Last night, just after midnight, Karen and I got back from a tour of northwest Brittany, hoping to bring back some information for those of you who want to travel there.
The most important thing I can tell you: don’t do what we did. What did we do? 700 km in 16 hours. From eight in the morning until midnight. Way too much. Pick a part of the route and skip the rest. Or split it in two: spend the night in the middle, and continue the next day.
Before we start: the rating system, a confession, and an important tip
Something new in my articles: with Zvi’s blessing, I’m going to start rating the sites along the routes I suggest, based on how much I personally enjoyed them:
“A must” – ***
“Recommended” – **
“If you have time” – *
Of course, as always, this is entirely according to my own taste and how interesting I found each place. I’d love to hear sharp comments and tough criticism of my ratings.
A confession
I love traveling. But I love the research I do before a trip even more, and filling in the gaps once I’m back home even more than that. And most of all, I love writing about the route I took, weaving in all that information. That’s what I’m doing right now. So be patient with me. Patient like a priest in a confession booth. Why a priest? A young man walks into a church and sits down next to the confession booth. “Father, I’ve only been in town a week, and I’ve already ****ed nine women.” The priest says, “My son, that’s no way for a good Christian to behave.” The young man replies, “I’m not even Christian.” “Then why are you here?” “Because I don’t know anyone in town, and I had no one else to tell.” Not bad, right?
A tip before we start
If you’ve got a stubborn, all-or-nothing “we don’t turn back until the mission’s done” attitude running through your veins, and you’re sticking to it even though you already know the plan is too ambitious, and your travel companion is sick of it and starting to nag that enough is enough, what’s even left to see anyway, it’s all the same, once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all: don’t do, and I repeat, don’t do, what a friend of a friend did.
He turned the car around to head back, but left the original destinations punched into the GPS. It kept nagging “make a U-turn” over and over. The friend of a friend hoped it would annoy his travel companion, but in the end he’s the one who lost it, screamed at the GPS to go do a U-turn to itself (if you know what I mean), and smashed his phone into the windshield. No more phone, no more windshield. And good luck continuing in the rain with no windshield.
So what should you do instead? Very simple. Drive straight to the farthest point of your trip, on the highways, while your travel companion is still fresh. Start your actual touring from there, on the way back. No need to worry: you’re completely safe, because you’re already heading home. There’s no going lower than zero.
Not that I personally know anyone this advice would apply to. But it’s worth saving for a rainy day.
Hitting the road
Here are the places we visited:
We set out yesterday at eight in the morning. As it happened, I decided to head straight for the farthest point of the trip: Tréguier.
That’s 215 km, all on highways. From our starting point to Rennes on D177, bypassing Rennes toward Guingamp on E50. From there to Tréguier on D787. Two and a half hours. In short: pure joy. Or in a couple of words: hallelujah!
Tréguier **
Tréguier is known as the hometown of Saint Yves (1253-1303), who served as bishop here in the 13th century. He became known as the “advocate of the poor,” since he represented them in court, or at least covered their legal costs. In a strange twist, the poor got forgotten over the years, and today he’s known instead as the “patron saint of lawyers.” The wonders of Catholic transfiguration. The original one happened on our own Mount Tabor, but let’s not split hairs.
The cathedral is known for its fascinating stained-glass windows, depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments.
In the town center, around the cathedral, there are small streets lined with houses that survived from the Middle Ages:
There are also newer buildings, or renovated ones, built with a lot of respect for the old style:
But with all due respect to cathedrals and houses, I personally find the small details hiding in quiet corners even more fascinating. Here’s one: judging by the staff with the curled top, that’s a bishop, probably Saint Yves himself, standing humbly next to an eyeglasses shop, a shy smile on his lips:
Shopping, ladies and gentlemen, shopping!
Before we move on, I want to pause for a moment on something you’ll see here and there along the roads of Brittany: warehouses or shops called Brocante.
