Beaches of Brittany - Trestrignel

One of the benefits of being a freelancer is that I can, to some extent, decide how to spend my days. And in summer that means checking out the beaches in Brittany.

Trestrignel

(www.plages.tv)


We (friends from the village and I) arrived in time for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the beach, it's not hard to find, there is only one and it is located on the corner next to the (free) car park, the one with the striking agapanthus and beautiful hydrangeas that are in full bloom in July.

There is a captivating view from the car park...

This agapanthus is almost the same colour as the sea...

These pink granite balls line many of the roads to stop people from parking on the pavements.
I'd like to buy a few for my courtyard, they'd have to be delivered, they're too heavy for my car...

So, fortified by fish and chips and a glass of Kir cassis, we made our way down to the beach and selected a nice spot near the rocks for the afternoon.

As is our way, we admired the houses built on the cliffs behind us...
Me, I always view a property with the needs of the writer/reader/student in mind, i.e. is it in a peaceful place, an inspiring location, with gardens in which to wander, windows from which to gaze, many rooms in which to store books and friends, a turret in which to work...

I think this one fits the bill, although not the budget...

And this one caught my eye...

Is it a hotel?  We wondered.
Looks like a monastery. I thought
I like its straight lines and symmetry.

When we got home I researched it on the Internet and this is what I found:
The house (La Villa Silencio) was designed at the end of the 19th century by the architects Pierre-Henri Gelis-Didot et Théodore Lambert, at the request of the comedienne Macrcelle Josset, and bought by the painter Maurice Denis for family seaside holidays, and for his painting.

In a letter dated August 2nd 1908 he wrote:  « Je ne pensais guère, en vous écrivant de Bretagne il y a un mois que ce voyage serait si décisif. Peu de jours après, mon enthousiasme s'accrochait à un écriteau, « A vendre », suspendu au mur d'une charmante villa bâtie par un élève de Viollet Le Duc, pour une actrice aujourd'hui ruinée et dans la plus belle vue du monde, non (cela vous chagrinerait trop), mettons de Bretagne.

Aujourd'hui, cette maison est à moi. Ma femme et mes enfants y sont installés, ils sont ravis ; ils ont un bois de pins extrêmement touffu et la plage au pied de la terrasse. »

The house remains the property of his descendants.

Link to Maurice Denis on Wikipedia

Link to Musée Départemental Maurice Denis

Here's a photo of the man.

I admit to never having heard of him until I coveted his former holiday home but he appears to have been quite an artist, and teacher, and writer and all round interesting chap...










He obviously found Trestrignel inspiring...

Here's Polyphemus (1907), now in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow

and Wave, 1917

and Bacchus and Ariadne (1907), the Hermitage, Moscow

I could go on about Maurice Denis, but this post is about a beach,

Where were we?
Ah yes, on the beach. And a very fine beach it is too with soft sand and smooth rocks and turquoise waters. A person could be forgiven for thinking they are in the tropics on a sunny day at Trestrignel.

This picture from tourisme.perros-guirec.com shows what I mean.

and this one from graniterose-tour.com gives me ideas for wandering with the dog on a day when he is permitted to play on the beach (usually from October to May, but it's worth checking first).

On the website  http://evolution-paysage.bretagne-environnement.org I found a page devoted to the development of Trestrignel during the last century. 

This was how it looked in 1915...  

I think I prefer it with a few more houses...

and the restaurant.

This is the Le Manoir du Sphinx, a hotel that, according to the pictures on the website, has rooms with huge windows and magnificent sea views.

Since I can't stay in La Villa Silencio, I've booked a room here for a night with Tashi in October, when, hopefully, the sea will still be warm enough for swimming and the beach will be open for dogs.

Maybe we will manage one last summer day at the beach before the winter sets in, although if the weather is stormy and wild that would be equally acceptable 😉.

Shall we have a final Maurice Denis?
I think it's very fitting.

30 Days Wild at the Pink Granite Coast

There's this thing on Twitter to encourage UK people to get out and interact with nature during June.

#30DaysWild.

I have no trouble going wild on most days, rather I have trouble not going wild on most days but I thought I'd join the Twitter fun anyway. 

Day 3 and the weather forecast was fair so I went wild at the Pink Granite Coast. 

