August 31: A Laver of a crab!

Classic Crozon: looking north from the Pointe de Penhir to the Pointe de Toulinguet - and the beach where you're not supposed to swim!

August 31 A Laver of a crab!

I am at Camaret, on the Crozon peninsula, which juts out from the Brittany coast south of Brest rather like a giant anchor, albeit one with all sorts of odd-shaped prongs at its business end. Crozon appears to be off the main Anglo-German tourist routes. I saw as many English cars en route to the Cap de la Chevre this morning as I would expect to encounter French cars on the way to the Lizard. My appalling linguistic skills are therefore more of a handicap than ever. I can work out in my own mind what I want to say. It is when my interlocutor asks me a question in reply that I go all to pieces. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Yesterday, the shone sun, for the first and – if the weather forecast is to be relied upon – possibly the only day of this leg of the trip. I spent the first part of the afternoon basking, swimming and reading on the almost deserted beach below the campsite. Then, when the incoming tide left nothing more than rocks to perch upon, I took myself off to Camaret-sur-Mer on the bike. It is a pretty little fishing town, with a long line of shops, bars and restaurants along the harbour. Not in the least bit chic, but quite smart. Having chosen a restaurant at which I would sup later, I went to explore the standing stones at Lagatjar, which rather suffer in their impact from the modern housing estate which has been built alongside, and then onto Pointe de Penhir, one of several dramatic headlands that stretch out in all directions from Camaret and Crozon. It was still sunny and warm, so I decided on a final swim before supper, on what looked like an inviting beach. But when I got there, I was confronted by huge notices saying “Baignade Interdit” by order of the Council. However, no-one seemed to be taking the slightest notice of them, so I didn’t either.

A suburban Carnac - the stone rows at Lagatjar, on the outskirts of Camaret

My meal at La Voilerie was OK, but no better than that. The fish soup was exemplary but there was something slightly odd about the crab mayonnaise. There appeared to be the correct number of arms, legs and other bits and pieces, but the pincers in particular were of strikingly different dimensions. I concluded that either my crab had been an assemblage from more than one crab, or, like Rod Laver, it had spent a lot of time playing tennis, leaving one forearm much larger than the other! At any event, whilst, at 10 euros, it might have been cheaper than my crab at the Turk’s Head on St. Agnes, it was certainly no better.

With half a bottle of a modest Muscadet, the bill came to 26 euros, which represented reasonable value. It’s the booze that’s become so expensive here in recent years. A 250 ml ‘pression’ – that’s less than half a pint of fizzy lager – will now set you back 2 euros 40, even in a scruffy tabac, and a glass of wine is the same price. That’s the equivalent of something like £4.20 a pint at the current exchange rate, and it’s frightful stuff as well. Wine in the supermarkets and ‘caves’ is still marginally cheaper than in England, but I’ve yet to find better value over here than the magnums of Chilean cabernet that Tescos were selling for £5 a throw just before I left. I even brought a couple with me; now that’s coals to Newcastle if you like.

The weather hasn’t held. By the time I was making my way back from Camaret the thunderclouds were building, and the most tremendous storm broke over the peninsula at 2.00 this morning. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. It sounded as if God was hurling wardrobes around in the attic, and the lightning was so incessant that the countryside appeared floodlit. And my God, didn’t it rain!

An ominous sky - the night before the great thunderstorm over Camaret

Today has been mostly grey and drizzly, although the sun did break through just after lunch. I cycled via Crozon and Morgat to Cap de la Chevre, which about 12 miles south of here. If there is such a thing as a ‘typical Breton small town’ then Crozon is it: narrow streets of ancient houses leading off from its central ‘Place’ where a market was in full swing right outside the church. It has to be said that the fish and vegetables here are in a completely different class to anything on our side of the channel. One of several fish stalls had the most beautiful turbot on sale for 26 euros a kilo. I was sorely tempted to buy one for my supper, but then it dawned on me that it wouldn’t be improved by several hours in a rucksack on my sweaty back.

The Cap de la Chevre is my third cape of the trip so far. It translates as ‘Cape Goat’, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Cape Wrath or Cape Cornwall. Nor am I entirely sure which are the two seas whose meeting point it is supposed to mark. Presumably the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel, although Point de St. Mathieu (which I can see out of Carmen’s windscreen as I write on the other side of the Rade de Brest) would be a much more obvious choice. But it is a magnificent headland and does command spectacular views on every side, from the Pointe du Raz and the Ile de Sein in the south to Ushant in the north. My distinguished predecessor (in the sense of being a Celtic traveller) R.A.J.Walling was so impressed with the cape that he declared it “the true finis terre – the end of the earth” (The Magic of Brittany – highly recommended).

Now it is raining again and it is time for supper. After moules for lunch at Morgat, I’ve bought myself some steak – local, of course, but with English mustard!

