What's the point?

Our original idea was to arrive in Dieppe then head straight for Brittany, maybe breaking the journey  somewhere between Avranches and Rennes. Instead we ended up hanging around Normandy for almost a week waiting for the antibiotics to sort me out. Maybe we never really had a clear plan to begin with, just a vague idea we might visit some unfamiliar places on the north coast  of Brittany then revisit a few old haunts in the west and south. Given we now had fewer days in the region, we were going to have to choose either to go south to Morbihan or head west towards one of Brittany's pointy bits. Morbihan's translucence versus the far west's wild headlands. No competition! The wild west won.

Our plan was to drive around the Quimper rocade then head towards Cornuaille, Finisterre's Breton heartland. This is one of those places that felt half familiar even  before we first visited it in our mid-twenties. Some places carry so many preconceptions that arriving can  fee like deja vu. For example, when we first visited New York  the Manhattan streets felt oddly familiar because of all the sassy NYC comedies we had watched over the previous decades - Breakfast at Tiffany's, the run of Woody Allen films from Annie Hall to Hannah and her Sisters and Nora Ephraim's romantic comedies - When Harry Met Sally, You've got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle's schmaltzy conclusion .

I grew up before the era of daytime TV, in a household where the 'Home Service' was the soundtrack to my childhood. My first encounter with  'Finisterre' was as a place of mystery, along with Dogger, Malin and Rockall, incanted daily on the 'shipping forecast'. 

The first time I realised that Finisterre was a territory rather than a featureless stretch of ocean was when I came across it as the title of a poem in Sylvia Plath's posthumous collection 'Crossing the Water' published in 1972. It was was given to me by a friend,. The message inside, "happy grants cheque day, happy getting better week!" dates its acquisition precisely, to late April 1975. The gist of the dedication reminds me that I was emerging from a dark time, especially attuned to the trajectory of Plath's haunting poems, which with the benefit of hindsight was not a good place to be in at all.  'Finisterre' resonated with me immediately and the name acquired a connotation of melancholy as well as wildness. Add to that, my vague predilection towards the 'celtic twilight' derived from the music of Alan Stivel, the region's association with Arthurian legend and my own sense of having a 'celtic genes'  inherited from my Irish and Scottish forbears - all this ensured my expectations of Brittany were  ludicrously romanticised well before we first disembarked in Roscoff in 1977. 

However, the place did live up to these preconceived notions - Brittany's strong regional culture was inescapable. On our visits  four decades ago we often happened upon a local 'Fest Noz'  where people donned local costume and celebrated the areas unique traditional dance accompanied by bagpipes and bombarde. In the far west the landscape's spectacular cliffs, sweeping bays and big skies felt remote, empty and slightly disconnected from modernity.

Today it doesn't feel quite so distinctive. It's tricky to know whether the place has changed or I have, probably a bit of both. In terms of wealth, of France's thirteen regions Brittany comes fifth, one place below Provence Cote d'Azur in terms of GDP per capita. I doubt this was the case four decades ago. Undoubtedly the area is much busier and prosperous looking. Most towns are ringed by recent housing developments, industrial estates and shopping centres. 

This has to be a good thing but development does comes at a cost, resulting in a loss of localism. The place feels less unique than I remembered it.  Also, the sixty something me is less given to romantic notions anyway, considerably more skeptical than I was in my twenties, so perception plays its part too. 

We ground to a halt on the outskirts on Concarneau, no particular reason for the traffic jam other than an 11.45am 'l'heure du déjeuner' dash for home. Snails pace traffic  continued all the way to Quimper and around Douarnenez too. Only when we reached the minor roads on Cap Sizun did it become less 

frenetic.  The far end of Cap Sizun is two pronged, a bit like a toasting fork, The Pointe de Raz is the more celebrated of the prongs with a spectacular cliffs, an iconic lighthouse and an enormous statue, 'Notre-Dame des Naufragés', commemorating sailors lost at sea. Though the place is not actually the most westerly point in France it has purloined that role and become a must visit destination, a bit like Lands End.

