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Published: March 16th 2016
Ah!hot water came through the tap this morning so the drama last night of thinking we might be here for 3 days without a hot shower is over.
And the day is another cracker with a stronger sun than we have seen since we have been in France. Perhaps it is the more rural area we are located in with less pollution or is it just less hazy in Brittany? Who knows but the BBA V3 is continued to be blessed with sunny, dry days.
The dawn chorus of happy birds in the trees and fields is a lovely background as we prepared breakfast and put a load of washing on. One needs to make use of a proper washing machine when one can! With a clothes horse available and the sun shining the washing should dry nicely today.
We decided on a cruisy day today and so took a walk down the lane to the village which turned out to be larger than what we thought. It even had a Post Office which surprised us a bit. The only other store we came across was cafe which also had some groceries for sale.
The Maire is
the local offices for the mayor and council activities (often known as Hotel de Ville in larger centres).The local office was a busy place with a community centre attached and the sound of traditional Breton music emanating from it. Inside it appeared to be a session for mothers and preschool children who were dancing.
The village looked like it has had a resurgence of population in recent years as there was a small subdivision of new homes at the other end of the main road.
Like many villages the church is dominant and one here was built in 1899 giving some indication as to when the village began to flourish with a growing population although our cottage was built 30 years prior. The graves in the yard of the church had all been very well maintained, even the oldest of them, and it would be a lesson to many communities in NZ to look after the dead even years after they had been buried as many of our cemeteries are not so well kept when it comes to older graves.
We had the feeling that the locals eyed us with some suspicion as strolled the road but
we gave a ‘Bonjour’ to those we passed and got the same back in every case. We got a good laugh from the elderly man who tried to help us last night before Jean Noel appeared. We have no idea what he actually said to us though!
After lunch we took a short drive to the town of Treguier which dates back to the 6
th century and even boasted its own bishop in 1790.
The bishop’s house or rather mansion given its size is part of the original walls of the town.
He did what bishop’s do in a magnificent cathedral sited in the middle of the town square.
The structure was huge and really out of proportion with a town of 2500 people and when it was built between the 14
th and 15
th centuries it was probably not known that a bishop would eventually sit here.
The town also has a port even though it is 5 ½ miles from the English Channel with a fishing fleet that uses the river channel to get out to sea.
We carried on towards the coast itself passing through market garden country. The winter crops were
well finished and there was a lot of activity with the ploughing of the fields and spring crops being planted.
The road to the coast took us through the busy town of Paimpol and out to Point de l’Arcouest where we took a short coastal walk with a fresh cold breeze blowing.
As at Cape de la Hague in Normandy this north-eastern point of Brittany was a flat stony beach but with numerous small rocky outcrops and the significantly sized island of Ile de Brehat giving a barrier to the shoreline, the sea is much calmer.
The island looked like it might have been an interesting place to explore but there didn’t seem to be any ready boat transport to get there.
On the way out to an advantage point we passed a woman who was carrying her dog over the stony beach. She may have thought we were wondering why the dog was not walking alongside her as she jabbered away in French to us and gave a mighty laugh as she passed by. What she said or found so funny, we shall never know! This is how it can be sometimes when you make
eye contact with the locals!
Back to Paimpol and our almost daily visit to a supermarket to buy our dinner’s for the next two nights.
We thought that we should more like locals tonight and so splurged out €7.50 on scallops, a staple seafood option in Brittany, for dinner. They weren’t the Queen type we get in NZ but seemed very fleshy all the same.
Crumbing them was going to be the best way to cook them given our limited kitchen supplies to try anything too fancy. All we had to do was to but a bag/box of breadcrumbs.
We knew that ‘pain’ is the French word for ‘bread’ but had no idea what the French word for ‘crumb ‘was so we were unsure what the bag/box would say when we found it on the shelf.
Up and down the aisles of Leclerc supermarket we trolled looking more intently in the places we thought the breadcrumbs should be.
Ask the staff you say!Well,yes that would have been an option but we still didn’t know the French word for breadcrumbs and we doubted that we would have been able to explain ourselves enough in this
rural Breton town supermarket.
In the end when we had been up and down the aisles 2 or in some aisles 3 times we opted for a small packet of croutons which we thought we could reduce to crumbs by squashing under a heavy spoon or suchlike. After all the seasoned croutons would add a little flavour to the final result of cooked scallops.
The trip home took us over winding country roads and we were ready for a coffee and relaxation to complete the day before attending to dinner.
The crushing of the croutons turned out a great success even if they were a bit coarser that breadcrumbs but they did give that extra flavour to a dinner we thoroughly enjoyed.
We are set for the next time we shop as we now know (good old Google) that breadcrumbs in France are called ‘chapelure’!
By the way you can watch and hear the traditional Breton song on YouTube by typing in the title.
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KjBenvie
non-member comment
Translator app?
Immediately thought of Mr Google when hearing about the breadcrumbs...do you have a translator app? Or what about an old school handy French pocket guide? Could have been your Xmas present if I had known!