Manoir du Hilguy As part of our ongoing mission to visit the properties of Judith's Holiday Property Bond holiday club, we booked a week at their Manoir du Hilguy property in Brittany, France (for anyone that's not sure where Brittany is).
Wedding Saturday - A slightly unusual start to the holiday in that we've been invited to a wedding. Despite being first in the queue for the wedding service, circumstance results in Judith and I being last into the room, thereby securing possibly the worst seats in the house.This was the moment the wedding vows were exchanged. Doh! At least the rest of the day was most excellent and it was positively scorchio all day.
Ferry Just as the evening reception was getting into full swing and the dancing was starting, we had to head off for the Plymouth ferry terminal to board our overnight ferry to Roscoff (much to my disappointment - I'd been looking forward to the dancing all day [not]).Here's the view from the back of the ferry as we left the port.
Roscoff Sunday - After a choppy crossing (just choppy enough to rock you to sleep, which was excellent) we arrived in Roscoff in the rain. Here's Judith on deck shortly before we disembarked.
Manoir du Hilguy And a period of time later we arrived at the Manoir du Hilguy (here's Judith's car parked outside).There are no photos of our transit as the weather was miserable and we could see very little for most of the journey over the Monts d'Arree. They're only just over 1,200 feet at the highest point, but that was easily enough to put us up in the clouds on this day.
Manoir du Hilguy
Reception Judith's car parked outside reception.
Walking As it was only mid-afternoon and it had stopped raining for a bit, we decided to walk to the nearby village of Plogastel-Saint-Germain.
Languages In this region they have their own language, Breton, which is apparently closely related to the Cornish language and more distantly to Welsh. And they insist on writing all of the signs in French and Breton, just like in Wales.
Plogastel-Saint-Germain Not surprisingly, at 5pm on a Sunday afternoon there was nothing at all open in Plogastel-Sain-Germain. Not even the bar, which was scheduled to open at 6pm for two hours.Still, we were surprisingly exhausted by this time and ready for an early night (after a visit to the pizza van, which was visiting the Manoir on this day).
Pointe de Millier Monday - Sun's out! Yay! We drove to the Pointe de Millier, where there's a short coastal walk. Lovely views immediately from leaving the car park.
Judith
Me
Trail Judith on the coastal path. This part of our circular trail is part of one of France's Grandes Randonnees (specifically GR34), a national hiking trail that runs along this coast for many, many miles.
Moulin de Keriolet After a while our trail turned inland to loop back to the car park, passing the impressive Moulin de Keriolet. Needless to say, it was closed for lunch when we passed.
Pointe de Beuzec Having returned safely to the car, we drove a few miles further up the coast to the recommended Pointe de Beuzec. That's it that you can see in the distance in this photo. Judith didn't fancy another walk just yet, so I headed off for a look.
Flowers There were lots and lots of flowers out.
Pointe de Beuzec View
Pointe de Raz Having left Pointe de Beuzec, we continued west to the Pointe de Raz, which is probably the most popular attraction in this area. So much so that we even had to pay to park! (Only EUR6.50 though.)We had a very nice three course lunch in one of the creperies near the visitor center before heading along the coastal path to the Pointe de Raz.This is the view approaching the Pointe de Raz.
Path Judith on the coastal path (still GR34).
Choppy Judging by how choppy the sea is between the end of the land and the lighthouse, I would guess that it's a) not very deep and b) very rocky. It's easy to see why there are so many lighthouses around here.
Lighthouse View I have no idea who these people are, but I thought it was interesting that they were all looking at the thing I was trying to take the photo of. So I took a photo of them too.
Pointe de Raz Every few yards there seems to be a new and interesting view of the rocks and the lighthouse.
Pointe de Raz And another.
Baie des Trepasses Having walked to the Pointe de Raz, Judith didn't fancy stretching her legs any further, so she headed for the car while I headed for the beach at Baie des Trepasses, which apparently means Bay of the Dead. Yikes!The beach can be seen in the distance in this photo.
Cliffs Approaching the cliffs at the Baie des Trepasses.
