5 minute read
Travel
Step Three : Western Brittany
Another day, another nearly empty campsite and another very quiet town. Benodet is a modern holiday resort on the mouth of the river Odet. A modern town appears to be a rarity in Brittany, but it does mean they have planned in cycle lanes.
Advertisement
Travels through Northern France
by Russell Adams Photo : Locronan
Having been in a modern town for a few hours, we obviously had the yearning to see more historic buildings so set off for Locronan, a perfectly preserved medieval town. This gives me chance to comment on French road signs which have an annoying habit of directing you from fifty miles away but then disappearing completely as you actually approach your destination. The French highways agency must have had hours of fun working out how to make visitors feel lost. In the case of Locronan they excelled themselves by also changing the spelling on each signpost. Sat Navs have ruined much of this fun for the French so now they appear to have moved their attention to footpaths. In Locronan a signpost promised a view 0.5km up a hill. The path then split into multiple options, of course with no clue as to what direction we should follow. We emerged hours later having forced our way through woods, hedges and people’s gardens dishevelled, wet and with a 6 o’clock shadow (and that was just Sherril).
Locronan did live up to it’s billing though, there is not a single non-medieval building in the town and every building there has been perfectly preserved. The various majors had obviously been trained in rural British planning departments and just said no to everything. Roman Polanski filmed Hardy’s Tess here and only felt the need to cover the streets with mud and sh*t to make it feel more English. Like every other town or village in western Brittany, it is centred around a Gothic and ornately designed stone church. Bretons in medieval times were either extremely religious in the ”hell and damnation vein” or they had an excess of stone masons on YOP schemes whose time had to be filled. Wandering past Locronan’s church into the equally Gothic and ornate graveyard, we were confronted by a snarling, growling and salivating Great Dane looking down from a wall above. It was like a scene from the Omen - or would have been if it wasn’t daylight and the Great Dane hadn’t been backed up by a small collie. Still, it frightened the colour out of my photos.
Pointe du Raz is France’s equivalent of Land’s End. Again, well signposted until you get within 30 miles, then nothing. We parked and lunched in a huge bay between Pointe du Raz and Pointe du Van (it’s smaller equivalent) with a scattering of other people and Brittany’s surfing school. We
then set out on the rough cliff paths for the most western part of France. A few hundred yards up the path was a small wooden sign indicating the way to Pointe du Raz. The contrast with Land’s End is extreme, no car parking charges, no ice cream stalls, no coach trips, I know which one I prefer.
We found out later that the bay where we had lunch was called “Baie des Trepasses” or the bay of the dead. Apparently it got this name because so many corpses of shipwrecked sailors used to wash up here. Might explain why it was so quiet.
Concarneau is France’s 3rd largest fishing port and while the working town is what you would expect, the old town is a fortified island in the bay that is now a tourist attraction full of restaurants and shops selling local produce, one shop specialises in hundreds of different varieties of tinned sardines, each to their own. We came here in the evening for dinner and found a lovely restaurant in the old town with a courtyard.
As well as holidaying at the same time, all the French eat at the same time. The vast majority of restaurants work strictly between 12 noon and 2pm for lunch and 7pm and 10pm for dinner. This can be particularly annoying for the typical Brit on holiday. After too much wine the night before you scrape yourself out of bed for 9 o’clock, manage to eat breakfast around 10, by the time the wife has messed about and you go somewhere its 11:30. You’re still picking bacon out of your teeth when you find that if you want a table you have to think about lunch. The fact that all the French eat at this time means that not only is it hard to get tables, but if you aren’t ready to eat there is little
else to do because all the shops and activities shut while they go for lunch. They really need to sort this out.
I mention all this because it means that, for reasons of practicality and economy we have taken to eating some of our lunches and drinking the accompanying wine in the parks of whatever town we are visiting- at a time to suit us. See the picture above of Quimperle park, a pleasant enough town (and yes, with some old buildings).
For us Brits there are obvious conclusions drawn about the people who participate in day time drinking on park benches. For this reason, we have developed certain rules:
• Napkins must be used on the knee, not just for wiping cheese or pate off your shorts.
• Alcohol should be drunk from glasses, not the bottle and should be “appellation controlee” wine, not white lightning.
• Cups for loose change should only be put out if the park is very busy.
• Shouting abuse at passing strangers should be kept to a minimum.