Here’s one:
Brocante roughly means “flea market goods” or “junk,” but don’t be fooled: the merchandise in these warehouses is anything but junk. We’re talking about near-museum-quality pieces. Prices start in the tens of euros and climb quickly from there. It’s worth stepping in to look. It’s like Ali Baba’s cave:
Sometimes you’ll stumble on a real bargain. Take, for example (I didn’t take it, I left it for you) this travel suitcase:
15 euros. As a suitcase it’s not worth much, but think of all the other things you could use it for!
I’ll write at some point about where you can find cheap goods and enjoy the thrill of digging through piles at the same time. For now, just a taste: at the top of the pyramid, as I said, is the Brocante. It’s rare to find cheap merchandise there, but there are sometimes surprises. Next come the warehouses that belong to the Troc chain. You’ll find these in every large town. A huge supply of great items, at ridiculous prices. Most of it is relatively large furniture, but there are smaller pieces too, some of which can even be taken apart for easier transport. They work on consignment, meaning people hand over items to sell, and split the proceeds with the shop once a buyer pays up.
At the bottom of the ladder, though in my opinion it should actually be at the top, are the vide grenier. Translated loosely it means “attic clearance,” but it has nothing to do with attics. These are Sunday markets that rotate between small villages across every region in France, and also in Belgium and Switzerland. The idea is that in each region, the villages take turns hosting a market, so every week the market is held in a different village.
Usually, within a drive of a few dozen kilometers, there are at least two or three markets happening every week. That’s where you find real bargains, because people are finally clearing out of their houses things their wives would never, for any amount of money, let them bring back inside. Those things get sold off, sometimes for pennies. The merchandise sits on the sidewalk or on makeshift stalls. It’s a beautiful, colorful celebration, with food stalls and sometimes even music. You can plan ahead and check where the nearest market will be on a given date at this site. Go to whichever region you’ll be in (Brittany, of course) and pick your flight dates around the market, or the other way around.
Usually the village posts people to block cars from entering the center, and directs arrivals to makeshift parking lots in the surrounding fields. There’s a lot of commotion, and a cheerful atmosphere. It’s worth arriving early, because by midday many of the stalls start packing up. Just as nobody can take the English away from their five o’clock tea, nobody can take the French away from their midday rest.
So what have we got? Brocante: expensive. Troc: less so. Vide grenier: cheap. There’s also, of course, something in between: the market in Nantes, for example, held on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays too, until noon. It’s a mix of private sellers offering goods from home, alongside dealers arriving in commercial vans. Prices there are somewhere in the middle too. It’s at Place Viarme, and you can get there by tram line 3, right to the market.
As I said, I’ll write about this in more detail another time.
The Pink Granite Coast ***
We continue west from Tréguier, through the Pink Granite Coast (Côte de Granit Rose), toward Lannion and Saint-Thégonnec. Here’s the route:
In words: leave Tréguier on D786, and after 5 km turn northwest onto D6. You can set your GPS to Perros-Guirec. From there, set it for one of the villages to the west, where the coastline is marked on the Michelin map as “Rochers.” It’s a sight from another world. Boulders of all sizes, from the size of a seashell to that of a mammoth, in vivid shades of pink, lying around clean white sand.
Lannion *
From here we continue to Lannion, heading south on D65 or D21.
A ship of the desert? No. But ships on sand? Yes.
A quick aside: in various spots along the roads, you’ll see wide stretches of sand exposed at low tide. Here’s one example:
The same thing happens with streams that run for many kilometers inland. At high tide, a wide river seems to flow through the center of the village. But really, it’s only a little bit river, and a whole lot of sea that pushed its way in and widened it. At low tide the sea retreats, and in the middle of the dry channel, a small, unassuming local stream trickles along on its own.
Lannion itself is pretty and pleasant, with houses dating back to the Middle Ages. Nothing extraordinary, but since the route passes through it, it’s worth stopping at one of the cafés along the main street.
From here we continue toward Saint-Thégonnec, on D786 past Grand-Rocher, which I marked on my map. You can climb up to a viewpoint at 80 meters and look out over the Lieue de Grève bay. I didn’t climb up.
