A week in Brittany

Peter and Ann have rented a villa right on the water. It’s a beautiful house on an expansive property overlooking its own swimming pool with a bay full of moored boats beyond. It’s another thatch-roofed house, but on a different scale than the Danish in Troll Forest! Peter’s daughter Catherine and her boyfriend Lee are with them too, and it’s great to be here with them, finally. For years we’ve been saying that we’d like to visit Peter and Ann in England. It’s great to chat over good food, inexpensive good French wine, yummy cheeses, and fine whiskey. Who could ask for anything more?

Well…how about…... We might have asked for a bit better weather! This has got to be the rainiest, windiest June week in history. The cold that Susan felt coming on riding the Paris metro developed and kept her a bit under the weather for a couple of days. Since the pharmacie was closed, suffering in 'silence' was the only option.

Each day we drove out to see some of the local sights. And each night we took turns cooking in our very well appointed kitchen. Cat and Lee made beef Bourgogne and great potato salad, Peter barbecued steak and we baked lamb chops in mustard/rosemary and cracker crumbs, among other things. And of course, we shared our new-found Danish desert with them… baked figs in caramel over ice cream and melon.

Commerce is a bit relaxed around here. The tourist info office is only open 10-12:30 each day, and grocery stores and pharmacies and most other shops are not open on Sundays or fete days, which it was on Monday. Also, many places are closed 2 hours for lunch!

Baden is a sweet little town with curvy streets lined with stone walls and buildings, and a nice stone church. I loved the little stone houses with bright geraniums in window boxes, and gardens full of bush roses and hydrangeas. Unfortunately the rain prevented us from getting great photos.

The Golfe de Morbihan is an inland sea formed with hundreds of little islands scattered among the many inlets and bays. It formed during a period of global warming about 9000 years ago. Before that time the islands were mostly part of the mainland; sea level was 100 meters lower than today. Sailing is huge here and there are many small ferries one can take to the islands for a visit.

One afternoon we went to see the Alignements near Carnac and Le Menec. These are ancient (1000 years older then the Egyptian pyramids) stones, 3 to 30 feet high standing by the thousands in fields, all carefully lined up in rows. Not yet well understood, they seem to mark observances of astronomical cycles as well as figure in human burial customs. Underwater excavations have discovered evidence of human habitation going back 500,000 years. These 6,000 year old ‘standing stones’ are leftovers of a very old civilization but are certainly not old in terms of human occupation of this area. The continental shelf which includes Great Britain today also includes the western English Channel and Brittany. Breton language in use today is a type of Celtic related to that of Wales.

Mike rented a bike for a couple of days and he and Peter took turns taking this decrepit machine for rides. Ten out of 18 gear combinations worked; not too bad. Mike found an excellent coastal trail around the peninsula to Pointe de Blair and a enjoyed a bit of practice for the Hinton MS ride (minus the drizzle and mud). Luckily, he didn’t find out until his return that it was illegal to use this trail unless you are a ‘pieton’ (walker/hiker); also luckily he didn’t see a single other person. Riding the roads is OK; they are narrow but not busy. Baden is about 3 or 4 or 5 km from our villa, depending on how lost you get reading the tourist map.

June 16, 2011

Our last day at Le Dreven was more rain, but this time, really heavy. Nothing like a summer holiday in France. I uncovered the pool, but no takers today. Easy dinner (the ubiquitous roto-chicken from the supermarket) and pack up tonight, then the other four hop into Peter’s new Range Rover and head for the St. Malo ferry and the drive home to the Lake District. We’ll rejoin them there after a night on our own in historic Nantes and a flight to Manchester.