The promontory is immediately recognisable as the place Sylvia Plath wrote about. Having  visited the spot years ago on some previous trip or other we felt no particular need to rush back.  Instead we headed towards Cap Sizun's other 'prong', the Pointe du Van, situated about 6kms to the north, skirting the somewhat ominously named 'Baie de Trespasses'  separating 'les deux pointe'.

Maybe the mysterious allure of nomlacature was at work, but the Pointe du Van's car park was full of vans. Next to a big car park with height barriers was a special area for camping cars, not something you find back home where mohos are regarded as a nuisance. There were a couple of dozen bays and almost all were taken. 

Though the spot is designated as 'day time only'. I think people ignore this. We hadn't come across any other motorhomes on the way here and concluded that most people must have decided to stay overnight. Free with a view, in summer you are never going to experience the Point de Van in 'lone splendour'. We joined a line of fellow tourists heading for the waymarked viewpoint in 'crocodile fashion'. All most people wanted to do was stand at the pointy bit and stare at the sea. 

However the path that ran southwards along the coast towards the Baie de Trespasses was much less frequented. It felt more peaceful and proffered a spectacular view towards the Point de Raz.

A small chapel nestles in a hollow part way between the two points is a. It is easy to understand why promontories are often sanctified. Like mountains they exude the sublime - the sense of how small we are in relation to nature.

However, Cap Sizun is beautiful in its intricate detail too, especially now in early summer when the heather covered headlands are carpeted with wild flowers.

Among the  clumps of heather Gill spotted wild honeysuckle, cinquefoil, thrift and devil's bit scabious. One plant flummoxed her, a mesh of pale orange filaments overlying the heather here and there. Google Lens to the rescue, it turned out to be 'dodder', a parasitic plant whose malign effect on the host flora prompted a more folksy nickname -'witches hair'.

We returned to Douarnenez by a different route, a more minor road that follows Cap Sizun's north coast. In practice it was actually easier than the route the sat nav chose on the way here. The Camping Car Park in Douarnenez was located on a scrappy piece of gravel next to Camping de Trezulien. The place is a few kilometres from the town centre and a tad tricky to find. We have never come across a deserted Camping Car Park before, but we were the only people in the place from the time we arrived in mid afternoon  until we were packing up to leave the next morning when a German van arrived. 

France meteo had been predicting thundery weather for the past few days, but it never materialised until last night when a couple of mighty rumbles in the small hours catapulted me out of bed to close the skylights. After a short downpour the storm chuffed off elsewhere. With our return ferry date looming we discussed our route home over breakfast.  Dieppe is 350 miles away so we reckoned we needed a couple of stops at least. No rushing about is our mantra, unless we are heading for the Med, then we scoot south as fast as we can.

Marshmallow, Gadget and the screaming abdabs.

After the frenetic atmosphere of Pont Aven over the weekend we truly appreciated the peace and quiet of the aire de camping car in Nevez. We had the place to ourselves until late afternoon, then another van arrived. It was owned by a French couple who lived near Brest. Though they were both Bretons they had never visited this particular spot in their home region. This is not unusual, we have lived on the fringes of the Peak District National Park for 35 years and there are still some parts of it we have never visited.

We never found out the names of our neighbours but we were introduced to their pets - a small grey hairy dog called Gadget and more unusually to Marshmallow, a large white and pink parrot. We know from being surrogate parents of a dachshund that dog ownership is not something to be taken on lightly, but it's burdens pale into significance compared to being responsible for a parrot's well-being. Marshmallow was five years old. Typically they can live for forty years and exceptionally have been known to reach 'three score and ten'. In Marshmallow's case, his owners, in their sixties by the look of it, had extracted reassurances from both children and grandchildren that after they had passed away the following two generations were equally committed to keeping Marshmallow safely locked up. There was something about the arrangement that made me feel disconsolate. Caging birds for entertainment is not something I think we should tolerate never mind encourage.

We needed to find a campsite, after a couple of days using the on-board facilities we begin to crave a proper shower, we required a washing machine too. There were plenty of Acsi sites to choose nearby, we opted for one of the nearest at Raguenes Plage. 