Of course. 

I think this is wild enough?
The sea was certainly wild, large waves crashing against the rocks...
 

I did wonder if the kayaker would be OK...

Tashi on the rocks.
He's aging now, my buddy, his eyes are not so good and he sometimes needs a little help when we're clambering over the rocks. As do I, truth to tell.

Our favourite restaurant in Ploumanac'h was closed so we ate at another place nearby.
It was not as good but, hey, it was still nice to share a plate of fish and chips.

And then we went wild at Trégastel where the tide was low.
Another shame but it meant we got to walk to the château de Costaérès and spend some time up close and personal, as it were.

I adore that pink castle.
Top of my Cancer Bucket List is a week's holiday there with my Ragazzi and close friends. It's not cheap, I am saving my euros for the 15000 rental cost. Hey, dream big, yes? Though someone on Twitter recently advised me to dream very big and buy the castle.
If only...

At high tide I swim to the castle/
From that beach in the middle of the photo.
Jeez, I hadn't realised it's so far!
Next time I should leave a note on the car windscreen in case I fail to make it there and back:

I SET OFF SWIMMING AT x O'CLOCK
IF THE CAR IS STILL HERE AT y O'CLOCK PLEASE FISH MY BODY OUT OF THE SEA
AND, PLEASE, LOOK AFTER TASHI (THE DOG)

See, up close and personal with the pink castle...

But keeping an eye on the tide.

I did wonder, if I were stranded on the rocks at high tide, would I get to spend the night in the castle? Then I read a report in a local paper of a group who had been caught out by the rising water and were rescued by the local lifeboat crew so no, I need to keep saving for the holiday rental.  

The tide does return quickly and it's fascinating to witness.
Not quite as fast as at Mont St Michel but still, I watched it flowing back to fill first the dips in the sand and then to cover the smoother parts.
And, hey presto, we were almost cut off.

I could have swum back, if necessary, but with Tashi it would have been a struggle, he is not happy in the water although he can swim if he must, he may have set off in the wrong direction, or headed for the nearest rocks, or simply not been able to manage the half a mile back to the beach.

Best not to risk it..

We returned, rock hopping and splashing through the water and beat the tide back.

Les Sept Saints Dormants at Vieux Marché

Near the small Breton town of Vieux Marché is a chapel dedicated to The Seven Sleeping Saints.

To reach the chapel I set off west towards the coastline where, in the fifth century, Irish monks - les moines navigateurs - arrived in flimsy crafts, set foot on rocky shores and gave thanks for their safe delivery.

Towards the coast but not quite that far...

The Sept Saints Dormant are not sleeping in Vieux Marché itself, you have to go through the village and pick up the signs and then follow a trail that twists and turns and sends you round in seemingly ever-decreasing circles as if to test your resolve, before permitting you to arrive, finally, at your destination which is the small and plain-looking chapel.

  

You can park right outside, parking is never an issue in France., and wander in through one of two open doors or, as I did, walk around the outside to get a feel for the land and to read the sign on the gate that describes how Louis Massignon, the celebrated French orientalist made a connection between the Breton Sept Saints Dormants and Sura Eighteen of The Koran, the one that tells the story of the seven early Christian martyrs in Ephesus, Turkey.

The Muslim story relates how, in the third century, seven brothers, Maximilian, Mark, Martin, Dennis, John, Seraphin and Constantine, early followers of Christianity, were ordered by the Emperor Decius to make sacrifices to his pagan gods. When they refused Decius ordered them to be cast into a cave and entombed alive. One hundred and seventy years later the cave was discovered and opened and the seven martyrs were found to be just as they had been left, not dead but sleeping. They awoke briefly, died, and were then transported straight to heaven.

A Breton folk song, The Gwerz recounts the same story, attributes miracles to the seven brothers and links it to the chapel near Vieux Marché.

"In the Bishopric of Treguier, in the Parish of Plouaret, The Holy Spirit raised up a chapel without the use of lime or clay, without a mason, or roofer or carpenter. Whoever visits can see the truth. The chapel is made up of but six stones, four rocks that serve as walls and two others as the roof.Who can doubt that Almighty God built it?"

