Brittany - Coast to Coast

I'm sittin' in the airport station,
Got a ticket for my destination, uhumm 
On a tour of three night stands
My suitcase and souvenirs in hand
And every step was neatly planned,
For this woman and this retired man
Homeward bound

For now we are, 

Homeward bound

Home, where the garden needs weeding

Home, where our friends need greeting

Home, where my family's pleading

Bring that sun back home

(Written in the Charles de Gaulle airport, with apologies to Simon & Garfunkel)

One thing I have learned on this voyage is that it helps to have a goal. And by goal, I mean something greater than completing the day's Wordle, or finishing your stretches without prompting prolonged and persistent pain. Today's goal is so simple - get on that plane before it leaves. So far so good. Although I have to credit some very kind French citizens who stepped forward to make it happen, like the one who approached us when we were doing the best imitation of a couple of lost tourists, and who found us a path to avoid having to run across six lanes of a highway, or this morning's bus driver who let us ride for free when he realized we had money but were sans billets. And when it comes to goals, there is nothing quite as motivating as a goal that you can visualize. In making our way through the landscapes of Brittany, and especially along the coasts, we often had the great fortune of setting out on paths whose end could be seen on the horizon, beckoning us forward, inviting us to make the beauty ours. Nowhere was this more true than at Mont St. Michel.

Mont St. Michel isn't actually in Brittany - it is part of Normandy; however, Mont St. Michel Bay is in Brittany. Don't ask. It isn't surprising that both regions want to claim the island as their own, as it is truly a treasure with a treasured story to its existence. Legend has it that in the beginning of the 8th Century, Bishop Aubert of Avranches received a visit from St. Michel (long before he visited Jeanne D'Arc) who told him to build an oratory on top of the island. Aubert wasn't convinced. So St. Michel came a second time. Aubert still had his doubts - it might be a demon masquerading as St. Michel, after all. Finally, St. Michel got physical, poking Aubert in the head, leaving a hole in his skull. That did the trick.

The head-poking moment captured in bas relief

on the abbey wall

The island, and the abbey that sits atop the island has been attracting hordes of people ever since. It was captured by the Vikings, besieged twice by the English during the Hundred Year's War -without success - and became the goal for a multitude of pilgrims - called Miquelots - from the Middle Ages to the present day. While only 29 people claim Mont St. Michel as their home (including 7 nuns and monks), over 3 million visitors swarm the island each year.

As with so many goals, it was the journey that mattered in the end. Sharing a small island with a good portion of the 3 million in no way drew us close to heaven. What captivated us was the experience of walking there. So often when we walk, we are in our heads. We take little note of our surroundings. And if we aren't in our heads, we are focused on the practical aspects of our journey. Even when we are on a forest trail we tend to keep our head down, avoiding the roots and rocks along the way. But when you have an image like Mont St. Michel in front of you, you can't tear your eyes away. Every 25 steps or so, my hand would reach for my phone, irresistibly drawn to take yet another photo.

First glimpse 

Mont St. Michel rises above the salt meadows as we start our hike across the causeway

Real smiles greet the sight

Getting closer . . .

Getting so close you can almost reach out and touch it

And then, suddenly you're there, 

standing on the sea bed that surrounds the island at low tide

Thanks to Rick Steves (guidebook author), we avoided the worst of the crowds on our climb up the mount. The Abbey's church is perched at the summit, and stands on top of the original church, vestiges of which - particularly the stout Romanesque columns - can be seen in one of the crypts. The Abbey has undergone many expansions followed by the scourge of the usual destructive forces, including a fire at the time of the Revolution which destroyed almost half of the nave (the porch end). The resulting shortened church has allowed for an open terrace large enough to accommodate the tourists who paid the entrance fee to get the panoramic view.

One of those tourists - a good-looking one, at least

The columns of Notre-Dame-Sous-Terrre

As is true of so many monuments in France, Mont St. Michel has flexed and accommodated itself to the changing society on shore. It served as a prison both before and during the Revolution, referred to as 'la bastille des mers'. It wasn't until the latter half of the 19th century, following a hue and cry raised by Victor Hugo, that the prison was closed and attention was paid to preserving it as part of France's patrimoine. During World War II, the Germans occupied it, but fortunately never tried to defend it, so no damage was done. It also returned to its original use as an abbey. In 1966 Benedictine monks were sent to the abbey for a summer, and some stayed, including a monk from Le Bec-Hellouin, which we visited on our way to the wedding.

Prisoners were required to walk, like Guinea pigs, in this wheel 

to haul supplies up from sea level far below

Monks had it better - hanging out in columned cloisters

Having accomplished our 'goal', we walked back across the causeway, turning around every so many steps to gaze wistfully, smiling at our good fortune to have been two of the three million!

