The Ryndex

What do you do when you’re weary of the easily accessible cathedrals and lack of cliffs in Paris? When you want to start your own Early-Canadian fan club? Or when you have a long weekend and crave butter? You visit Bretagne, of course!

Bretagne is the northwest region of France. In English, I should say Brittany, but I’m going to continue with the French spelling — mainly because googling for the English spelling continually suggests that I actually want to search for ‘Britney’. The inhabitants of the region are Breton, as is the language and the adjective. In the Breton language (the most popular modern Celtic language after Irish, and the only Celtic language still spoken on the continent), the region is Breizh.

The Celts arrived here, well, a long time ago. The Neolithic is the last period of the stone age, when man was polishing and grinding stone tools instead of chipping (the Paleolithic), but before the use of metals (the bronze age). The Celts left their prehistoric mark for modern tourists in the form of megaliths — giant stone formations that can be categorized as dolmens (giant stones arranged as a tomb), cromlech (formations for religious purposes, of which the most famous non-Breton example is Stonehenge) and menhirs (single, giant stone markers). The size of the menhirs is particularly impressive. Erecting the 200 tonne obelisk in Paris was thought to be an engineering marvel in the nineteenth century. Many of the menhirs are half again as large, and were erected over three thousand years ago.

I didn’t visit any prehistoric Bretagne on our trip, but I know how the story continues, thanks to the influence of Asterix and his menhir-toting buddy Obelix. The Celtic people and lands were added to the Roman empire when Julius Ceasar defeated Vercingétorix at Alésia in 57 B.C. France was occupied by the Romans, who introduced their technology, taxes, circuses, and eventually religion. Over the next hundreds of years, the melting between the two cultures produced the Gallo-roman people — the ancestor of the modern French.

In the fifth and sixth century, there was a massive immigration of Bretons from across the channel. The Celtic people had long ago spread into Britain from the continent, and their descendents returned by the thousands to flee the invasions of the Picts, the Scots and the Anglo-Saxons. They set up large communities on the shores of Bretagne.

In the ninth century, Bretagne was united as a sovereign kingdom, with its own king, and in 1066, the Bretons contributed to the conquest of Britain (and of course, history fans can’t do much better than checking out the Bayeux Tapestry for the story of William the Conqueror and The Battle of Hastings). By the twelfth century, Bretagne was an independent duchy under the English rule of Henry II.

In the fifteenth century, the Duke François II took his duchy to war against France, and was defeated by Louis XI. His daughter, the Duchess Anne of Bretagne agreed to meet and marry the next French king, Charles VIII, to ally the two countries and negotiate an independent Bretagne. They had a lot in common: they were both already politically married, her to Emperor Maximilien of Hamburg, and him to Maximilien’s daughter. After Charles’ death, Anne would marry a second French king, Louis XII — a personal, rather than political, marriage that had little effect on her lands. Bretagne was peaceful, prosperous and independent.

In the sixteenth century, Bretagne loses its independence as Anne’s daughter Claude marries another French king, and brings the duchy as part of her dowry. Bretagne firmly becomes a province in the French kingdom.

From a purely stylistic point of view, the black and white Breton flag has similarities to the American flag (although it was based on earlier coats of arms of cities in the region). Instead of the red and white bars, there are nine black and white bars, and instead of stars, there are black ermines on a white field. The ermine is a symbol of Bretagne, like the fleur-de-lys is a symbol of France — it looks like an upside down elongated kite, with three small diamonds radiating from the top.

Sylvain and I had booked two nights at St. Malo, and we drove directly there (in Sylvain’s car) from Paris via Rennes on the pay highways. In total, the trip took about four hours and cost 24€ in tolls, but we took it really quite slow, stopping at several aires along the highways to stretch, eat and refresh. We arrived in the very early afternoon, at low tide.

Tourism on the coasts of Bretagne, especially around the city of St. Malo, is highly linked to the tides. The beaches are extremely gently sloped, so the shore moves large distances. In low tide, you can walk out to some islands, lookouts and forts that are inaccessible during high tides. There are many signs warning you that if you get stuck on an island, you’ll have to wait there for the next low tide to get off. We went immediately to the old section of the city (the remparts or reinforced city walls) and walked along the beach, clambered over the rocks filled with tidal pools and visited the extremely windy islands.

St. Malo, as any good Canadian knows, is the birthplace of Jacques Cartier. In 1534, he set out from this port city to search for an alternate route to East Asia and stumbled into the new world. From the current inhabitants, he learned the name was Kanata, and voilà — a future nation was named.

The city is also known for it’s privateers, or corsairs. Much like pirates, privateers were permitted to attack and capture foreign ships on the high seas and keep the riches they found. This activity was authorised by the king, who distributed letters of course to ship captains.

We ate at an artisanal crêperie — finally, real Breton crêpes. They’re not quite the same thing as in Paris, which is understandable. Bretagne is all about the crêpes. Several of the restaurants were already fully booked all through the evening, but I still think we lucked out in finding our crêperie (Ti Nevez in the old city). It was absolutely tiny, about four or five tables. It turned out to be Sylvain’s birthday, and a respectable celebration with very good cider.

