BRETAGNE IN A SMALL BOAT

10th September 2018 (Tony)

In all our years of visiting France there is one corner of this country we have never visited —  Bretagne. My pre-conceived notions visualised misty, drizzle soaked pastures of stoic cows facing head-on into Atlantic driven gales. How wrong! The cows can barely be seen for all the trees in the beautifully forested vales. We seem to be in another country. Practically every home is constructed of stone with slate roofs and are lovingly cared for. Gardens are immaculate and the flower pots in every village are bursting with colourful blooms. We can only imagine what they feed the plants with, and I guess there is no shortage of it, but it certainly makes them flourish. So, one because this may be our last visit to France for a while, and two, because we are soon to become great-grandparents to a child whose mother was born and raised in Bretagne (Will and Laure live in Sydney) we felt we had to complete our exploration of a region hitherto by-passed on our journeys. And we felt we should finish, as we began in 1996, by hiring a little Locaboat. Bretagne has an extensive network of canals but they can only be accessed from the sea, unless one’s boat is ocean-going or small enough to truck overland; and Sable just couldn’t make it — either way. It is somewhat discomforting to have to squeeze into a bathroom/toilet/shower the size of a small wardrobe and to have a kitchen that can barely warm food let alone try to cook in but there is a cosy and nostalgic pleasure to be cruising in our 11.8m “Guenrouet”. Having a fly-bridge to steer from is fun, especially when the weather is as gorgeous as this. The man who makes clouds in Bretagne must be on holiday for we have had sunny, cloudless days since we arrived with temperatures reaching into high 20’s every day.

We began at St Martin sur Oust and jaunted up to Josselin where a Disney-like castle looms over the mooring and protects the town. The whole place is tourist heaven  — lots of shops, cafes, restaurants in buildings that may be five hundred years old yet perfectly maintained or restored. Malestroit was similarly attractive.

Mark and Deb rounded off their holiday to Iceland and the Faroes Islands with a trip to Morlaix in the north of Bretagne, where Laure’s family live. After a jolly reunion of the four grandparents-to-be, Laure’s mother, Claire, drove them down to la Gacilly to join us for several days cruising on our Locaboat. From about 10 o’clock every morning until sundown la Gacilly is thronged with tourists — all visiting the famous annual photographic exhibition that this small town hosts for three months every year. Don’t ask how many photos are on display; we were there for almost two days and didn’t get to see them all. But they were stunning. And beautifully presented all through the town, some on walls some on posts, buildings and in gardens. How they could enlarge, let alone print, some of the photos to such size and sharp quality is hard to imagine. One photo, for example, filled three sides of a huge courtyard, 7m high x 90m long. The subject was a ghetto in Algiers complete with audio recording of the noise emanating from 5,000 apartments housing 30,000 people. All the restaurants in la Gacilly do a roaring trade for lunch but as there are only a couple of hotels in the town the place is deserted at night. La Gacilly is also home to the Yves Rocher perfume and cosmetics empire. Their restaurant is excellent; we had lunch there.

Next day we cruised down to Redon which in the old days was an important port for canal traffic as it sits on the junction of four canals. It has an incredibly old church, part of it dating from 856. By the 18th century the church and adjoining abbey was huge but about a third was destroyed in 1780 by an accidental incendiary event. The Revolution would have put paid to any attempts to rebuild it but some of it was eventually restored in the 1930’s. We were all a little disappointed by the apparent lack of shops and “commercial heart” but on a second visit some hours later Sally and Deb managed to find a few shops that attracted their attention for Deb returned with four pairs of shoes and a bag full of tops and business attire. And then next morning, after seeking out the best coffee shop in town and buying wool and patterns for baby knits we stumbled upon a ladies and menswear shop where Mark was, in no time, fitted out with a shirt, jacket and trousers; and I was unable to resist buying a shirt that would be hard to find in Aus. Redon’s economy greatly benefitted from our little visit. We set off late in the morning to return to the Locaboat base at St Martin sur Oust, Deb and Mark electing to ride the bikes. All too soon, apart from the uncomfortable mattresses, our hire boat sojourn was at an end. We all took a train to Rennes where we left Deb and Mark to spend another day exploring the capital city of Bretagne before they flew back to USA. By all accounts they found Rennes a fascinating and lovely place with a lot of new building work in progress in the city’s centre. Hopefully, we’ll get back there one day to see Rennes for ourselves; surely there will be some event worthy of a family gathering in Bretagne. Five hours later we were back in Roanne; TGV trains are so pleasurable. The weather is still gorgeous, no longer as blisteringly hot as in July but lovely sunny days and cool nights.

In August we flew to Copenhagen for a couple of nights and joined a ten day cruise around the Baltic stopping at Tallinn, St Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Warnemunde, Kiel and back to Copenhagen. Whilst it was enjoyable, we agree cruising in a Locaboat was more fun. To us the Zuiderdam seemed like a floating aged-peoples home; the number of walking-impaired passengers was staggering (no pun). Ocean cruising is without doubt a fabulous way of getting from A to B or seeing special places but it is not our scene; as always there was far too much food but the quality was mediocre. A barbecue on Sable is better and the wine less expensive. That said, St Petersburg was a highlight and two days there wasn’t enough. We visited Catherine’s Palace and Paul’s Palace both of which were spectacular and reeked of wealth and opulence that is mind-boggling. Little wonder the peasants revolted. But the absolute gem was the Fabergé Museum. Karl Fabergé was not only a superior craftsman, he was a genius. We were blown away by the minute detail of his work and being able to see it so close was memorable. We also visited a modernistically designed refurbishment of the staff quarters for the Winter Palace, now a museum housing several hundred Impressionist paintings. Most had been confiscated from private collections by the communists who then offered them to France to boost their coffers but France declined. I bet they now regret that decision! They too were marvellous but we only had an hour — one needed four hours minimum to see them properly. We enjoyed Copenhagen; and Stockholm was pleasant. In Stockholm we were greatly impressed by the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a warship built for the King of Sweden, carried 145 crew, 300 soldiers and was embellished with more than 800 amazing carvings decorating the hull and especially the stern. Less than an hour into its maiden voyage in 1628 it heeled over and sank. Only 30 lives were lost as it was merely a few hundred metres from shore and the tops of the masts protruded above the water. Eventually its location was lost but it was found in 1959. It was raised in 1961, virtually totally intact thanks to the coldness of the water and the fact that the water was almost fresh, protecting it from rot and wood worms. Lifted ashore, a museum building was constructed over and around it and it has been lovingly restored. A must see for anyone visiting Sweden; 35 million have. Following the cruise we stayed several nights in Hamburg. What a liveable city that is. We did boat tours around the harbour; and around the lake, walked extensively around the city and toured the Philharmonie, a stunning architectural edifice which imposes itself overlooking both the harbour and town.   

We are about to depart on Sable to get her up to St Jean de Losne by 24th September to enter dry-dock for bottom clean and painting; and of course the all-important survey. We will bring Sable back to Roanne to winterize her for the new owners and spend a few days discovering another quiet corner of France we haven’t seen, before heading home. It has been a fabulous eleven year adventure…