We knew when we chose to visit Brittany in September that
the weather could – and probably would – do anything. It is about as reliable
as Scottish or Irish weather: you can count on it to keep you guessing. During our 8 days there, it lived up to
expectations. We had almost every kind of weather other than snow: some
sunshine, some rain, some wind and sometimes a mix of all three at once. Only
once, though, did the weather seriously interfere with our plans: our afternoon visit to the walled city at
Concarneau was curtailed by a downpour, which, towards the end of a day of
wandering through drizzle and cool wind, was enough to send us scurrying back
to base for a warm shower and a change of clothes, pleased to have packed
polypro and merino clothing. Otherwise, though, we were lucky – we enjoyed
fabulous weather for our cruise around the Golfe of Morbihan on our second day
in Vannes and equally sunny weather for the day we spent exploring the Pink
Granite Coast in the north of Brittany.
Our choice of Vannes as a starting point proved an excellent
one. We’d never heard of it but chose it for its central location - as both a
starting point for a car tour of the region and for its railway links to both
Paris and La Rochelle – and for the fact that it’s on the coast. We both love
the sea, so it would never be a hardship to spend a couple of days there to
acclimatise and get over any jetlag before starting touring in earnest. We also
chose it for its size – it was big enough to have a rental car base but small
enough to get out of in said car without too much drama. What we didn’t realise
was just what a gem it would turn out to be – a stunning little city with a
medieval centre, surrounded by ramparts, decorated with flowers and “Ephemeral
gardens” and with the bonus of a picturesque port for pleasure craft and a
ferry terminal serving the whole of the Golfe of Morbihan. We would have
struggled to find a more pleasant place to spend our first days In Brittany.
Beyond these first days and the rental car booking, we had
made no firm plans for our touring in the region. We made up our itinerary
based on a list of places chosen from a guide book we had at home, a map of
Brittany bought in Vannes and how we happened to be feeling of an evening when
we booked the next night’s accommodation. Our mastery of the car’s GPS (or lack thereof in the first day or so) also
determined our route to some extent. For
those who know Brittany or who like to trace a path, we visited the Quiberon
peninsula, Carnac, Pont-Aven (and several tiny coastal villages around it),
Douarnenez, Pont l’Abbe, Concarneau, Ploumanac’h and Tregastel, then back to
Vannes via Cornay and Pontivy.
It was fascinating for us to consider Brittany’s
relationship with the sea… being island-dwellers, maybe we take the sea for
granted; or perhaps our Pacific Ocean is less of a presence, less of a great
force than that of the Atlantic – but in coastal Brittany, this part of the
continent that juts into the Atlantic,
the sea imposes its presence in a
way that we don’t experience in NZ.
There is an amplification of its importance… This is evident in the
number of boats in every port, the produce,
the art work, the architecture (ports, lighthouses, …) the
seafood offerings at local restaurants , the clothing (blue and white stripes
rule here, as do waterproof jackets of a certain, nautical kind), bookshops are
filled with stories of the sea and photo books depicting the sea, its islands,
its lighthouses, its boats. There are
memorials to lives lost at sea and in churches, plaques offering thanks for
lives spared. While inland France has largely been tamed by thousands of years
of human activity, the sea has never been dominated – the people and their
culture bear the marks of thousands of years of living with, by and from the sea. It is the sea that makes its mark on the land
here, wearing away the rocks, creating deep indentations into the land. It
demands attention and respect, imposes its will… resists any attempt to be
tamed. And the heroes of this land are those who appear to master
these watery elements: sailors such as Florence Arthaud and Eric Tabarly; the
members of the coastguard rescue service.
But Brittany is not only about the sea. Large portions of it
lie inland – in farmland, forest (an astonishing amount of forest!), and
regional parks. And it’s in these areas,
that you tend to find Brittany’s other great tourist attraction: megalithic
monuments, known here as menhirs (standing stones) and dolmen (stone tables). Along
with the weather, the celtic language and heritage, and the geology of this
region, these stone structures provide another link to their neighbours across
the channel (think Stonehenge or the dolmen in Ireland), and they are a testament
to the enduring relationship between humankind and the land. For travellers from a young country, they are
a source of wonderment and awe. While they are scattered all around the region
of Brittany, we felt fortunate to have seen the greatest concentration of them
in one place – on the outskirts of Carnac – and especially fortunate to have
been able to visit (and photograph) them on a misty autumn morning before most
of our fellow travellers were out of their beds.
Our decision to rent a car to travel in Brittany proved a
good one in retrospect but there is no doubt that having a rental car has both
advantages and disadvantages. The latter were most obvious on the first morning
when we picked it up in Vannes. Our “lesson” in how to use the GPS could only
be described as useless and our trip back to the hotel to pick up our bags was
a little on the fraught side. Not knowing where to turn doesn’t help… but
neither does the narrowness of the streets and a tendency for some French
drivers to use more than their fair share of the road. The passenger side of
the car found the curb one more than one occasion! Still, after a strong coffee
and a study of the GPS manual, we managed to work out how to get the GPS to
tell us where to go in a suitably friendly manner. Having that car meant we
could and did visit places we would never have seen using public transport, to
set our own rhythm and to change our plans at will – or in response to a change
in the weather. It also enabled us to stay in out-of-the-way places, such as
the fabulous B&B Domaine le Rustin – a 15th century manor house
in the middle of nowhere but not too far from Pont-Aven. We were never entirely relaxed while driving –
and we were relieved to deliver the car safely back to base in Vannes after 6
days – but we wouldn’t have seen as much of or enjoyed Brittany so much without
it.