We set off the next morning towards Mont-Saint-Michel — the church on a rock. The Michelin atlas had the coastal route marked out in green, indicating scenery, so we took the road toward Pointe de Groine and hung out over the famous sculptured rock cliffs of Bretagne. It was pretty grey out, and the cliffs were grey as well. It reminded me a lot of the west coast of Canada. I got that impression a lot in Bretagne.

Our little hike around the point took us by a campground. If there’s anything I’m homesick for, it’s Canadian camping. I want a place that you can only walk into, and where there’s a lot of space between me and the next guy. I want a campfire. Alright, if you know me, you know that I talk more about loving to camp than actually camping, and I probably won’t make it out camping in Europe this year. But I miss it anyway.

The city of Cancale is supposed to be extremely beautiful and colourful as well. I wouldn’t know. We skipped it entirely to get to Mont-Saint-Michel at a decent hour. A couple thousand years ago, this would have been a large granite rock island in the bay. At low tide, you could walk out to it (being careful of quicksand, as signs today still warn) and at high tide, it’s completely surrounded by the water. It would have been an impressive thought even without the church.

In the seventh century, the Bishop of Avranches had three visions of the Archangel Michael, who requested him to build a monastery on the island. The island soon became a popular Christian pilgrimage, and at the turn of the first millennium, the Benedictine monks started work on the abbey. It was built and expanded over the next six hundred years, while a village to support the pilgrims and fortifications were built around the base.

We saw the outline of the island and the abbey long before we arrived. We got there in the early afternoon, at low tide. Parking is a bit peculiar. You pay to get into the lot, which is well-drained but curiously wet, and there are large signs that tell you exactly at which hour you have to get off the lot — it’s submerged during high tides. The land is extremely flat, which means that the tides travel great distances and can come in at a brisk walking pace.

Mont-Saint-Michel is stunning. It should be a mandatory destination for anyone visiting France. Everyone else thought so on this Easter long weekend, and came. Of course, crowds bug me a bit, but they were right. You have to go there. I’m embarrassed by my inability to express how incredible it is.

We walked from the lot along the causeway, built to permanently connect the island to the shore in the mid-nineteenth century (and hopefully prevent a few quicksand deaths among the pilgrims). There was a long, extremely crowded corridor from the medieval gate, passing through the old village which was now entirely tourist oriented — gift shops, restaurants, side museums. It was a high-tourist weekend, so all the little corridors between the half-timbered and slate-roofed houses were full. The ramparts were full. The staircases (many, many staircases) crossing up and down the rock were full. There was an incredible line going into the abbey.

The view from the abbey was incredible. The abbey itself was incredible — with great halls, a peaceful cloister perched on top and little hidden herb gardens poked in here and there.

We were exhausted and ate lightly at the hotel that night in St. Malo.

The next day we headed along the Rance valley on our way to Dinan. We took a couple of side routes, mainly thanks to my intuitive sense of direction (it was wrong, but intuitive nonetheless). We found a little hiking route to an incredible lookout over some beautiful countryside.

The city of Dinan is outstanding in a different way than Mont-Saint-Michel — it has all the multi-storeyed medieval wood houses and the carvings, the cathedral and the ramparts, but people also live their lives there. It’s a real city.

We needed more crêpes, but unfortunately the crêperie recommended to us by our colleague was closed for the day. We wandered around the old part of the city to the central square and ate another excellent meal. I bought my souvenirs, especially some crème de salidou, a caramel sauce for crêpes and desserts made from high-quality salted butter.

One of the most amazing picturesque streets in Dinan goes from the old city, through the city walls and down to the Rance river. It’s fairly steep and not very evenly cobbled, but the medieval wood houses on either side are interesting and brightly coloured. We followed the river for a long distance, enjoying the peace and green space along it. Back up in the city, we walked nearly the entire ramparts, and visited the St. Malo cathedral.

Our last destination in Bretagne was a tour along the Côte d’Emeraude, named for the emerald colour of the ocean. Cap Fréhel is one of the most well-known panoramic points on the route, and we spent the rest of our remaining time in Bretagne along the cliffs.

They were very colourful, and very beautiful. There was a lighthouse and a tearoom, but neither of them were open while we were there. Not surprisingly, we didn’t do anything but walk and gape. Wow.

It took me hours just to choose the pictures I wanted to put on the site. It made me feel like a great nature photographer. The light was great and the location was perfect. You could point and click in any direction and it would be a masterpiece — the problem is when words fail you trying to describe it. Not that it ever stopped me from trying.

We left Cap Fréhel pretty late, at about eight o’clock and headed back to Paris. We decided to take the trip through Caen instead of Rennes, just to see what it was like. I learned an important tip at this point: it’s much cheaper to go through Caen (11€) and it looks pretty much exactly the same as any other route at that time of night.

Bretagne is awesome, but the next few weeks should be pretty cool as well. Check back to hear about my next guests and our amazing adventures!