The Brittany Coast and Goodbye to Europe – by Gary

The Brittany Coast
I have always wanted to explore the Brittany coast, but as our time had ran short we could only briefly visit Dinard, St Malo and Le Mont St Michel.  It was however a fine sample of this famous coastline.

Dinard
Dinard is quite obviously an ‘old money’ town, a beach retreat for wealthy Parisians, and the ‘beach architecture’ there is pretty amazing.

The Dinard beach

A house? I guess this could be a small hotel or guest house.

But these looked distinctly like your average ‘pots of money’ beach shacks

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There were hundreds of them, gorgeous old places.

St Malo
A walled town, but with a spectacular waterfront location, it’s another ‘old money town’.

The tidal range on this coast is huge, the currents strong, there are off-shore rocks everywhere, the weather is often severe and just to make life interesting there are frequent fogs.  Brittany sailors and fishermen are legendary.

St Malo’s defenses had to be strong to keep out those bloody Poms.

Even the off-shore rocks are heavily defended.

But how’s this for a cool hotel?

The shops and cafes are very, very chic.

Le Mont St Michel
This island monastery was our last major stop in Europe.  A big conservation project was underway, so it was a bit of a construction site, but still spectacular.

Seen from afar in a rolling landscape??!

Closer up – those monks obviously wanted security and solitude!

The town at the foot of the island is Hollywood mediaeval.

 

And Zeke correctly identified the light, soaring majesty of the church transept as Gothic – well done Zeke.

From high up in the monastery you can get a sense of the scale of the conservation project underway.  The monastery island sits in a large bay that is gradually silting up – this massive project aims at changing the nature of the in and out flows of the river at the head of the bay to gradually flush the accumulated silt from around the island.  It’s a World Heritage site and a major tourist draw-card – but it still seems a far-sighted investment.

 

Bye Bye Europe
After two plus months of camping and freeloading off friends, relatives and complete strangers it was finally time for us to head off back to Trinidad.  We want to thank everybody who helped make our European trip such a very special time.  Ciao.

Zeke and Nina’s tent was twice as big as ours!

Turning our European hire car in at Calais before heading back to England and Gatwick airport.  It was a sporty little car and very economical to run.

 

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