Baie des Trepasses
Beach Approaching the beach at Baie des Trepasses. As you can see, the beach is not very busy at all.
Judith As Judith was driving, she got here ages before me and I met her on the beach.
Seagulls Although that seagull on the left has its back to me, I can't help but feel that it's still watching me.This photo and the next five are all taken using my compact Panasonic TZ30 camera.
Spray Although the view to the north was very clear, looking south along the beach, into the sun, a spray mist was blowing in off the sea, which made for some atmospheric photo opportunities.
Horse This lady was galloping her horse up and down the beach at high speed. I think this is one of my favourite photos of the week.
Dogs These two dogs were playing in the surf, their owner just out of shot on the left.
Dogs Same photo as the last one, just with a wider field of view. I can't decide which I prefer so I've inclded them both.
Lighthouse That's the lighthouse at the end of the Pointe de Raz. The rocks and the waves look mental from this point of view.
Penhors After leaving the Bay of the Dead, we drove down the coast road for a few miles to Penhors, where there were some impressive waves and a few surfers out. So I got my SLR out of the boot of the car and settled down on a bench to watch for a while.This surfer guy was pretty good.
Surfer Guy
Waves That's just a wave crashing over the harbour wall at Penhors. The surfer guy isn't in there anywhere.
Sunset (nearly) We were tempted to hang around for sunset, but as there were pretty much no clouds in the sky it was likely to be a fairly dull affair with the sun sinking undramatically into the sea. So we gave up about twenty minutes before the big event and headed back to the Manoir.
Point de la Torche Tuesday - The weather was rather dull in the morning as we headed for the highly recommended Point de la Torche.The Pointe itself isn't particularly scenic, as you can see from this photo.
Surfer What people come here for mainly is the waves. And where there are waves there are surfers. There were very many surfer dudes in the car park at the Pointe de la Torche. Here's one on his way to do battle with the waves.
Surfer I couldn't decide if I liked the black and white one or the colour one best, so I've included them both.
Surfers As you can see, there were a lot of surfers out. This one looks like he's about to mow down his pal on the right. With this many people in the water it seems likely there are regular incidents.
Cool Dude A cool surfer dude.
Doh! And a couple of seconds later it's all over.
Le Gulvinec Having entertained ourselves for a while watching the surfers, we moved on to Le Gulvinec, which is supposed to be quite pretty. Their marina area was quite nice, but the rest of their town looked a bit grim. I don't know if we'd just parked in a bad spot, or the grey weather wasn't doing it justice. Either way, we didn't hang around for long.
Beach A bit further along the coast at Lehan, we came across this nice beach. That's the town/village of Lechiagat in the distance (I think).
Heron There were lots of birds wading in the rock pools. However, none of them seemed to fancy having their photo taken and moved to a safe, i.e. un-photographic, distance every time I nearly got into a good spot. This was the best photo I managed.
Le menhir de Lehan One of the many megoliths scattered around this area, thought to have been there for at least 4,000 years! It's a bit 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Loctudy Shortly after we arrived at Loctudy the sun came out. In this photo you can see the bank of cloud that we'd been under all morning rolling off into the distance.
Loctudy Things definitely look better when the sun is out.
Cottage A while later and we were back at our cottage. As it was now so lovely out we decided to sit out on our patio for a while and enjoy the sunshine.
Manoir I thought this might also be an excellent opportunity to take a few photos around the site. Here's the view looking through the main gate to the manoir.
Manoir The manoir itself.
Swimming Pool The indoor pool. There's also an outdoor pool, but it's closed at this time of the year.
Library There's a large selection of DVDs in the library.
Bistro and Bar Awesome food in the bistro and in very generous proportions too.
Beer Back on our patio in the lovely sunshine with a locally brewed beer. What a nice way to end the day.
Quimper Wednesday - The weather forecast for the day was not looking promising at all, so we thought we'd head for Quimper (pronounced camp-air apparently), which is the largest town in the area. This is a view down the River Odet, which runs through the town.
