Travel

Step Two : Northern Brittany

On the way to Brittany, we made a major Northern Francediversion to Les Andelys in South Normandy. After all the trauma of the Norman conquest and the British failure at the Somme, we felt the need to visit Chateau Gaillard, the favourite residence of a true British hero, Richard the Lionheart. Richard couldn’t speak a word of English, lived in England for less than 6 months once he was king, failed in the major military endeavour of his life (to recapture Jerusalem), was held captive by the Austrians and the Holy Roman Emperor and taxed England ruthlessly to pay for his ransom and to build his castles in France. Makes you proud. Still, like many Brits, he had an eye for a property abroad and the setting for Chateau Gaillard is truly magnificent, high on a rocky outcrop overlooking the white cliffs of the River Seine. To keep the cost of this trip down we have used Eurocamp sites as our base. The site in Picardy was set in the grounds of a chateau and was peaceful and quiet. Arriving at the site in Brittany we encountered a hotel, golf course, water skiing, horse riding, zip wires, fishing lakes and endless different swimming pools. It was like a cross between Disneyland and Dirty Dancing. Not quite what we had envisioned. Still for an average of £35/night you have to take the rough with the smooth. Travels through

by Russell Adams

Dinan is a beautiful, late medieval town, but with very little history – you’ll be glad to hear. We used our time here to sample the Breton specialities crepes and cider. Scallops or smoked salmon with creamed leeks in a pancake – what’s not to like. Cycling in Brittany, so far, has not been as pleasant as in Picardy, long straight roads that have cars on them, what are they thinking! Still, we made it to Dol de Bretagne, another pretty little town full of half-timbered houses. We spend an interesting hour wandering through the local park, under the town walls where they had a display of photographs and paintings by French artists. French art appears to be the same as French comedy – decidedly odd. Two displays that stick in my mind were a series of pictures of a half-naked man crushed into a Perspex box located in various landscapes and a series of photos of an extremely morose family, in what for the French are presumably everyday activities, such as dressing or urinating by a river. As I suppose art is meant to generate contemplation, I considered these works for some time and came to the following conclusions: it’s stupid to put a half-naked man in a Perspex box (H&S would have a field day) and most French families must be manic depressives. The highlight of the afternoon (for Sher anyway) was my plastic chair collapsing under me during lunch, I must have had one too many Roquefort baguettes. The advantage

of having a trained nurse on hand was evident when Sher sprang into action and returned immediately with a camera. Fortunately, she didn’t try to insert it anywhere.

We visited Cancale in the evening which is known for its sea food, especially oysters. They have developed a great fast-food system. You buy your dozen opened oysters off one of the market stalls, your chilled wine from a van and eat your meal sitting on the stone walls overlooking the beach. When you’ve finished you just throw your shells on the beach for the sea to retrieve and the gulls to peck over. The beach now solely consists of oyster shells.

We, however decided to eat in a restaurant on the front and as revenge for Sher’s lack of care during the day, I ordered the meal. A fruit de mer of oysters, langoustines, prawns, whelks and dog-cockles followed by scallops with tripe sausage. Lovely. The French seemed interested in British eating habits as Sher closely inspected the whelks and threw them straight in the waste bucket and then nearly choked on her first and only mouthful of tripe sausage.

Tuesday was predicted to be 33ºC followed by deteriorating weather in the days ahead, so we decided to head for the beach. Saint Lunaire is a lovely, small Belle Epoque seaside town with huge beaches surrounded by rocky cliffs. The beaches were almost deserted and the town seemed effectively shut.

This displays one of the strange habits of the French, the belief that you can only take “les vacances” in late July or August. This leaves holiday towns outside of this period weirdly quiet, especially in a season when there are not many British travelling. I have first hand experience of this obsession. Ancient neighbours of my mother, (both now dead), who had been retired for years and could have travelled at non-peak times for minimal cost, still insisted on holidaying every August. This involved the whole village (including me on one occasion) dragging their dilapidated caravan the 300 yards through their overgrown garden to the road so they could join the mayhem and traffic jams with the other 60 million French. The reward for the effort of the villagers was a glass of whiskey and a cracker, just what you need at 9am.

I should also add that 2 days after arriving, our Disney-like holiday resort was empty and you felt like a trespasser passing through the unused activity areas.

