Welcome to Mary Ann & Tim's travelog for Brittany.
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MA & T en Bretagne
17 days' driving, 1987 kilometers.
Highlights
In Nantes, the home town of Jules Verne, what do you do with the shipbuilding
industry at the silted-up mouth of the Loire? Les machines de l'île!
La Rochelle is the hometown of the Mongeaus, and Brouage is the hometown of
Champlain (and now nine km from the sea).
The défilé of FIL, the Festival Interceltique de Lorient,
offered 73 miniconcerts in the space of three and a half hours: pipes, horns,
drums, dances, and even jazz saxophone injected into a band from Galicia.
We visited only one of the neolithic sites around the Gulf of Morbihan (near
Vannes) - the alignments of Carnac, where the museum was fascinating - but
there are dolmens (table rocks) elsewhere and menhirs (long rocks) everywhere.
Almost every town has a medieval, half-timbered core, except those extensively
destroyed by our guys in 1944, and Lorient, built in the 17th c. for the East
Asia trade.
Town centres set aside as pedestrian precincts, and filled with flowers, really
work, and the absence of internal combustion (apart from mopeds) seems to keep
them clean. But finding your way to downtown accommodation and parking is a
challenge.
Countryside from wooded riverside paths to heath to beaches and sea-carved pink
granite.
The French on vacation are a cheerful, friendly bunch, and so are those in the
vacation and tourist businesses.
Everyone drives manual-shift diesel, and T wasn't the only one to stall a
motor.
Breton lurks everywhere in the background of Brittany (Breizh) but you don't
have to learn it.
Photo: T, 2015/7/39
First glimpse.
Map: T, 2015/8/20 from Google
(If this does not display on your browser, here is a
less focussed one which may.)
Nantes, July 30, 31, Aug. 3, 17 2015
38 photos, 7.4 Mbytes; 2 videos separately, 8.9 Mbytes
La Rochelle and Brouage, Aug. 1, 2 2015
17 photos, 2.8 Mbytes
Pornichet and La Baule, Aug. 4 2015
5 photos, 1.0 Mbytes
Vannes, Aug. 5, 8 2015
25 photos, 4.5 Mbytes
Carnac and Quiberon, Aug. 6 2015; Lorient and Port-Louis, Aug. 7 2015
27 photos, 4.4 Mbytes
Festival Interceltique de Lorient, parade Aug. 9 2015
28 photos, 5.9 Mbytes; 2 videos separately, 3.2 Mbytes
Kernascléden, Quimper and Plomelin, Aug. 10, 11 and 12 2015
25 photos, 4.2 Mbytes
Pleyben, Mont St-Michel de Brasparts and Pleyber-Christ, Aug. 13 2015
8 photos, 1.3 Mbytes
Ploumanac'h and Perros-Guirec, Aug. 13, 14 2015
23 photos, 4.1 Mbytes
Dinan and St-Malo, Aug. 15, 16 2015
13 photos, 2.1 Mbytes
Chair series, July 31 - Aug. 8 2015
7 photos, 1.1 Mbytes
Challenges: driving in towns, Aug. 1-18 2015
4 photos, 740 Kbytes