River Odet For some reason that I'm not clear on, there are about a dozen small bridges over the river in the space of about half a mile. I say "small", but they're big enough to carry traffic. They're all beautifully decorated with with baskets of flowers too.
Flowers Here's a closer look at some of the flowers decorating one of the bridges.
Cathedrale Saint Corentin Pretty standard cathedral configuration from the outside...
Cathedrale Saint Corentin ...but from the inside we can see that the cathedral has a curved nave. I'd never seen one of those before. The cathedral also had loads of very impressive stained glass windows.
Jardin de la Retraite Just up the road from the cathedral is the Jardin de la Retraite, which is a bit of a hidden gem in the middle of the town.
Jardin de la Retraite
Jardin de la Retraite Judith in the Jardin de la Retraite.
Place au Beurre It started to rain quite heavily (as forecast) so we stopped in to a creperie in the Place au Buerre for a spot of lunch.
Historic Quimper The rain had eased up a bit by the time we'd finished lunch so we went for a bit of a walk around the historic town center.
Historic Quimper A bit more of historic Quimper.
Musee des Beaux Arts Before long it started raining heavily again so we reluctantly decided to go and have a look round an art gallery - the Musee des Beaux Arts.
Musee des Beaux Arts As it turned out it was rather good. It was almost completely full of proper paintings and sculptures, with only one smallish room set aside for that modern crap that looks like it was made by children.
Paintings Judith admiring some of the paintings.
Mona Lisa This copy of the Mona Lisa is considered to be one of the "best contemporary reproductions" and "was probably painted in Leonardo da Vinci's studio". So maybe this is the real one and the one in the Louvre is the copy?
Hotel de L'Epee This room was created as a replica of the room in the Hotel de L'Epee where these paintings originally resided so that they could be displayed in their original configuration. Most of the doorways are fake.
Contemplation Judith contemplating a big painting.Having had an unexpectedly good time in the excellent Musee des Beaux Arts we headed back to our cottage.
Le Juch Thursday - The weather was nicer than I was expecting when I got up so I thought I'd head out and try one of the recommended local walks starting and ending in the village of Le Juch.The first half of the walk was on muddy trails in open countryside...
Quimper to Douarnenez Railway ...whilst the return half was mostly along the route of the old railway line between Quimper and Douarnenez. That at least made for largely mud-free progress, but it was a bit boring and flat.
Locronan After lunch we headed for the nearby scenic village of Lacronan. This is the view along what sort of passes for their high street.
Locronan Cottages in Lacronan.
Eglise Saint-Ronan de Locronan Approaching the Eglise Saint-Ronan de Locronan.
Eglise Saint-Ronan de Locronan Inside the Eglise Saint-Ronan de Locronan.
Eglise Saint-Ronan de Locronan Outside the Eglise Saint-Ronan de Locronan again.
Graveyard. In the graveyard of the Eglise Saint-Ronan de Locronan.
Door An interesting looking door in Locronan.
Rooftops The map said there was a view point overlooking the village so we headed off up the hill in search of it. There was a nice view over the rooftops on the way up the hill.
View Point The view point itself was rather disappointing. If there ever was a view over the village, it had been long ago obscured by trees. There was a very limited view of the distant coast that my photo makes look very significantly better than it actually was.We returned to the village and bought some local beers before heading back to the car.
Plage du Ris We stopped at the pretty Plage du Ris on the way to Douarnenez, which is visible in the distance further round the bay.
Plage du Ris Unfortunately it started raining heavily while we were on the beach, so we decided to save our visit to Douarnenez for another day and headed back to our cottage.
Dinner We had another lovely dinner in the bistro, which I discovered also sold Leffe Blond. Although I think it's a bit strong to be sold in half-litre glasses!
Concarneau - Ville Close Friday - We drove to the town of Concarneau, the most popular part of which seems to be their old town, called Ville Close, which lives on its own little fortified island in the harbour.
Flowers Some nice flowers on the way into Ville Close. Slightly past their best, but still looking very impressive.