When leaving Northern Brittany, we decided the visit was incomplete without seeing the Cote de Granite Rose, Brittany’s most impressive natural attraction. We woke to thunder and lightning and torrential rain, but we packed and set off. We stopped for a break en route at Treguier. The Rough Guide described Treguier as one of France’s few hill top towns. The writer had obviously never been to Italy and seen a proper hill top town. There they can be seen for miles as you approach, not just the impression of a hill behind the first houses as you pull up in the car park, and hill top towns definitely do not have a marina with yachts. Anyway, this was another beautiful town with half-timbered houses, (I know this is getting boring, it appears every other town has a medieval section). Stopping here for coffee and cakes did give us the chance to try Far Breton, another local delicacy. It is best described as a poor bread and butter pudding with a surprise centre of sweet, soft stuff. Edible, but not an experience to be quickly repeated. The tarte amandine however could teach Bakewell a thing or two.

The Cote de Granite Rose stretches for 30 kilometres along the north west coast of Brittany and consists of granite rocks eroded into weird and wonderful shapes. I would imagine that at sunset after a sunny day you would capture the impressive pink colours of these rocks, we were there though around 3pm on a cloudy day but I hope the picture above gives you the idea. We would love to return here and walk the full length of the Cote.

On to Western Brittany .....

Introduction to Les Sibylles and Les Anges Musiciens

by Howard Needs

Life is full of random occurrences, which sometimes direct the future of entire families and more often that of individuals; how one met one’s life partner is one of them. The random occurrence I want to muse about here is stopping at a church during a holiday in the Pyrenees and having a casual look round. This was not an unusual happening because, as long as my wife and I have been together, we have spent our holidays in walled towns and looking at castles, abbeys and churches. Anyhow, walking by chance (as is everything in life) into this church in a small French town, Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, with the mountains looming in the distance, a new interest was fuelled.

This old cathedral, with its tall, narrow, Romanesque nave, early Gothic choir and Renaissance choir stalls, almost exuded the faith of generations of worshippers; it was a moment to stand and wonder at the way the generations pass and, still, much of life remains the same. However, it was the choir stalls that took my attention – beautifully carved, there were 66 of them, and on closer examination, I noticed that the carvings were of stately women lightly draped with clothing, interspaced with equally stately men in heroic postures and robes. My first reaction, even before I came to appreciate the quality of the carvings, was “What a strange subject, in what was in the past a cloister and choir stalls that would have been used by monks.” That moment of amazement soon passed, as my wife, who, as usual, had found literature on the church’s history, had the explanation, or at least part thereof. The female figures were the 12 sibyls of ancient Greek and Roman history, but the reason for their presence in the church was not clear. Time was pressing, and so I digitally immortalised a few of the stalls for later perusal and we continued with our tour of the cathedral and its cloisters.

The next couple of days we were in Saint-Lizier and visited the cathedral Notre-Dame-de-la-Sède, with its magnificently restored, painted nave ceiling. There were also wall paintings of various subjects, but it was the ceiling that took most of my attention. The comprehensive guidebook had already told us that the figures were the 12 sibyls, and this time I carefully photographed the entire ceiling, panel for panel. That was twice in two days that we had come across

church art portraying pagan female figures, and so the question “Why?” remained in my mind.

Subsequent research on the Internet and the reading of a couple of newly purchased books has shone a glimmer of light on the subject of the sibyls. This research is not something I want to go into in depth at the moment, but I will return to it in future articles. The books were obscure and the Internet articles only a little less so, but in the course of the voyage into Greek and Roman mythology and its relationship with the Christian church of that period, I encountered The Angel Musicians and The Angel Singers. Here, too, I was woefully ignorant, and I found that the religious and artistic arguments surrounding them are not easy to understand – if, indeed, they are understandable at all under the modern norms of logic. It seems that they first appeared in late Romanesque and early Gothic churches and flourished for a while before “going out of fashion” again.

Looking through my photo archive, I found that, in the course of visiting churches in the past 10–15 years, I had encountered other wall paintings of The Sibyls (Les Sibylles, in French), and also of The Angel Musicians (Les Anges Musiciens). I have now documented the location of various churches with examples of these artworks in stone, in wood and as wall and ceiling paintings. And so began the idea of further investigating, photographing, obtaining permission for publication on, and writing about these obscure figures that were an important church symbology for a while in certain areas of France (and I suppose in other countries as well).

I shall be writing in greater detail about both The Sibyls and The Angel Musicians in later issues of The DSM, so here, you will find only a couple of photos of sibyls to be found in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Sède in Saint-Lizier and in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Saint-Bertrand-deComminges, as well as a couple of angel musicians I found in my photo archive.