. The

hill fort holds the Libération Museum which covers

Cherbourg in wartime and has a view of the whole

town. (It’s closed from 12 to 2 when sensible Frenchmen

take a long lunch.) On Saturday, the market in Place

Central is a cornucopia of produce. The Normandy

farmhouse butter is so good I import it every visit,

only to spread it mournfully on English bread,

the baguette having long succumbed to the

petrifying effect crossing the channel.

When you sail into Cherbourg, on your left

is a vast red brick building that looks like

Grand Central Station in New York. This is La

Cité de la Mer that now houses an exhibition area

dedicated to the Titanic and a great aquarium with the

deepest tank in Europe. Just outside is the nuclear

submarine Le Redoutable that one can walk around

(they still build submarines on the western edges of the

port) and if you ever feel cramped on board a small

boat this is a salient lesson that you can feel equally

cramped on a large one.

But Cherbourg is also about its environs. To the

East of Cherbourg, within a day’s sail you can reach

Barfleur then the gorgeous fishing port of St Vaast-La-

Hougue where there’s the nearest professional wooden

boat repairs available and oyster farms. (Gosselin

grocery shop and La Bisquine restaurant scored highly

in my journal.) Further still and up the canal is

Carentan, close to the four landing beaches.

To the west, it’s the Channel Islands of Alderney,

Guernsey and Jersey and the delightful coastal passage

via the Cotentin Peninsula from Dielette to Granville

passing Carteret-Barneville. There are modern marinas

at each port and, from Granville, it is a short

onward passage to Iles Chausey, Le Mont-Saint-

Michel and St Malo. These places aside,

Cherbourg has managed to reinvent itself from a

stop-off ricochet industrial port into a delightful

destination in itself and is pitching hard to host

the Tall Ships in 2018. We’ll keep you informed.

CB323 Cherbourg.indd 63 24/03/2015 14:21