High Street Most of the shops and restaurants in Ville Close are along a single street that runs the length of the island.
Choclaterie Larnicol The chocolates in here looked amazing, but they also cost an amazingly huge amount of money, so we didn't get any. Still worth going in for a look around though.
Cloudy As we left Ville Close the clouds looked very much like it was going to rain heavily, but my weather apps assured me that there was no rain expected.
Seagull A seagull sitting in a scenically photographic spot.
Chapelle de Beuzec Having left Concarneau, we headed for Point de la Torche to spend a bit more time watching the waves and the surfers. However, along the way we passed the pretty Chapelle de Beuzec, so I stopped to take a few photos.
Chapelle de Beuzec
Chapelle de Beuzec This was when I remembered that there was some famous church or other around here, so we had a look on the map and programmed the likely location into the sat-nav.
Notre Dame de Tronoen The church of Notre Dame de Tronoen is itself quite pretty (particularly in the improving weather). However, what is apparently interesting here is the calvaire which you can just see in the bottom right of the photo.
Calvaire Apparently this calvaire is almost six hundred years old. I'm slightly surprised it doesn't have a fence around it as even this late in the afternoon it was drawing a steady stream of visitors.
Pointe de la Torche After leaving Notre Dame de Tronoen we drove the last few miles to Point de la Torche, where these school kids were just setting up for a lesson in land yachting (is that what it's called?).
Ruins As well as the beach sports, there are also pre-historic ruins.
Ruins And some distinctly more recent ruins. I assume this was once part of the WWII Atlantic Wall fortifications.
Sea Birds There were also a lot of sea birds around to keep the twitchers occupied.
Waves But I think most peope were here for the awesome waves.
Surfer Dude Particularly the surfer dudes.
Surfer Dude This one is doing quite well...
Surfer Dude ...until the almost innevitable ending. I watched them for ages and not once did I see one successfully ride a wave all the way to the beach.
Seagull Another seagull sitting in a photographic spot. Although this one almost got swamped by a particularly large wave a few seconds later.
ND10 This seemed like an excellent opportunity to try out the ND10 filter for my SLR, which hadn't seen the light of day for, oh, ages and ages.
ND10 Another ND10. That's smoothed out the waves nicely.
Waves More nice waves.
Almost Sunset It was shaping up to be a nice sunset, but not for another 30-40 minutes. As much as I wanted to hang around for that, I also wanted to get home for my dinner. In the end, dinner won. Doh!
McDonald's Saturday - We had to be out of our cottage early, so we'd planned to skip breakfast at home and grab a bite to eat at the McDonald's on the northern edge of Quimper as it was on our route. However, McDonald's in Quimper doesn't open until 10am. 10am!!! What use is that to anyone?!Interestingly the next one we passed didn't open until 10:30am. We finally stopped at this one shortly before lunchtime, by which point we were in relatively urgent need of some sustenance.
Ferry It was a nice drive to the ferry at Ouistreham, with good weather and little traffic, and we arrived in good time. I'm glad I didn't have to park on the end though as the cars in the photo have. They must have been quite salt-covered by the time they disembarked.
Cabin Standard tiny but comfortable cabin, but with a massive window.
Ouistreham As usual there was lots of activity on the beach at Ouistreham as we were leaving.
Pilot This pilot boat came past as we left port, although I didn't see it pick anyone up from our ship.
Island?! As we were leaving port I could see what looked like a large island on the horizon. However, on full zoom it's just possible to make out that it's one of those enormous container ships. I would have liked a closer look at that, but it appeared that we were moving in opposite directions.Later in the crossing, not far out of Portsmouth, we passed quite close by a cruise ship, but it was fully dark by then so I couldn't make out any details.
Clouds It had been getting steadily cloudier all day. The sky was still looking quite good when we left Ouistreham, but it was raining by the time we were half way across the Channel.
Home There was a nice view of the Spinnaker Tower as we arrived in Portsmouth, as well as the Navy's new aircraft carrier.Awful drive home with very, very heavy rain almost all the way.841 miles driven this week @ 47.7mpg.