The first 'chapel' was a indeed built without lime or clay. It is a dolmen, dating back to the early Neolithic period (4000 - 3000 BCE), a single-chamber tomb comprising four upright stones (megaliths) topped by two flat capstones. The dolmen now forms part of the south transept and it is this sacred place, rather than the chapel that was built on 1703 on the feast day of Saint Mary Magdelene, that the Gwerz celebrates and associates with resurrection and eternal life.

When the Celts arrived they found the landscape dotted with dolmens and menhirs and other enduring stone symbols that they, too, revered and venerated because the Celts also believed that sleep, death and resurrection were intricately linked and that a person could pass between such states as easily as slipping through a forest clearing.

Think back to the fairy stories that your mother told you when you were a child...

"il était une fois ..." Once upon a time...

of Sleeping Beauty who slept in the castle for a hundred years before Prince Charming appeared to rouse her, still glowing with youthful beauty, with a kiss on her lips...

of Snow White who ate the beautiful rosy-red apple that the Wicked Stepmother had laced with poison, died and was placed in a glass coffin by the seven dwarves where she remained in a state between sleep and death until the handsome hunter came upon her and revived her with a kiss.

The poet Rumi wrote "During the night our souls are reunited with God

"Sleep and death, physical states between which a body and soul can pass back and forth...

"Not dead, but sleeping"

"Fell asleep on..."

In this land of myths and legends it's not so difficult to believe in the Sept Saints Dormant

It was pure good fortune that brought the Orintalist Louis Massignon to this place. One hot July day, the third Sunday in the month, he was taking part in a pardon (a religious festival to mark the local saint's day) when he was struck by the similarities between the story recounted by The Gwerz and that of the Koran. His research led him to discover that in days gone by the Celts of Brittany developed commercial links with the Muslims of the Orient and that the area around Vieux Marché was a stopping-off point on the route of traders carrying raw materials for the manufacture of iron and with it , it seems, also their tales and beliefs from distant lands.

The people of Brittany adopted the miracle of the Seven Sleeping Saints and, in 1954, Louis Massignon added an Islamic Christian pilgrimage for Peace to the Breton Pardon of The Seven Saints of Ephesus at Vieux Marché that remains, to this day, an important link between the two faiths....

There is a small door on the right-hand side of the chapel that leads down stone steps into a vault. Behind an old dark brown oak screen there are seven small figures and one larger one that represents Mary and Jesus. It's too dark for photographs so I borrowed this from Wikipedia. 

Inside the chapel, built in the shape of a cross and, as is the way with Christian worship, facing east towards the rising sun (son), above the altar, the Seven Saints and Mary and Jesus raise their eyes towards heaven and eternal peace.

If you sit on the pew at the front, light a one euro candle and place it carefully on the stand, and focus your mind and your prayers on the flickering candle light you might be lucky enough to see the whole altar lit up by rays of sunlight entering through the stained glass panel to the right.

Time will stand still. Silence will engulf you and you will feel at peace.

On the right  there are the statues of St Michel and The Archangel Gabriel, Jesus and angels... and  the dolmen on which the original chapel was contructed.

Before you leave you are invited to buy a few postcards to spread the word of Peace and Brotherhood between faiths and to write a prayer in the open book nearby.

This is a place in which peace is to be found.

For a French description and pictures from the infobretagne website click here  

Le Mont St Michel New Year

When the Ragazzi and I took our first holiday together as a threesome, nineteen years ago, we chose to come to Brittany. 

It was such a stressful trip but such a huge adventure for us: the first time I'd driven abroad, the first time we'd crossed the Channel without their father, my ex, the first time we'd been to Brittany, the first of so many firsts... 

Despite all of that, it was a wonderful week and it showed me that life would go on and we could continue to thrive and be happy.

Fast forward to 2018, the Ragazzi are now adults leading their own lives in the UK and I am living in Brittany alone. If you ask me, I'll admit to having unknowingly sown the seeds for my move to France back in 1999 but it would take me nineteen years and one false start, before I'd be able to make Brittany my permanent home. 

At least for now... 

On that first trip we crossed from Portsmouth to Caen on an overnight ferry and then drove down through Normandy to Mont St Michel to spent our first day there. The first of many, we made a habit of calling there on every subsequent holiday to Brittany. 