Inspiring lights in the Celtic gloom

August 29. Inspiring lights in the Celtic gloom

Ushant! A name to strike fear into any mariner’s heart: an island of violent storms, savage reefs, treacherous tides, impenetrable fogs and tearing Atlantic gales; rising low but menacingly, like a crocodile in a whirlpool, on the edge of the continental shelf where the Bay of Biscay joins the English Channel; at the very western tip of France. “Ouessant”, they call it here. “The Westernmost” is how I like to translate it. Mind you, the Celts called it Enez-Eussa - the Isle of Terror - and the channel that separates Ushant from Molene is From-Veur - the strait of fear!

Except that, today, when I made the long anticipated sea crossing from Le Conquet, there wasn’t so much as an Atlantic zephyr, let alone an Atlantic gale, either to stir the waters into their customary anger or, more to the point, to shift the low, misty cloud that has enveloped the north-west coast of Brittany like a grey shroud these last four days.

But I made the best of it – hiring a bike which enabled me to see most of what is, without the assistance of the more violent among the elements, a rather flat and dull island. It occurred to me halfway round that Ushant is a bit like Lundy: the sort of place that everyone interested in the western seaboard of Europe ought to visit – but probably only once!

Ushant’s hallmark is its lighthouses. There are five of them in all: three at the outer edges of the reefs that stretch out towards one of the busiest sea-lanes in Europe, and two on the island itself. I paused for a glass of cider and a packet of crisps on the Pointe de Pern – the most Westerly point in France – where two ruinous pylons and a crumbling stone barn provided, respectively, electricity and a gigantic steam-powered fog-horn for the Phare de Nividic, just offshore. With its ceaselessly churning sea and gigantic masses of granite, the peninsula reminded me powerfully of Wingletang Down on St. Agnes.

Gibbo at the most westerly point in France - the Pointe de Pern on Ushant. In the background, the now derelict equipment for powering the lighthouse.

But even more impressive is the Phare du Creac’h, reputedly the most powerful lighthouse in Europe, if not the world. It is black and white and massive. Du Creac’h is to normal lighthouses what the Millennium Eye is to fairground wheels. This is the daddy of them all!

And thereby hangs a theory of mine. The Bretons are big on lighthouses. There are hundreds of them. On the Ile de Vierge – Virgin Island – they’ve built not just one, but two of them, one the tallest in Europe. Now if that’s not making a Gallic, or better still a Celtic point, I don’t know what is! Because this fondness for tall straight things, penetrating the very skies above, goes back a long way in these parts. Around every corner is a standing stone, sometimes made decent with a cross on the top, but by no means always.

Yesterday I stopped off at the tallest menhir still standing in Brittany, at Kerloas near St. Renan. It has two protuberances, about a metre from its base, against which newly married couples were once wont to rub their naked bodies: on one, the man, so as to beget a son; on the other, the woman, so as to be the boss of her household. One of them still looks suspiciously shiny and worn, and I’ll bet I can guess which!

The menhir of Kerloas - with that suspiciously shiny bump!

Be it sacred or profane, lighthouses seem to me to have much the same significance in modern Brittany as menhirs did in the old days. What finally convinced me of that was when, after returning from Ushant, I cycled down to the Pointe de St. Mathieu, at the western end of the Rade de Brest. There I found the still substantial ruins of a Benedictine Abbey – with an enormous lighthouse standing right alongside the entrance to the nave!

Le Phare de St. Mathieu - presumably Cardinal Newman was asked to advise on its siting ("lead kindly light......")!!

I am camping at Les Blancs Sablons, overlooking the estuary (Aber or Rade) which has given Le Conquet its sheltered harbour. It’s a long way round to the town by road, but no distance at all on foot or bicycle, across the long, low passarelle, which I've discovered is French for footbridge. The beach here is superb. Even under murky cloud, swimming yesterday afternoon was a delight, and there’s surf as well. Le Conquet is a pretty, unspoilt little fishing port. There may be pleasanter corners of North West Brittany, but if there are I’ve yet to discover them.

And if you detect a slightly more upbeat tone as these notes reach their conclusion, there’s a very good reason. The sun has a last broken through. I celebrated by roasting myself an enormous veal chop (and drinking a toast to Compassion in World Farming as I ate it), which was quite one of the best things I’ve eaten all year.

A final postscript to Wednesday’s dispatch: St. Paul of Aurelian did not arrive in Brittany at Roscoff, as I suggested. He came ashore on Ushant. I visited the spot today. He was also indirectly responsible for the original chapel at Pointe de St. Mathieu. In fact, one way or another, I seem to be treading in his footsteps much as I did in those of St. Columba in Scotland and Ireland. I wonder if St. Paul built lighthouses as well?!

Celtic to the core - a holy well in the parish close of Lamber near St. Renan

August 27. On the road again

I write at Camping Les Abers, looking out through Carmen’s windscreen to the clitter-clatter of low, rocky, somehow desolate islands that fringe the North-West coast of Brittany. In the distance, a faint pink glow enlivens the otherwise unremitting grey of sky and sea, offering hope of a brighter day tomorrow.

