The Côte des Abers
Jun. 11th, 2011 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustAnother bright sunny week has dissolved into a grey dreary weekend, and a night of shallow dream-filled sleep has left me feeling rather grey and dreary myself. Looking forward to midsummer week on Lindisfarne, maybe it's time tonight to look back with a holiday post, cheer myself up with good memories and pretty pictures. The earliest notes still awaiting posting - given the mysterious absence of words to accompany the still unsorted photos from Iceland - date from October 2009 in Brittany; with our day-trip to Ouessant we had passed the furthest point of our tour, and now we turned back towards Roscoff.
We drove along the Côte des Abers (an 'aber' being, as I believe it is in Welsh place-names, a narrow inlet), an illustration of the impossibility of measuring the length of the coast: shall we take the direct road that runs parallel to the coast, or shall we drive within sight of the sea, taking the detour that leads to the lighthouse, pausing to walk along the beach, following the signs to a chapel or a prehistoric burial chamber?
We stopped for coffee at the punningly named 'Abri Côtier', which must have been a lively little café in season, but looked sad and deserted with the chairs and tables all folded up on the decking outside. Inside was warm and welcoming, though, and our coffee arrived on a white china tray, the cups nestled in a layer of coffee beans.
Finally we dropped onto the main road, through field after field of maize, and occasionally something green and leafy (this is vegetable-growing country). I was looking out for artichokes, but hadn't seen any and assumed the season was over, until we came to Saint Pol de Leon, and suddenly they were everywhere.
Roscoff, on the other hand, where we were to spend the night, is the onion centre. That archetype of the Frenchman with his beret, his striped jumper and his string of onions? He isn't a Frenchman at all, he's a Breton, and specifically he is one of the Johnnies de Roscoff. Civic pride is expressed by festooning the buildings with tresses of the distinctively pink-skinned onions.
We had passed through Roscoff before, since it is a ferry port, but I think we must simply have driven off the ferry and away, since the old town came as a pleasant surprise - I'd happily visit it again, and for longer than an evening. I liked the Hôtel des Tamaris, too (though another time I'd probably pay the extra for a room with a sea view). And we dined at the Moule au Pot (I'm not saying that its name was the best thing about it, but it's the thing that I remember).
Pictures of Roscoff.
We drove along the Côte des Abers (an 'aber' being, as I believe it is in Welsh place-names, a narrow inlet), an illustration of the impossibility of measuring the length of the coast: shall we take the direct road that runs parallel to the coast, or shall we drive within sight of the sea, taking the detour that leads to the lighthouse, pausing to walk along the beach, following the signs to a chapel or a prehistoric burial chamber?
We stopped for coffee at the punningly named 'Abri Côtier', which must have been a lively little café in season, but looked sad and deserted with the chairs and tables all folded up on the decking outside. Inside was warm and welcoming, though, and our coffee arrived on a white china tray, the cups nestled in a layer of coffee beans.
Finally we dropped onto the main road, through field after field of maize, and occasionally something green and leafy (this is vegetable-growing country). I was looking out for artichokes, but hadn't seen any and assumed the season was over, until we came to Saint Pol de Leon, and suddenly they were everywhere.
Roscoff, on the other hand, where we were to spend the night, is the onion centre. That archetype of the Frenchman with his beret, his striped jumper and his string of onions? He isn't a Frenchman at all, he's a Breton, and specifically he is one of the Johnnies de Roscoff. Civic pride is expressed by festooning the buildings with tresses of the distinctively pink-skinned onions.
We had passed through Roscoff before, since it is a ferry port, but I think we must simply have driven off the ferry and away, since the old town came as a pleasant surprise - I'd happily visit it again, and for longer than an evening. I liked the Hôtel des Tamaris, too (though another time I'd probably pay the extra for a room with a sea view). And we dined at the Moule au Pot (I'm not saying that its name was the best thing about it, but it's the thing that I remember).
Pictures of Roscoff.
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 09:15 am (UTC)We stayed overnight only once (near Bruges) all the way from Hamburg, which was both my miscalculation and fault. But arriving at a Bates Motel-like castle hotel at the far west end of Europe at two in the morning did have its charm, I found.
Not so sure about husband ...who had had to drive all the way through, counting meaningless roundabouts, with gas suddenly out on the motorway in the middle of Normandie ...though he was absolutely sure it must be something wrong with the aged BMW motor and the minute he stepped out with his can to catch gas by foot from the in-sight station a few kilometers away (almost blown off the non-existent sidewalk by heavy trucks); the heavy rain set in.
He turned around to take one long look at his silly wife laughing her ditto head off...then he walked on. I had suggested gas might be out soon but he had known better, you see!
We both loved Brittany, although I´m a hopeless mapreader and this was in pre-GPS days.
We were, as so often, off season so we had the similar deserted experience which I found very fitting, what with the vast lostness of the landscape and mystery of its stone obituaries.
One of my most beautiful memories is the small "town" of St Croix with a lovely abandoned cathedral, oozing medieval mystery, that we entered at own risk, finding the new one just beside it horrendous. But what a wonderful place!
I can´t believe, I didn´t manage to eat one single crêpe there just because we were out of lunch time so we bought a memorably tasty piece of handmade bread by the eldest bakery lady I have ever seen; her arms as bent and white as the flour on her bread. We had it with our cheese and olives under the platane trees overlooking the small river that runs out to the sea, parting Audierne to make room for the fisher´s boats.
You see: your entries are always inspiring, at least to me!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 09:49 am (UTC)- that's wonderful, and makes me long to revisit Brittany, and see Pont Croix - we have walked along that coast in the past!
And I have good memories of picnics bought as a last resort because it was too late to find lunch in a restaurant, eaten in perfect settings and tasting so much better than what we had planned!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-14 10:20 am (UTC)Even the entrance to her wobbly house (where she apparently lived as well) was so old and bent (my husband is 6ft4 and had to stay bent at buying our braided-looking, equally bent bread) we had the feeling of being in the middle of a Grimm fairy-tale come true and then the cathedral at Pont-Croix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont-Croix left me with this strong feeling of accidentally having entered the forbidden but true mystery of an ancient, secret, long-forgotten holiness: there was one single handmade candle burning on the abandoned altar, otherwise all was shadowy dark and echoing of our steps. The whole place was so full of magic, it is hard to describe.
Btw, that small place´s (old&real) cathedral is said to have inspired the architecture of the one in Quimper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quimper,_Finist%C3%A8re which was impressive more by size and in its turn is said to have inspired the bows of Notre Dame, if I recall right.
The sunshine outside seemed almost absurd in contrast but we didn´t mind and had exactly that kind of an unplanned, but so much better than any restaurant meal!
I think, I will go there sometime, again.