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.