The wondrous, marvelous, beautiful stone statues
Saint-Thégonnec and its wondrous statues ***
A small village, nothing special, except for its calvaire, which, along with others like it across Brittany, is nothing less than a must-see. First, let’s take a look, we’ll talk afterward:
These are groups of stone statues depicting figures and events from the Passion, Christ’s path of suffering, starting with the Last Supper and ending with his descent from the cross. Sometimes earlier events from his life appear too, or even events before his birth, like the Annunciation. The word calvary comes from the Latin calvaria, meaning skull. That takes us back to “Golgotha” in Aramaic, the site of the crucifixion just outside the walls of Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified.
Most of the statues date from the 17th century, and are probably connected to a plague that struck the region at the time. They weren’t made by great artists, so they don’t adorn famous palaces or cathedrals. They were carved by village craftsmen, out of simple local stone, sometimes even reusing menhirs (prehistoric granite pillars once used for worship).
The statues are crude, naive, but very human. They show striking facial expressions. There’s evidence that the village priest would use them during sermons, pointing to a particular scene as he spoke about it. You could say the calvaire worked like a three-dimensional illustration that accompanied and brought the sermon to life.
Since a calvaire doesn’t depict just one event but a whole sequence of them, it’s more accurate to compare it to a comic strip, where one panel follows another, and the same figures play different roles one after another on the same stage. In particular, you can see Jesus at the Last Supper in one scene, on his way to be crucified in another, then on the cross, and finally taken down from it. In the photo I included, you can see on the right Jesus bound with rope, held by two Roman soldiers in uniforms typical of the 17th century.
Here’s another scene, from a different angle:
Time to say goodbye, but don’t worry, it’s only for a little while. We’re on our way to another one. In my opinion, even more impressive. We start heading south.
The first stop is Plougastel-Daoulas, after which we head east to Pointe de Pen Hir, a headland jutting into the sea at the western tip of the Crozon peninsula, then to Menez Hom for a lookout over the region. We’ll head back west to the peninsula that closes off the Douarnenez bay from the south, visit the two headlands of Pointe du Van and Pointe du Raz, look for the old windmills, and finish at the statue of Notre-Dame des Naufragés, “Our Lady of the Shipwrecked.” There, you can help me figure out what the Polish sculptor had in mind.
Plougastel-Daoulas ***
From Saint-Thégonnec to the start of this part of the route, at Plougastel-Daoulas, I’m not including a map. The whole way is on the highway, E50. First west, then, still on E50, bypassing Brest and heading straight down to Plougastel-Daoulas. Honestly, I have no patience for maps right now, I’m dying to talk about the calvaire of Plougastel-Daoulas.
Take a look:
The missionary position… or: Christianity for beginners
What do we have here? What don’t we have here.
On the lower right, a scene from the good days of Jesus’s life. Mary of Bethany, whom the Catholic Church identifies with Mary Magdalene (named after the village of Magdala on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee), anoints his feet with expensive oil. Let’s take a quick look at the New Testament, the Gospel of John, chapter 12.
Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
I love this passage in particular, because it reveals an unexpected side of Jesus: a sharp sense of humor!
According to what follows, one of the disciples, acting like he’s some great saint, turns to Jesus and asks:
Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?
Jesus smiles (or so I imagine), and answers:
For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.
In other words: let yourself enjoy a little, before the end comes. The poor aren’t going anywhere.
On the lower left, the Last Supper. With some effort, you can make out several of the apostles. On the right, slinking (of course) is Judas Iscariot, holding the small bag with the thirty pieces of silver he received for betraying Jesus. You can spot Peter, holding the keys to heaven he received from Jesus, which would be passed down from pope to pope. For some reason, Jesus is lying in the lap of one of the apostles, as though he were already dead. Only his head is visible.
Upper right: Jesus enters Jerusalem riding a donkey colt. Why?
The Gospel of John, chapter 12, gives us the answer:
Jesus found a young ass, and sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt.
The explanation is simple:
In the book of Zechariah, chapter 9, it’s said of the coming king messiah to Jerusalem:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.
