Out in Ault

An official day of rest. No driving. No cycling. Just a diet of croissant, baguette and some gentle sea side strolling. Ault is a pretty cool little town that seems to have been held up in a time warp. The houses are all higgled-y-pigglyed and old fashioned. There are all the basic French requirements - church, town square, post office, baker, bar, pharmacy - and it’s famous cliffs. Victor Hugo, was obviously impressed during his travels here in the 1800s as there are plenty of plaques about him around the town.

It feels like the only thing that has changed here since then are the cliff faces, which are slowly crumbling down into the sea. The Post Office looked as good as the day it was built.



We followed the cliff top path east to a ‘beach’ area. There were five lifeguards all sat in a hut on the sea front wall looking a bit bored. There was no one in the water and only a singular dog walker on the entire expanse of sand. Even the ice cream stall and funfair rides were pretty much deserted. We cheered up Ryan of ‘Chez Ryan’, by purchasing some chips from him though. 



There must have been some fantastic ‘erosion events’ around here over the years as the sea is getting gradually closer to the town. On the cliff top, the old tarmac road ended abruptly over the edge. We kept well back.  



We came back through the little streets and had eyed  up a food truck to return to for some fresh evening food. On our return though, it was all closed up. Rather than risk the only other restaurant in town, we got out the camp stove and cooked up some food ourselves. We had it on the terrace of the BandB which was perfect. All in all, a fine way to spend a slow day...