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Published: September 24th 2012
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Field of Maize
This is such a common sight in Brittany One of the things we love about staying in B&Bs is getting to meet new people over breakfast. This morning we had breakfast with a retired French couple from Lyon whose daughter is married to a Kiwi. Their English was excellent (far better than our appalling French) so we had quite a long conversation.
A mere 600m from our front door, and a very pleasant walk along the tree-lined road between fields of maize (corn) is the 16
th century
Chapelle de Trémalo. Besides being a beautiful chapel, in a lovely rural setting, it is famous for housing the large crucifix that Gaugin used as the basis for
Le Christ Jaune (The Yellow Christ). The churches in this part of Brittany are different from any we’ve seen before. They look absolutely ancient, with their weather-worn statuary that appear to us as quite pagan-like. Also, their interiors are often quite different. Many (including
Trémalo) have three altars arranged in a line across the front. The heavy beams in the vaulted ceilings are often carved to give the appearance that they emerge from the mouths of some type of sharp-toothed beasts (it’s hard to describe – we’ll post a photo).
We had
Chapelle de Trémalo
Notice how close the roof comes down to the ground. Many of the old houses are like this too. expected that after the very busy Heritage Weekend was over,
Pont Aven would be much quieter. We were wrong! Everywhere you looked – ‘grey nomads’ in their big white camper vans – apologies to Noelene and Tony 😉
Lunch by the river was almost the classic French affair – baguette with cheese – only the red wine was missing.
Despite the crowds, we managed to enjoy wandering along the
Promenade Xavier Grall, a boardwalk along a narrow section of the Aven River, winding its way through the buildings in the town centre. It is a very pretty walk with flower boxes and little gardens along the way. Upstream of the Promenade, is a section of the river called The
Chaos, where the water is slowed by a jumble of large boulders (a feature that made the river especially suitable for mills by making the flow easier to control).
We continued up the river into the
Bois d'Amour (the Love Forest), so named because of the presumed antics of the many painters who found inspiration there.
Keen to check out more of the sights suggested by Véronique (our hostess), we drove to the very small villages of
Chapelle de Trémalo
We like the steps going up the roofline to the bell tower. Maintenance? Kercanic and
Kerascoët to see the
Chaumieres (thatched houses) and
Clôtures en Pierres Debout (fences/gates made of miniature standing-stones) for which they are famous. Incidentally, we had noticed an inordinate number of villages and farms whose names began with “
Ker”. Apparently it means “small” in
Breton. There are also towns whose names start with “
Plou” which is
Breton for “large” – but there are not nearly as many (I guess that makes sense).
From there, we made for
Port Manec’h at the mouth of the
Aven and
Bélon Rivers. We were a bit frustrated here because we wanted to get onto the banks of the
Aven for a closer look but couldn’t because the river is lined with huge homes on large grounds that run right down to the waters’ edge.
We stopped in at the tiny hamlet of
L’Anse de Rospico in the hope of finding their
créperie still open. Our disappointment was more than compensated for by the beautiful view over the water in the fading light and the lovely walk along the coastal path. We finally found a great pizza restaurant at
Nevez, on the way back to
Pont Aven.
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Noelene
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Young Nomads.
Apologies Accepted, love following your blogs.