COSIT 2009, L’Aber Wrac’h

L’Aber Wrac’h is on the north coast of Brittany. It’s rather beautiful.


On the first night, outside the pub, we found a bucket of fish. A large group of barefoot heavily suntanned and weatherbeaten young men were very amused at me taking a photo… I presume it was their fish. But you never can be sure. Pictures of buckets of fish never come out as well as you hope though, so here’s a field of maize.

The conference trip was a boat journey to a lighthouse – the tallest stone built lighthouse in the world. It’s a bit rocky around there, so I guess lighthouses are useful.


I think that sometimes Roger would rather I didn’t take photos of him and put them on the internet, but there you go. You just have to put up with these things when you’re that photogenic.


The big stone lighthouse had replaced an earlier, shorter model.
This is the short one from the top of the tall one.


Here are some windswept conference attendees recovering at the top of a rather large flight of stairs — Alasdair Turner, Dan Jacobson, Stephen Hirtle and Christophe Claramunt. Christophe was one of the conference chairs and he did a great job.


I told you there were a lot of stairs.


Max Dupenois and Brandon Bennett, one evening. I think this was the evening they filled us full of pancakes. All the other evenings, they tried to fill us full of fish and seafood… I believe that if you’re not allergic to these things then the food was great. For me, it was a bit “meh”… I could have done pancakes every night though.


A pirate ship moored itself next to the conference centre a few days into the talks.


Dan Jacobson and Mathieu Simmonet (on the jetty), Tony Cohn (in the boat) and various other important people go round the harbour to try out virtual reality navigation aids for blind sailors. (Or maybe they just wanted to go on a boat.)