It's a pleasant wooded site with hedged, generously sized pitches. A path from the leads across the fields to the coast about half a kilometre away.

It seemed all very familiar, though we have never stayed at this site, we used the nearby beach a lot when camping with the kids as it was only a ten minute drive from the Domain de Kerlan we used on family holidays.

The coast here is certainly not unfrequented, but it's much less busy than the bay of Concarneau around Benodet and Loctudy. One reason why this area between Raguenes and Port Manech is less developed is there is no road along the litoral.

 

A string of headlands and small coves are connected by a waymarked footpath. It's a lovely undeveloped stretch of coastline. 

Westwards  a minor road runs towards the Point de Trevignon. Next day we unloaded the bikes and pedalled towards the small settlement.

We recalled there used to be a fresh fish stall on the quayside. Would it still be there we wondered, or would leisure craft have entirely replaced the small flotilla of inshore fishing boats that used to moor here?

We were glad to see a queue of people at the stall, it was shellfish rather than whitefish on offer, but it was heartening to see that local fishermen were still making a living here.

However, we were not here for the fish. The local creperie across the road from the harbour had excellent reviews and following our somewhat underwhelming experience in Binic we felt we could not leave Brittany without having truly delicious 'ble noir et froment'.

La Mariniere came up trumps on both fronts. The place itself had a great seaside vibe and the people running the place were lovely.

We had booked into Raguenes Plage for three nights. On the final day we pedalled along the coast to the nearby village of Kerascoët. It's famous for 'les chaumiéres' - thatched cottages, quite common in parts of southern England, but rare in France. 

The village is quite literally a living museum, there are inhabitants but they are outnumbered most of the time by tourists clicking away. 

So in a sense the photos I took completely misrepresent the place as I chose shots which deliberately excluded all other people holding up phones taking similar pictures as me. 

Consequently every one of my photos has been de-humanised, ideal as a subject for a jigsaw puzzle but bearing little resemblance to how the place actually looked.

Beyond the village a narrow lane drops down to the sea. The Anse de Rospico is somewhere else we came with the kids. It's a sheltered narrow inlet with a gently shelving beach, safe for toddlers. 

The sand is white and the tidal lagoon goes turquoise blue when the sun shines. 

We did have some great family holidays hereabouts. However it's easy to over-romanticise them with hindsight. 

The experience of the last couple of days, camping next to an English family with three kids reminded us of some of the challenges. Not that their children were badly behaved, if anything the elder two seemed oddly quiet. The youngest looked about fifteen months and was going through the phase of what we dubbed 'the screamin' abdabs'. Her outbursts of pure fury during the day were not so bad, but the child found settling at night difficult and had a tendency to join in with the dawn chorus. It was only when we moved on from the campsite to being the only occupants of a Camping Car Park on the outskirts of Douarnenez that I fully appreciated how much I need peace and quiet these days.

"As close to Eden as you get on Earth."

The Camping Car park in Pont Aven is well positioned, on the edge of the village a few minutes walk down a steep hill to the historic centre. It's sizeable with space for over thirty vans and it was almost full. If you are planning to visit Pont Aven during the summer months then it's probably best to avoid the weekend. For us now, a question of being wise after the event.

In fact we had no particular desire to revisit the place, it was the Pont Aven Camping Car Park's proximity to the country lanes around the estuary that brought us here. On the map it looked like an ideal starting point to explore this beautiful wooded landscape. In fact faced with the reality of the steep hill down to the village and the traffic choked streets we decided that the aire at nearby Nevez provided a better starting point, so we moved there.

Here too is an old stamping ground. The village is a kilometres or two from the Domain de Kerlan campsite that we used on many familiy holidays to Brittany. In fact we used the site for so long we watched the place develop from the ramshackle 'Camping Ros Pin' in the 1970s into the much improved 'Le Spinnaker' in the 80s, before being reinvented as 'a Haven Resort' in the following decade. When we passed the gates it all looked very familiar, now run by 'Siblu' who acquired the Haven brand some years ago.