While we were done with Mont St. Michel (having started our day at our gite outside Bayeux), we were not done with our adventures. We decided to end the day by taking the scenic drive along the coast toward St. Malo.  We were now definitely in Brittany, and to punctuate that fact, we found ourselves at the tip of a beautiful point - Pointe du Grouin - hiking a cliffside trail and taking in the most beautiful seascape. What a glorious way to end a perfect day.

Trying to find our gite at Dinan felt like a scene from the Amazing Race. One of the downsides of following Google Maps is a) they don’t show contour lines so you don’t know you’re about to go over the edge of a cliff, and b) they don’t do so well with residences that can’t be reached by a motorized vehicle, unless you can drive a motorcycle down 90 (I counted them) steps like Tom Cruise. I may exaggerate when I say our gite was perched on the edge of a cliff, but not by much. I, for once, followed my wife’s helpful advice as to how I should drive, when she suggested I research where I might find the car’s parking brake. Despite all the obstacles we eventually settled into our gite and discovered that Dinan is divided into a small harbour along the River Rance and the centre of the town on the heights above where, as so often is the case, you’ll find the remains of a castle and castle walls, along with a few churches, and countless creperies (this being Brittany). And to complete the charm, there were scores of half-timbered houses, the majority of which were on the cobbled street we called home.

Our street

The harbour looking upstream 

Having arrived on a Monday night, there weren’t a great number of restaurants open (same with Sundays). We found an upscale creperie at the point where our historic street reached the harbour and got treated to artful crepes which bore no relation to our distant cuisine cousin, the common pancake. This set us up well for three days of exploring Dinan, St. Malo and one of the highlights of our trip, Fort La Latte. 

Crêpe saumon avec sorbet roquette

The dessert crêpe to die for

St. Malo is famous for its fortifications that allowed the residents to protect themselves and the harbour from those darned Englishmen. In addition to the fort and massive walls along the shore, there were fortified positions on three of the islands that were guarding the harbour. I got my first lesson in tides when I innocently wandered out across the sand to get a picture of the biggest fort on the nearest island, having left Catherine behind to figure out the best way to frame a photo of the harbour. She finally realized I had wandered off and clambered over the rocky outcropping after me. When she reached me on my heroic journey to the fort, we both turned and looked back to see that what was once a point was now an island! Turned out that wading through the salt water was a delightful surprise - one of those unplanned activities that make travelling memorable.

`Let`s walk out to the fort!`

The island fort, while still a peninsula

Not a peninsula!

From the ramparts you can see the island fort at high tide

The ramparts were the last line of defense after

three island forts successively farther out to sea.

Jacques Cartier sailed from St. Malo on his journey to the New World

He started from St Malo`s cathedral, kneeling in its nave. 

A plaque marks the spot.

We found that he had been buried in the cathedral; his skull is there as a relic

We were impressed by the modern art that adorned many of the walls of the cathedral.

St. Malo Cathedral suffered a direct hit on August 8, 1944 during intense

fighting . Someone pulled this 17th century Madonna and Child from the flames. 

It stands now beside the 20th century Revelation painting (above) by Augustin Frison Roche.       

A sign reads:`Cette vierge est le symbole de la ville renée de ses cendres` -

`This virgin is the symbol of the city reborn from its ashes.``

The following day we faced a rare meteorological phenomenon: it rained (well, a little). So we put off our planned excursion to Fort La Latte and instead spent more time in Dinan, exploring the medieval town

St George faces off against the dragon

and its church, Saint Sauveur, including the gisants (effigies) of local nobles of the middle ages (there aren’t a whole lot of effigies of washerwomen and chimney sweeps) as well as the tomb of Bertrand de Guesclin's heart. Guesclin, a local military commander who smartly took the side of the French against the English also has an equestrian statue dedicated to him in a local square. In the afternoon, the rain let up, which made for a lovely walk up the river to a nearby village (Léhon) and abbey, passing a set of locks - called écluses - along the way. 

The heart is in there somewhere

Resting like a noble should - being a noble was hard work, I'm sure

I couldn't resist including this one showing two camels jawing at one another

Léhon

On Thursday the weather turned and gave us back the sun, our mostly faithful companion. So off we set, first driving up the Pointe du Chevet to an abbey come retreat centre, in St. Jacut-de-la-mer, where we parked the car and began a shore/cliff hike up to the end of the point. The water’s lustrous aquamarine shade of blue was almost enough to cause me to shed my clothes and dive in, but I wasn’t sure I could explain skinny dipping to the gendarmes in my limited French, should the locals complain. After checking out one further nameless church, we continued on our way toward Fort La Latte.

