FOR the past two or three years, my wife and I have been researching and writing a book about the natural history of North Western France.

As you can imagine, it's been a pleasure. The manuscript is finished and has been sent off to the publisher but, to round off the whole thing properly, so to speak, we spent last week in France (where else?) taking a few more photographs and checking up on a couple of details.

The Brittany coastline has been the subject of much scrutiny since the disastrous wreck of the oil tanker Erika and, while we were in France, yet another massive oil spill made the headlines, this time on the fragile coastline of southern Africa, seriously affecting the Cape Penguins in the middle of their breeding season.

The oil exploration and refining industry boasts high tech skills but, in truth, it is little more than a group of monolithic companies using and abusing the environment for profit. In this, they are aided and abetted by governments around the world, our own included, because taxes on oil and the refined products of oil such as petrol are as good as the 'golden goose'.

This dependence on petrol tax revenue would appear to be one of the main reasons why international regulations concerning the shipment of oil are less than effective.

Another fact to be taken into account is the lack of incentives to motor manufacturers to produce fuel-efficient vehicles.

I am not a Luddite. Having a background in engineering and patents for the invention of induction fans for air compressors and electronic sound amplification systems for the hard of hearing, I marvel at the wonders of modern technology. But it's more than a century since the invention of the internal combustion engine and I'm increasingly irritated at the continued waste of energy from every single litre of fuel in the form of heat and exhaust gases, not to mention noise and air pollution.

Unfortunately, public transport does not meet the needs of a public that has grown accustomed to mobility.

It's impossible to go back to a former age. Our reliance on cars is too great. However, we must address this seemingly intractable problem - and soon.

I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to using a car. We went to France last week by car, although we did fill all the available seats. We went in company with my mother-in-law, who celebrates her 91st birthday in a few weeks' time and Betty Beningfield, widow of my late friend, artist Gordon Beningfield.

We've known Betty for more than 30 years; she is an excellent naturalist too in her own right.

We crossed from Poole to St Malo, using the service operated by Condor Ferries, which sails twice daily out of Poole and Weymouth. The latest design in wave-piercing, razor-edged hulls, these 21st Century vessels are built of aircraft-strength aluminium and incorporate aircraft design and stress techniques.

They are enormously strong, yet light and fast and smooth - very important for me as I'm not a good sailor - and are powered by diesel engines driving highly efficient water jet propulsion.

This form of propulsion means less propeller vibration and allows for amazing manoeuvrability in and out of the ports.

The old walled city of St Malo, smashed to ruins in the final stages of the Second World War, has risen Phoenix-like from the ashes and rubble, rebuilt in the original style.

During the 16th and 17th Centuries it owed much of its prosperity to profits gained from a legitimised form of piracy known as La Course, encouraged by King Louis XIV and mainly directed against the English and Dutch merchant fleets.

The pirates sailed in small specially built, heavily armed ships crewed by expert sailors known as Corsairs. As we came into the harbour a replica of a Corsair ship, the square-rigged Renard was lying in the inner basin. Fortunately the crew was friendly and the cannons not loaded.

We stayed in a hotel inside the walled city overnight and left for southern Brittany the following morning. Our destination was Benodet, not far from the ancient city of Quimper.

Benodet lies at the mouth of the river Odet, navigable inland as far as Quimper. The beaches along this part of the coast are splendid too - miles upon miles of soft blonde sand, the vast majority untouched by oil from the Erika. Further down the coast, near the Golfe du Morbihan and at Le Croisic and Pornic in the Loire Atlantic region some of the beaches are experiencing problems with oil and, unfortunately, the bad publicity has affected tourism throughout the whole of southern Brittany.

However, only a very few beaches are off limits and there's no problem at all inland. I particularly enjoy watching the members of the swallow family. These trusting little birds share their lifestyle with us to a marked degree. Even sand martins, the smallest of our native hirundines, have taken advantage of man-made sand quarries in which to dig their nest tunnels.

On the opposite bank of the river Odet from Benodet the coastline curves round a headland to expose a beach of astonishingly white sand, built up into dunes that front a nature reserve.

In these dunes, which fall sheer to the beach and are about 10 feet in height, a large sand martin colony has established itself. Safe from disturbance by a fence erected to protect the dunes from erosion, the birds seem unperturbed by the people on the beach (of course they will have finished nesting by the time the main holiday season begins in August.)

Indeed the martins have chosen to nest close to the main path over the dunes when there are dozens of other seemingly more suitable habitats available to them and they whirl around in the updraughts of air from the sea before diving down to feed their clamouring chicks in the nest burrows.

The Furnell party travelled courtesy of Condor Ferries, tel: 01202 207 207 and stayed at the Armoric Hotel, Benodet, run by Erwin and Bente Clement, tel: 02 98 57 04 03. To call from Britain, dial 00 33 2 98 57 04 03.