Our destination was more workaday, a simple free aire on the outskirts of Nevez. Perfect for an overnight stay, but not for longer, the service point was a construction site. The village of Nevez seemed much posher looking than the last time we were here a couple of decades ago. We remembered it as a somewhat workaday place with dun coloured concrete faced buildings, all a bit dour. Everything has been brightened up, with white-washed facades and bright blue shutters; a couple of places opted for a more startling pink or dusty blue look; flowers beds and shrubberies are dotted about cheering up the main street and the small square in front of the church. It all looked well cared for and more prosperous. I found it heartening, progress is possible!

For years I regarded the wooded countryside of l'Aven estuary between Pont Aven and Kedruc as one of the most beautiful places I had ever visited, exuding a profound tranquility, 'a haunt of ancient peace' as Van the man once put it. However, in the intervening years since we were last here we have travelled to four continents, touched base in both hemispheres, and since 2014 travelled for almost four years in total, visiting 15 countries in Europe. We have seen fabulous things, both natural wonders and thought provoking works of human culture. Would this scrap of forest on the banks of a small river in Brittany still feel quite so magical, I wondered, given all the marvelous places we visited over the past few years?

We were heading for a very particular spot. The 'bois du Hènan' is a a small area of broad leafed woodland on the western bank of l' Aven's ria, situated just at the point where the valley broadens out to form estuarial mud flats. 

Mostly the area is ancient woodland, including four ancient springs, but one area was developed two or three generations ago into an Arboretum. Now fully matured, magnificent specimen deciduous trees mix with the native limes, sycamores and beeches. The result is nature perfected, an arboreal Shangri-la.

A small, simple chapel nestles in a clearing. Even after all, our wanderings this still feels like a very special place. 

The building dates back to the fifteenth century, but you get a strong sense that the spot has been venerated far longer than that, especially the woodland springs. 

Such places feature strongly in Celtic myth and legend andthere is something about le Hènan that tempts even hard headed rationalists towards flights of fancy. I began wittering on about Lothlórien; when Gill Whatsapped a couple of photos to Matthew he observed the the area was "as close to Eden as you get on Earth." For someone who likes to remind me when my musings take a bit of a 'cultural turn' that he espouses a strictly materialist view of history, this was indeed a rare affective outburst. I felt delighted that somewhere that we had taken him as a child had remained with him as a treasured memory.

As for me, the experience also took an uncanny turn. As I have said in a couple of recent  posts I have not been feeling well for weeks. While I was sitting in a tree stump next to one of the springs, just looking at the play of light on the weedy water and watching how the light breeze made the leaves shimmer suddenly I felt much better - energised perhaps is the best way to describe it. I am not saying that some magical spirit of the woods healed me, but I do think connecting with nature can be a profound experience and have a restorative effect. I haven't taken to hugging trees  just yet, but I don't think the people that do are wholly deluded.

In one respect our visit to le Hènan' was different to previous ones. We cycled here rather than coming by car. It meant we pedalled through a maze of small lanes to get there, in itself a more delightful experience. On the way back to the van we took a different route to visit some strangely shaped giant boulders. 

Brittany is full of natural curiosities, it's wholly understandable that previous inhabitants wove myths and legends around them. 

We may congratulate ourselves that now we are less given superstition and myth , though five minutes scrolling through TikTok or Twitter might dent your confidence that we have progressed at all.

 

Forty six years later ..

We headed across Brittany towards the south coast. It's familiar territory, or at least it once was, as back in the early eighties we took two extended cycle camping trips hereabouts. 

Our memories of our intended destination  - Pont Aven - go back further, to our first visit here in 1977. We backpacked around Brittany,  planning to hitchhike; when that proved impractical, we used local buses to get around. Somewhere in a cupboard at home is a box of faded Agfa transparencies from the trip including a handful taken in Pont Aven. 