Clearly Jesus needed to fulfill the prophecy, and here we are, watching him do exactly that with our own eyes, albeit in France. Of course, there’s also the opposite possibility: Jesus rode a donkey simply because his feet hurt. The passage from Zechariah may have been slipped in later by Christian editors, to make use of a donkey that was already part of the story, in service of fulfilling a much older prophecy.
In the middle, we see Jesus carrying his cross, on the Via Dolorosa. Notice the cheeky figure resting his foot casually on the cross. Further left are the two Marys, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. To their left is Saint Veronica, holding up her famous veil. She’s never mentioned in the New Testament, but according to later traditions, she was a woman (probably named “Berenice,” a name that was later Latinized to “Veronica”) who gave Jesus her handkerchief as he struggled along the path of suffering. He wiped the sweat from his face and handed it back to her.
Miraculously, the imprint of his face stayed on the cloth. Given how many churches around the world claim to hold the original handkerchief, or at least a fragment of it, it seems safe to assume the lady had a massive supply of veils, or maybe access to an industrial printer. All right, enough joking, I’ll give myself a yellow card and get serious for a moment: it isn’t actually impossible for the imprint of a face to burn itself onto a cloth.
Sweat is acidic, and if the fabric was delicate and dyed with colors that weren’t especially colorfast, it’s entirely plausible that a face could leave a burned imprint on it. And here’s something else: Veronica’s veil functions a bit like a photograph from our own time. It’s the only record we have that Jesus actually existed, that he had an appearance, that he had a face, and here it is, documented.
By the way, every now and then some researcher pops up claiming that, using X-rays or some other technological method, they’ve uncovered the face of Jesus hidden within the fibers of a piece of cloth. This isn’t some modern-day hoax. It’s more likely that what they’re finding is a later replica, a recreation of the original handkerchief, made sometime in the Middle Ages or even earlier.
Finistère: Headlands That Are Pure Joy
Sadly, I say goodbye to Véronique, wipe my face with a handkerchief, and head on to the Pointe de Pen Hir. This headland looks north over the Douarnenez bay, at the tip of the Crozon peninsula. South of the bay are the headlands of the Pointe du Raz. From either side, you get a spectacular view of the other.
Here’s a video about the place, courtesy of the Finistère tourist office:
Why Finistère? That’s the name of the whole department, Finistère, meaning “the end of the world.” Of course, there are a few other places in Europe that claim the same title. Near Santiago de Compostela in Spain, for instance, which may not be the end of the world, but it was nearly the end of my left leg. More on that another time.
Back at the Pointe de Pen Hir, I should mention there’s also a massive memorial to the Breton commando fighters of the Free France army. You can’t drive up to it: you need to park about two hundred meters away.
Breton soldiers were among those who landed in Normandy during the invasion, and some of their vanguard had already parachuted into the area beforehand, fighting alongside the Resistance for the liberation of France. To be more precise: for the liberation of Brittany. I read somewhere that during the German occupation, Bretons used to wear a ring with a double heart, one symbolizing France in their hearts, the other symbolizing Brittany in their hearts. One was bigger than the other, and you can guess which one. Of course you can.
The memorial bears this inscription:
Aux Bretons de la France Libre – MCMXL – MCMXLV – La France a perdu une bataille, mais la France n’a pas perdu la guerre. Dans l’univers libre des forces immenses n’ont pas encore donné. Un jour ces forces écraseront l’ennemi.
To the Bretons of Free France – 1940-1945 – France lost a battle, but France did not lose the war. In the free world, immense forces have not yet been engaged. One day these forces will crush the enemy.
The dedication at the top was obviously added later, but what follows is a quote from a speech General Charles de Gaulle gave in London, on BBC radio, on June 17, 1940, just before the French government was about to sign the armistice with Nazi Germany. On the back of the memorial is an inscription in Breton: Kentoc’h mervel eget em zaotra, meaning “death before dishonor.”
The memorial is shaped like the Cross of Lorraine, the symbol of Free France. It’s a cross with two horizontal bars crossing the vertical one, the lower bar longer than the upper. It was also de Gaulle’s personal emblem. Churchill, who clashed with de Gaulle more than once, once said, “The heaviest cross I have had to bear was the Cross of Lorraine.”