Fitting then, that on the last day of this year I should return to spend a night on Mont St Michel. 

I chose to stay at La Mère Poulard because The Rags and I had spent my 50th birthday weekend in Room 205 and it holds happy memories for me - always a good reason to return when I am alone.

And it is a very unique hotel and just oozing with history and tradition.

My room was on the top floor, the two windows on the right as you look at the picture, so it was lovely and peaceful when I closed the windows to quieten the noise made by the excited tourists milling around outside the hotel and taking pictures through the windows of the spectacle of the famous Mére Poulard omeletes being cooked. 

Peaceful, but almost one hundred steps to my room which provided a heart-pumping workout each time I went up to my room and an arthritic-knee-aching ordeal each time I descended again. I didn't mind, I just needed to take a deep breath and pause on each landing...

The view from the window at the side of my room looking out over the roogtops of the medieval town was of wooden and stone tiles and little turrets and ancient stonework and quite a few pigeons in pairs preparing for spring, I think...

While the view from the front was of the causeway leading from the mainland and the surrounding salt marshes. When there is a very high tide Mont St Michel becomes an island once again, thanks tyo the work carried out in 2012 to dredge the mud and to build a barrage on the river.

I climbed to the abbey. More steps, many more steps but another excellent workout, with a few stops to catch my breath as I pretended to pause to admire the view.

 I am not religious. I'm spritiual but I find religion difficult to master. As Robert Langdon said in The Da Vinci Code, faith is a gift I have yet to receive. Or words to that effect. But I tried to pray, despite the people posing for selfies and snapping pictures all around me, tried and failed. And then, well, then I saw demons everywhere...   

And doors to places to which I was not permitted to enter...

This one, though a normal size, reminded me of Alice in Wonderland, and I was quite happy not to shrink to be able to fit through it...

In the cloisters where the monks and nuns walk in slent meditation when its not full of tourists ignoring the signs not to touch the pillars...

despite the watchful eyes of the dragons above their heads...

I'd plant a herb garden laid out in an intricate design with paved pathways edged with low box hedges and aromatic plants so that it would be a haven for bees and butterflies. 

I've visited the abbey at least a dozen times and on this last occasion I decided I probably won't return: the cardboard cut-out nativity scene near the steps leading to the entrance, the one inside the abbey's church and the tacky attempt at a festive Christmas scene in one of the halls were just not to my liking.

And it's not really an inspiring religious experience, nor is it a beautiful and calming visitor site.

I suppose it just felt cold and bleak and, well, no longer the abbey that I first visited almost twenty years ago.

Yes, I know, the abbey hasn't changed, of course it hasn't, but I have...

So, alpha and omega...
Quite fitting, n'est-ce pas?
        

I left the abbey and walked back down the hill, pausing for something to eat in a crèperie - Le Chapeau Rouge -  whose owners were surly and unfriendly and who served me the worst French soup I have ever eaten: thin and tastleless, containing barely any onions and accompanied by packet-croutons that should have floated on the top with a sprinking of grated cheese. They may have floated, had the soup not been so thin that they sank to the bottom to form a sludgy mess.

I should have sent it back and refused to pay for it.

I didn't. I was too tired to complain and the owners didn't look as if they cared anyway.

I definitely should have sent it back I told myself later when a violent stomach upset hit me, I can't be sure that it was as a result of that French onion soup, but I hadn't eaten anything else since dinner the day before so...

I rested in my room, recovered from my soup-stomach-upset and then took a long, hot bubble bath and dressed for my New Year's Eve dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was expensive, the service was not super-efficient and my beef was tough but the omelette, the famous Mère Poulard omelette was perfect. I'd have happily just eaten omelettes for all three courses and, yes, there was a desert version, had I been able to manage it...

(Pic from https://lamerepoulard.com)

After dinner I walked the near-empty streets and then wandered down, through the town's old gates, past the Christmas trees and fairy lights strung across the stone walls, to gaze at Mont St Michel from the causeway.

It looked tall, imposing and quite beautiful, in a stark and severe way, like a castle in a fairy tale;  though I am not convinced this particular one would necessarily have a happy ending.

Perhaps we have to write our own happy endings?

And our own forward-looking New Year beginings?