Four decades  seems an almost indecent period of time to have slipped by. As we wandered around the place the gap felt simultaneously 'ages ago' and 'no time at all'. Similarly, the town itself looked both unchanged and utterly different. In terms of the buildings there seems to have been little development, what had changed were the kinds of shops and business - almost every one is now  tourist related - useful stuff like a butchers, bakers or supermarket have been relegated to the Intermarche on the edge of town.

Still, the area by the river remains beautiful. The old tidal water mills are all swanky restaurants now; in truth they were like that four decades ago too. 

The river bank is covered in flowers and willows overhang the placid mill ponds. It's very picturesque, and understandable that artists were attracted to the place at the end of the nineteenth century, most notably Gauguin in the late 1880s before he left for Tahiti.

By the time we first visited the place had already dubbed itself 'Cité de Peintures'. What was then an aspirational 'strap-line' is now an all-consuming USP. There are scores of galleries and crafts shops. A few sell high quality items at eye watering prices, most of them specialise in overpriced but affordable kitch. 

If I had to find one place that encapsulates Pont Aven today it has to be, somewhat unromantically, the public toilets.

The building itself is something of an ancient monument, built sturdily out of local granite next to the town's eponymous 'pont'; it displays vaguely Art Decor influences -  a unique Breton interpretation of an  underappreciated Northern English design classic - the brick shit-house. 

When we visited  back in the 1970s not only did its architecture reflect simpler times, the plumbing too was distinctly antique, that is to say more or less none existent. Raw sewerage and swathes of pink toilet paper drifted down the Aven sullying the picture perfect vista from the bridge.

 

These days, thankfully, the facilities are connected to the mains, and as if to complete the building's inadvertent elevation from utility to monument, a giant reproduction of Gauguin's famous painting of Breton peasant girls  has been placed on the gable of the adjacent building. 

Admittedly, it's an accidental juxtaposition, the picture is placed there to promote the 'Traou Mad' Breton biscuit shop next door. 

In the end all tourist traps like Pont Aven risk becoming ludicrous exercises in self parody. All 'developed' countries have them - Titisee, Grindelwald, Polperro, St Trop., Amalfi. We've dutifully traipsed around them all, even though we know that their iconic status more or less guarantees the experience will be demoralising. Why do we do it? Curiosity maybe, like when we headed for Benidorm eager to find out if it was quite as ghastly as it was reputed to be. It was, but not entirely uninteresting in the sense that human folly and ingenuity  are equally intriguing and not necessarily mutually exclusive categories either - maybe thats what they are are - latter-day ingenious follies.

 

Not exactly the trip we'd planned.

Here we are on the the north coast of Brittany camping in the small seaside resort of Binic, a few kilometres from Saint-Brieuc.

It was sunny when we arrived yesterday but the forecast thundery showers arrived overnight and look to be set in for the next couple of days. This should not come as a surprise, we have visited Brittany over a dozen times, mainly years ago when our children were small. It was the region's unpredictable weather that led us in the summer of 1991 to un-pitch the Turpie encampment and drive south to find the sun. With two pre-school kids in tow we often spent hours simply driving about Finisterre on wet days simply to fill the time. 

One day we ended up at Point Saint-Mathieu, southwest of Brest, over 80 miles from where we were camping near Nevez. Our eldest is called Matthew, maybe that's why we ended up at the eponymous headland. I remember watching rain squalls drifting off-shore, half hiding Ushant in a silvery mist. We observed the Brittany Ferry to Santander appear out of the rain and sail off south. Gill commented that the passengers would probably wake up in sunshine. "Why can't we?" I mused, "we have wheels."  So next day we squeezed our bulky and somewhat damp Cabanon frame tent into the back of our Nissan Bluebird estate and drove southwards in search of sunshine. We found it 18 hours later. After an overnight drive we watched  the sun rise over the foothills of the Pyrenees from a bluff overlooking the Plage de Bidart.

 It was a defining moment, we changed from outdoorsy northerners content to cycle tour in the rain or endure blustery days on some windswept beach. From that moment on we became sun-seekers. Maybe it's no coincidence that it also coincided with our move to Buxton. The place may not have actually  achieved the accolade of being England's wettest spot, but experience has taught us it has to be the country's cloudiest. 