The campsite is at Aber-Wrach (as in Aberystwyth), just west of Landeda (as in Lanivet).The district of Leon (from Caerleon), where I am presently based, was originally divided up into Dumnonee (as in Devon) and Cornouaille (as in it goes without saying). Even the Breton language, now so jealously guarded, was largely imported from Cornwall and Wales, from the fifth century onwards.

But when we talk about ‘Little Britain’, which is what Brittany literally means, we need to remember that the ‘British’ in question was strictly of the ancient, Celtic variety. The Irish, Welsh and Cornish who colonised Brittany in the Dark Ages were looking for somewhere to escape from the Saxons and Vikings, pressing ever westwards. Armorica, as it was then known, was a bleak, infertile, windswept, storm-ravaged, thinly populated peninsula largely cut off from the rest of civilised Europe. It made the Cornish, the Welsh and the Irish feel entirely at home!

Anyway, by reaching Aber-wrach by way of Wales, Cornwall and a sea crossing to Roscoff, I have been travelling in ancient, not to say sacred footsteps. St. Pol-de-Leon, just a few miles from the ferry terminal, is named for the same Paul who gave his name to Paul, near Penzance, and whose chapel here at Aber-wrach I visited earlier today. He was a Welshman, of course!

Unlike Paul, who no doubt made the crossing on a millstone or a cabbage leaf, I travelled in some style, on the Brittany Ferries flagship, the Port Aven. It is a trip I have made many times, and I was looking forward to its rituals, not least the steak-frites in the self-service restaurant as the boat clears the Eddystone lighthouse (and not a moment before!). The food on Brittany Ferries is not exactly world-class, but it is at least French, which is a good start.

I looked up at the board above the servery, just to check that it was on. Sure enough, there it was: “Entrecote grille”. But what was that in the small print underneath?
“Origin S. America”? I looked again, just to check it hadn’t read “S.Armorica”, which is what one might have expected on a boat run by the fanatic gastro-patriots who are the Bretons.

But no, S. America it undoubtedly was, and S. American it undoubtedly tasted – stringy and gristly. I have rarely been more disappointed with a meal in my entire life. My thoughts turned to Alexis Gourvennec, the Breton farmer who founded Brittany Ferries and who sadly died earlier this year. He was arguably the most effective militant farmer who ever lived. He bullied the Government into funding the Roscoff ferry terminal and he dragooned the notoriously cussed small farmers of Brittany into joining his co-operative – the SICA, as it then was – on pain of having their crops burnt.

Alexis Gourvennec - a pocket battleship of a farming leader

The likes of Handley and Haddock are but pigmies to Gourvennec’s colossus. He transformed farming in Brittany. The magnificent crops of cauliflower, onions, leeks, potatoes, lettuce, shallots, broccoli and artichokes – especially artichokes, although he never did manage to persuade Plymothians to love them! – that I drove past on my way here this morning are a tribute to his passion, skill and belligerence.

I don’t know about him spinning in his grave. I’m surprised that he hasn’t burst forth from it: to blockade the ferry company which has so betrayed his legacy and to threaten to burn its boats, one by one, until every last kilo of foreign beef has been tipped into the grey Atlantic.

That apart, the journey across was relatively uneventful. I stayed last night at Mogueriec, not far from Roscoff, on a campsite which, apart from me and Carmen, was eerily deserted. Even the owner made his excuses and left. It was a disturbed, as well as a lonely night. I was just dropping off to sleep when my ears were assailed by the unmistakeable whine of a mosquito, on its final approach towards my neck. Now, if there is one thing in life that I detest even more than split infinitives and the mispronunciation of west country place names it is mosquitos! I had the light on a flash, armed myself with a rolled up Times, and went in search of the little beggars. I got two in the first sweep, two more later on, and one final buzzing menace was nailed to the window frame just before dawn. Conducive to sleep this was not, so I have invested in an electronic device which promises “45 nuits” of mosquito-free bliss. We shall see.

One thing that that Bretons have not, fortunately inherited from their Celtic cousins further north, is their cuisine, which is Frankish to the core, albeit using the magnificent local ingredients. I cycled to Prat-ar-Coum this afternoon to buy some oysters for my supper. A dozen of the freshest, plumpest, most sea-flavoured bivalves as could be imagined set me back just 4 euros 50. On Sunday, at Lyme Regis, the Hix Oyster and Fish Bar had much less fresh oysters on offer at £1.75 each!

Their sacrifice was not in vain!

I was given a leaflet describing the local attractions when I arrived this afternoon. From this, I learned that, near Plougerneau, there is a “Seaweed Museum”. Now that’s got to be up there, alongside Barometer World (near Okehampton, if you’re desperate), as one of the most unlikely tourist attractions in Western Europe!