Thirty-five leagues from Scilly

[shewhomust]

The island of Ouessant lies off the western tip of Britanny; Ushant and Scilly, thirty-five leagues apart (your mileage may vary, but that's the version I know) guard the western end of the Channel - which is why the English language has a name for this tiny island. And one of the reasons why we returned to Le Conquet was that on our first visit we had discovered that this was the ferry port for Ouessant.

A ferry trip of an hour and a half brought us past the neighbouring island of Molène to the island. It's no more than five miles long; and since the ferry comes into the Baie du Stiff on one side, and the town of Laimpaul is on a deep bay at the far side, we could tell ourselves we were walking "from end to end" in under three miles. Not true: the far end, the westernmost point of metropolitan France, is a headland beyond the village, the Pointe de Pern. We didn't get that far, but told ourselves (as we did on Unst) that we would save that for next time. So we missed the lighthouse - but we saw several others, the island is staked out by lighthouses.

The people of Ouessant don't seem to eat blackberries - or sloes, for that matter, though there are fewer sloes for them not to eat - and the brambles that straggled across our path were heavy with ripe fruit.

Being Bretons, they do eat crêpes - or at least encourage visitors to do so. When we reached Lampaul, we found a crêperie, where I chose a galette with the local specialty, smoked sausage flavoured with wrack (goémon), plus potatoes and emmenthal.

After lunch we walked down to the harbour; the 'Phares et Balises' museum was closed, and the tide was out, but there were little birds running to and fro across the expanse of mud and shingle, making a crackling noise like a wood fire. And there were ducks, and a solitary boatman.

We took the long way back, following the coast, tracing the inlets, until we realised that it was a longer way than we had planned; then cutting inland we came to a road we couldn't identify, and therefore didn't know whether to turn left or right - with the result that we arrived back at the port five minutes before the ferry was due out, and I at least was glad of an excuse to sit quietly with my book for an hour or so.

Photos of Ouessant