So, after more than a decade where Brittany was our go-to summer holiday destination, over the subsequent thirty years we only managed three further visits.  Nevertheless it remained somewhere we recalled fondly, and the fact we hadn't toured here in the motorhome seemed like an inadvertent oversight that we must redress. 

Our plan was simple, use the Newhaven to Dieppe crossing, stay overnight in Normandy then head straight for Finisterre. It went awry even before we left home as I began to feel increasingly unwell as our departure date approached. What I needed was a doctor's appointment and a course of antibiotics. A simple enough thing, but difficult to achieve these days especially around a bank holiday weekend. With steely determination it is possible in theory to navigate our GP's Byzantine telephone system and, if you can manage to persuade the receptionist that your symptoms are serious enough, eventually speak to a doctor by phone some hours later, but you do need to be persistent. Face to face appointments seem to have gone by the board, the last time I actually saw a doctor was six years ago.

Finally late in the afternoon on the day before we departed a doctor rang me. Somewhat grudgingly he accepted my self diagnosis that I probably was suffering a UTI, but was unable to prescribe antibiotics without a test result. When I explained that I was driving to France the following day he did pull out the stops, promising that if I could drop a sample off he would do a 'dip test', phone me back, and send a prescription to the practice pharmacy which was open until 6.30pm. However, he didn't ring back as promised; now it was too late to change our ferry booking. Our dilemma, delay the trip and forfeit £235 or take the risk and just go. We decided to risk it. Mid afternoon the next day, parked in a service area on the M40 I finally managed to recontact reception. Two hours later a different doctor called back confirming what I knew all along, the test was positive, I needed a prescription, however ten minutes earlier we had gone through passport control at Newhaven dock. The doctor texted me the name of the antibiotic I needed asserting somewhat breezily that they were available over the counter at pharmacies in France.

By the next day I was feeling quite ill. The first pharmacy I tried in Dieppe refused to supply the drugs without an official UK prescription. Happily the following day the  one next to the hospital in Neufchatel-en-Bray was more accommodating. Rather than head off for Brittany we decided to stay put until I felt better. 

Luckily the campsite at Neufchatel is lovely and the Via Verde next to it runs through beautiful countryside. I felt well enough to go for short bike rides and we spent three days mooching about locally 

The weather was warm and sunny, the hedgerows ablaze with dog daisies and poppies. Most of the time I just felt like sitting quietly by the van. Our pitch seemed to be a magnet for small birds, two species of sparrow, blackbirds, the occasional bluetit; it felt profoundly peaceful.

The entire site resembles a garden, consequently it is very popular with grey-haired caravanners from Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. I overheard a conversation on the neighbouring pitch where a venerable Englishman explained to an ancient Dutch guy that he was here 'for Normandy'. Initially this confused me, we are in Normandy, how could you come 'here' if you had arrived already? Then it dawned on me, it is early June, a moment when coming for Normandy is quite different to coming to Normandy; it's a euphemism, a coy metonym for the impending D-day commemoration events - an arcane code only understood by WW2 afficianados and crusty re-enactment geeks. That's why a lone guy in a beat-up VW camper down the way is towing a trailer with an impeccably restored vintage khaki coloured motorbike and sidecar. I can't be doing with all this 'glorious dead' stuff, it seems to me that a deep-seated nationalistic mindset lurks behind its po-faced trappings. I think something about me must communicate my scepticism. There was much 'hail fellow well met' affiliative chat happening all around me, but conspicuously I was not included. What is it about my appearance and demeanor that exudes 'wokerati alert!' amongst the nearby Daily Males? Let's face it, they're not wrong!

After three days, despite the delights of the Avenue Vert, the stultifying atmosphere of Camping Ste Claire became wearisome. I didn't feel up to driving all day so we found a municipal site at Cany-Barville about 70kms to the west. Like the site at Neufchatel it was situated next to a cycleway - Le Veloroute de Lin - so called because the whole area is famous for growing flax; high quality linen has been produced hereabouts since the Middle Ages.