Scenes from Pointe du Chevet

I write of Fort La Latte as though it were a commonplace French tourist destination like Mont St. Michel, when in fact it is not. Nonethless, it was well known to me, and should be well known to anyone who has sat at the Hamilton cottage dining room looking south, for there on the wall are a few of the remaining calendar photos that formed a 1960s Pan Am calendar the former owners of our cottage had plastered on the walls of the cookhouse. And one of those is a dramatic photo of a complete medieval fort perched on a small peninsula of rock - that is Fort La Latte. I had often vowed that I would travel to see it (and the other destinations Pan Am flew to, which remain for future trips). It was a glorious day that included a wonderful hike along the coast, and as with Mont St. Michel, it was all I could do to stop taking pictures. We actually had two visual goals on that hike, as you can see an enormous monument across the wide bay to the west of Fort La Latte, on Cap Fréhel, which we foolishly set out for late that afternoon, along a cliff-top path with bright yellow gorse on one side and the sea far below on the other, seagulls whirling and the wind on our face. I have to admit that we never reached our goal, but when we turned our backs on the monument, we were beckoned forward by Fort La Latte, which put a skip in our step and kept our heads held high.

Approaching Fort La Latte from the parking lot

The east side

From the southwest

We couldn't get enough of it!

On Friday, we left the northern coast of Brittany and drove due south to the opposite coast, with the city of Vannes as our destination, stopping briefly in Josselin to check out the local church and chateau, and to climb the bell tower. Otherwise, I can only report that the stretch of road that took us there led us to independently determine that interior Brittany could easily pass for rural Ontario. Hence, it never occurred to us to stop and take a photo - most of you know what that looks like.

Brittany, with the route from Dinan to Vannes shown

Josselin's chateau can be seen from the bell tower

And looks even better from the bridge with a gorgeous model in front of it!

As we only had two days in Vannes, we wasted no time in getting down to the business of exploring the area. Although I was tired from the drive that day, we gritted our teeth and left our suburban apartment and made the hike into the city centre. We quickly realized that Vannes, though attractive in its own way, could not hold a candle to some of the other centres we had visited. Adding to our slight disappointment was the fact that the local church of historical interest was almost entirely boarded up inside. What we decided is that Vannes was more suited to the young and jet-setting crowd, as it sat on a marina full of 40+ foot super yachts, and boasted huge bar patios, the average age of clientele appearing to be 17. Fun was being had, just not our sort of fun.

While Vannes is not particularly spectacular, the coastline near Vannes and the extensive Bay of Morbihan that forms an outer harbour by its various islands is a recreational treasure trove. On Saturday, we drove out to a long spit of land to hike along the cliffs, and there encountered bikers, hikers, paragliders, land sailing across the beaches, scuba divers, surfers and sailboats. The cliffs presented us with countless photo ops and primed us for our afternoon visit and hike among the menhirs of Carnac.  What are menhirs, you ask?  If you have ever read an Asterix comic, you will know that the enormous character, Obelix, is always shown at the front piece of the comic, carrying a large pointed stone - that is a menhir.  Menhirs were large rocks - the large ones averaged 10 tons - that prehistoric tribes delighted (or perhaps it was mere drudgery, who knows?) in quarrying and dragging to set up in formation across the landscape of Brittany (and some in Normandy). The menhirs at Carnac are set up in rows about 10 meters apart marching in neat lines down to the sea - there are 3,000 of them at Carnac alone and they cover four kilometres! We found it fascinating to wander amongst this testament to a past that is so inscrutable. Archaeologists seem pretty certain about how they moved the stones - rolling them on tree trunks, then digging a pit, filling it with homemade `cement,` and pulling it up with ropes; our guide told us it took two teams of 60 people to erect one - but I wasn’t entirely convinced by the theories arrived at for why they did it. My theory is that it was all part of a big game that involved running through the menhirs like a slalom ski race. That might have motivated me to heave to!

Scenes from our coastal walk

Catherine impersonating a menhir

She just doesn't measure up! 

Ship her off to the next field, as the menhirs get progressively smaller as you head east

Sunday saw us drive to a small town called Auray, in which a church was built to mark the place where some lowly farmer, Yves Nicolazic, was visited by the apparition of St. Anne (mother of Mary), who took the opportunity to suggest he build a church. As with all reluctant recipients of such visions, it took a few tries, and it wasn`t until Yves discovered a statue of St. Anne on his property that he got to work (at least he avoided the poke in the head!). Am I ever glad I am not subject to such visions! The church that was built is supposedly one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in all of Europe. We stayed for the mass which was well attended, but I didn’t get the sense that anyone had walked too far to get there. We did not make a long trek to get there, but nevertheless came to the  conclusion that we were becoming too exhausted to soak in very much more culture, so after checking out the local village of Saint Goustan, we took the rest of the afternoon off.

Curious shrine facing Sainte Anne d'Auray

where they had just installed gorgeous wooden doors

Charming harbour of Saint-Goustan

And so ended our tour through Brittany, which may not have been comprehensive - we missed the miles and miles of coastline that extend out toward Brest - but left us with the impression that the Bretons are a proud people (the Breton language is written on most signs) and that they have every reason to be so. And as our goal was to capture a feel for the land and people, we could leave feeling our goal had been accomplished. Kenavo, Breizh!