You’ll see the Cross of Lorraine in countless places across France, at sites commemorating Free France. Here it is on the memorial in front of our château:
Let’s move on to the other side of the bay, to the Pointe du Raz. There are two headlands there, the Pointe du Raz as mentioned, and the Pointe du Van. Along the cliffs, in several spots, you can still find remnants of German fortifications, part of the Atlantic Wall:
Not Holland, But There Are Windmills
Along the way, keep an eye out for windmills. There are plenty of modern ones that generate electricity, but there are also a few old ones:
Oh, and somewhere around the Pointe du Raz stands the Notre-Dame des Naufragés, “Our Lady of the Shipwrecked.”
Here she is, in all her glory:
The statue was made by Cyprian Godebski, a Polish sculptor, in memory of his son who was killed in Tonkin. Every year, on the last Sunday of July, a choir sings the local hymn there, in pure Breton of course, which even Google can’t translate.
Intron Varia Beg ar Raz,
Dirazoc’h e ma ar mor braz,
War hon listri, war hor bagou,
Savit ho torn leun a hrasou.
Now, help me out here.
Many statues of the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady, Notre-Dame, show her holding her sweet son in her arms. But in this statue, as I understand it, a survivor from a shipwreck reaches his hand toward the mother of God, begging her to save him. She looks on with indifference. Even if she wanted to help, she couldn’t, since she’s holding the son of God in both her hands. But she doesn’t seem too sorry about it. It’s actually the baby who reaches his hands toward the poor man, though it’s pretty clear he’s not about to pull him out of the water.
Does anyone have an explanation? Please.
The Douarnenez Bay ***
We leave the Douarnenez bay for the last sites on our long list. It’s already seven in the evening, but we still have about four hours of daylight ahead of us.
Menez Hom **
On the way is the summit of Menez Hom, part of the Montagnes Noires range that crosses southern Finistère. “Mountains” is a bit of a stretch for these hills, but from this summit you get a wonderful 360-degree view of the whole area, including the Douarnenez bay we came from:
Concarneau *
From here we head south to Concarneau. Today it’s an important fishing port, but what’s really interesting is the old town, fortified with 14th-century stone walls. It’s connected to the shore by two narrow bridges, which made it relatively easy to defend.
Pont Aven *
I’m sure you already knew that many Polish artists chose to settle and create in Brittany. I did not. Some of them gathered in the village of Pont-Aven at the end of the 19th century, in the shadow of Gauguin, who was kind enough to rest there between his excursions to the girls of Tahiti.
Henri Lebasque’s famous painting of a little bridge in Pont-Aven:
I don’t know exactly where this little bridge in Pont-Aven is. Judging by the width of the river, it’s probably far off, near where it meets the sea. A more accessible little bridge, the one that shows up in every photo from the local tourist office and where tourists love to take their pictures, is right in the village itself:
I also felt it was my duty to stand there, in the exact same pose as in Henri Lebasque’s painting, holding a book by Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz (1846-1916), known in our neck of the woods simply as “Sienkiewicz.” The book is, of course, Quo Vadis, which means “Where are you going?” I’m not exactly headed for a crucifixion, first or second, but I do find myself wondering where I’m headed instead.
One last riddle: what does this have to do with Brittany?
I put the book next to the camera the evening before the big trip. And of course, I forgot it there. All I could do was scan the cover and picture myself on the bridge, until I go back to take the real photo with it:
What does Henryk have to do with our Brittany? That one, you’ll have to figure out for yourselves.
Did you enjoy the article? Want to stay in my château?
Want to discover the château at Roche and plenty of other attractions featured in the various Brittany itineraries we’ve published? You’re welcome to stay at Danny’s château and turn it into your base for exploring the region. You can find more information about the château in the article Manoir de la Chaussée: Staying in a Château in Brittany.
And who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky enough to run into your resident Francophile there and explore Brittany together with us 🙂
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