The town was pleasant, the campsite well designed and comfortable and the cycleway beautiful. The track followed an old railway line through wooded, undulating countryside. It was lovely but I managed less of the route than we had planned.

I was now halfway through my week's course of antibiotics and had hoped that I would be feeling perkier by now. It was true, I was feeling less feverish but I lacked any energy whatsoever. Halfway up a long but relative gentle hill I simply ran out of steam and had to dismount and push my bike, though pedalec assisted I could not tackle even a modest climb. Gill, unaware of my predicament disappeared into the distance. I felt pathetic, ridiculous and cross with myself. 

Some minutes later I found her parked by the side of the track waiting for me. We decided to head back to the van, mainly downhill thankfully, I had managed less than 10kms, all very frustrating.

Next day we pressed on towards Brittany, over the Seine at Pont Brotonne, past the region's over- commemorated beaches. Towns signposted off the autoroute - Villiers-Bocage, Falaise, Avranche, they were like a gazetteer of places my Dad mentioned the few times he talked about his involvement in the Battle of Normandy. He was not given to reminiscing, I think he preferred to forget too 

I was still limiting myself to driving for a couple of hours every day. Normally we would have reached Brittany with only one overnight stop, it took three. Next impromptu resting place - the aire at Villedieu-les-Poèles. It's an interesting small town which specialized in the manufacture of church bells and copper cooking pots. There are still small foundries working today. The cookware is high-end stuff, a miniature sauce pan cost €50, a fish kettle €499! The place felt prosperous. We bought some sausages from an artisan butchers to BBQ later.

Bell makig is celebrated in three ways,firstly an example of the craft is showcased on the steps of the town's handsome Mairie. 

Alternatively you can take a guided tour of the foundry producing them, (we didn't). Finally every church in the town tries to out-do one another in regular clanging matches which only finish at ten in the evening and recommence at 7am. on the dot. If you are a sound sleeper and the local Olympic standard campanologists fail to give you a sleepless night, then raucous crows in the rookery next to the Aire will ensure you definitely feel completely wrecked in the morning 

So much for attempting to take it easy!  We headed south, past Avranches, then about ten minutes after a brief glimpse of Mont-St-Michel we crossed the Breton border. We had decided to head to the north coast near St .Brieuc as it's not an area we're familiar with. There are scores of small resorts strung along the coast. We decided to head for one of the campsites at Binic, an almost random choice as there seemed little to choose between any of them. We should have guessed from the name of the place - Le Panoramic - that reaching it involved a steep climb. Oddly enough, it had no view whatsoever.

It was described as a small family site, actually it was more of a mini-resort with heated pool and waterslides, a bouncy castle area the size of Carcassonne and intricately designed 'mini-golf'.  The place reflected another recent change we have noted, there is a definite shift towards mobile homes and camping bungalows on French sites with touring pitches in decline. Perhaps younger people used to Airb&b prefer the comfort of self catering. It meant when we arrived on Thursday the place felt like an evacuated village, come Friday it filled up and became one big party which continued into the small hours. It was a relief to leave the following day.

As for Binic itself, it was pleasant enough. A small port on an estuary with an enormous muddy beach at low tide and a small strip of sand at high. This unsurprising I guess given that Mont-Saint-Michel is only 50 miles to the east and boasts one of the biggest tidal ranges on the planet. 

 

The town is not exactly a tourist trap, but catering for visitors is definitely its main industry. We wanted to find a creperie, there were two, but one was closed. Breton tradition rubbed shoulders with French haute cuisine,  Spanish and  Argentinian restaurants and a couple burger joints. Binic is a perfectly nice seaside village but it is bland, a bit characterless and not particularly 'Breton'.

This being the case then it should not have surprised us that the crepes we had were distinctly underwhelming, there was nothing wrong with them but they weren't delicious.

I think we were both slightly relieved  to move towards more familiar territory on Brittany's south coast. After a couple of thundery days the forecast is looking better. I am feeling better too, not exactly perky but definitely on the mend.