I took a risk and used some precious fuel to drive to Le Havre for a Sunday outing. It was a beautiful sunny day.

Le Havre is a big town and the second biggest port after Marseille, but the biggest for shipping containers.

Le Havre was pretty well destroyed after bombing in 1944 and had to be rebuilt. The rebuilding work was undertaken by Auguste Perret who was a huge fan of, and one of the first to use reinforced concrete in large scale construction. I have already come across Perret because he built a famous tower in Amiens that looks over the town and is called la Tour Perret. Looking over the town of Le Havre it is easy to see Perret’s concrete fascination.

The beach is quite pebbly, but there is some sand at high tide.

The port was pretty enormous and a big ferry came in from the UK.

We had a lovely Sunday lunch.

There are many sculptures and interesting architecture around the town.

This is the volcano.

We visited the ‘hanging gardens’ which is a lovely garden area set in an old fort atop the town. It was quite amazing how they have used the fort as a garden and you can walk up and down and around and it was free entry.

There was an even an ‘Austral’ garden!

A gift from the Belgian people to the French.

On the way home we took the Pont de Normandie, an amazing piece of construction.

It is where the river Seine meets the sea and it spreads out amazingly.