Kenavo Breizh!
This week, we left Brittany to reach Vendée, not without first playing Moses and parting the waters to reach the island of Noirmoutier, which, for a few hours a day, naturally transforms into a peninsula..
General statistics of the adventure so far…
Total Distance (km)
Gasoil (L)
Countries Visited
10.785 km
1.713 L
4
Magic potion…
18-19/07/2025 – La Roche Jagu -> Forêt de Huelgoat
Apart from its coastline (which is impossible to access in summer, given the number of tourists and the restrictions that seem to multiply as the temperature rises…), Brittany is also known for its forests and, above all, for the legends surrounding them. The Huelgoat Forest is undoubtedly a good example. The Romans, at the time, built an oppidum there to control the indomitable Gauls and gave it the name “Artus’ Camp” (in Latin, of course… 🤓). It didn’t take much more for “Artus” to become “Arthur” over time and imagination, for an old man named Merlin to appear there with a treasure, and suddenly, the Huelgoat forest became a mecca of Arthurian legend…
The only curious phenomenon we found in the forest is the famous “Trembling Rock,” a roughly cylindrical granite block weighing 138 tons, 7 meters long and 3 meters high, which, due to erosion, rests on a thin ridge. As a result, by placing yourself in the right spot and pushing a little, you can make it wobble slightly, without any magic potion… 😉. That said, between the forest itself, the mini-Mont Saint-Michel (a chapel perched on top of a hill), and Lake Saint-Michel, the region is quite pleasant, and well worth the two nights we spent there…
Finistère…
20/07/2025 – Forêt de Huelgoat -> Pointe du Millier
Back along the coast to reach the tip of Finistère, first making a quick stop in Douarnenez, home of the famous Breton Kouign Amann (basically, a salted butter and caramelized sugar cake… not bad! 😉). A small fishing village known for having seen the birth of the first unions (for sardine cannery workers), Douarnenez has grown and gradually transformed into a small provincial town. The sardine factory on Tristan Island is long closed, and even the Scarweather, the last of the lightships that were once used to signal dangerous passages to ships, such as sandbanks or channels, when it was impossible to build a lighthouse there, looks in a very sorry state, abandoned on the Quai de l’Enfer, with its aging red paint. The coast, on the other hand, reminded us a little of Ireland, with large slopes of ferns or heather that reach almost to the sea, and mini-cliffs that form as many small coves. Just opposite, we can see the Pointe de la Chèvre and the Crozon peninsula (the one in the middle, between the two arms of Finistère), and behind us, the Pointe du Raz, but that will be for tomorrow…
At the very end… of the very end…
21/07/2025 – Pointe du Millier -> Écluse de Saint-Adrien
Finistère, as its name suggests (i.e., from the Latin “Finis terræ” = “end of the earth” or “end of the world”), is located at the very end of Brittany (that is, at the very western end of France). Well, it seems that the Romans weren’t great observers because, when you’re at the very end of Pointe du Raz (and therefore at the very end of Finistère, that is, at the very end of the very end…), you’d have to have serious myopia not to see the island of Sein, a few kilometres offshore (7 km, to be exact). The end of the earth is therefore only relative (for various reasons, by the way, but the Romans didn’t know that yet…). But symbolically, and after a rather strong (and unexpected) storm during the night, we were among the first, that morning, to pass under the statue of Notre Dame des Naufragés and to walk as far as possible on this famous tip separated by barely a few hundred meters from the Vieille lighthouse, on its small rock in the middle of the ocean. For those who might be wondering, the name of the tip has nothing to do with a certain rodent or the Egyptian sun god. A “raz” actually means a “fast sea current” in Breton, and it is among other things for its strong currents and storms that this area of the Iroise Sea is known… The Pointe du Raz was also our last point as far west, since from here, the coast goes back frankly towards the east… As for us, we came to settle on the banks of the Blavet, near the Saint-Adrien lock, for an afternoon of DIY-adjustment, and a pleasant evening enlivened by the spectacle of a kingfisher and the small fish that it was catching…
Mysterious menhirs…
22/07/2025 – Écluse de Saint-Adrien -> Carnac
We couldn’t leave Brittany without passing through this small, indomitable village that still resists the scientific legions: Carnac and its megaliths (or more precisely, its alignments of more than 3.000 menhirs). The place certainly doesn’t have the spectacular aura one might expect, but it must be admitted that it’s still impressive to see those menhirs aligned in parallel rows, over hundreds and hundreds of meters. We even have our own theory that, initially, the various alignments of Carnac were actually just one, but that crêperies, campsites, and other equestrian centres managed to spring up there before UNESCO put its foot down. The site could really do with a bit of care, and perhaps also a little revamping if we want, one day, have a chance to understand why Asterix and his friends decided, at the time, to align menhirs in the middle of the forest (editor’s note: there are many hypotheses, but we still don’t know, today, what the alignments of menhirs were used for, or why they were built. Theories range from religious to astronomical, including cadastral demarcations, without forgetting the most far-fetched: an army of Roman soldiers petrified by Saint Cornelius, or a place to attract the Korrigans, legendary Breton creatures, who would dance around the stones…).
South of the Loire…
23/07/2025 – Carnac -> Saint-Mars-de-Coutais
Between last year and this year, we’ll only have the Garonne left (in a few days) to have crossed all the major rivers of France. We are officially south of the Loire, which we crossed today via the impressive Saint-Nazaire Bridge, with the industrial area and shipyards on one side (including the latest MSC cruise ship, under construction just below the bridge), and on the other, the typical fishermen’s huts perched at the end of their pontoons (the tide can reach up to 5 meters at the mouth of the Loire), with their cradle nets hanging in front of them. The Loire seemed to us much larger than the Seine, and its mouth, surrounded by sandbanks, is also a bit more beautiful than that of the Seine… 😚
Our next stops will take us to discover the Breton and Poitevin marshes, like this evening, very close to Saint-Mars-de-Coutais, right on the edge of one of the countless canals of the Breton marsh, with our only neighbours being a small group of cows, two moorhens, a kingfisher, and a few coypus…
Open up, ocean!…
24/07/2025 – Saint Mars-de-Coutais -> Saint Georges-de-Rex
The island of Noirmoutier has the particularity of being an island only half the time… Located very close to the mainland (barely 300m between the two closest points), it is accessible by a paved road, the Passage du Gois (and since 1971, also by a bridge). However, when the tide rises, the Passage du Gois is covered with water, and the island therefore becomes an island again (if we ignore the bridge, obviously…). Just like at Omey Island in Ireland, we didn’t hesitate for a second to brave the tide, Marvin proudly crossing the 4,2km of bay to reach Noirmoutier Island through the sand!…
Okay, the reality was a little different… Sure, the Passage du Gois is a submersible causeway, but far from crossing alone on the sand (like for Omey Island), we were one more vehicle in a long, 4,2km long queue (yes, a line of cars from the mainland to the island), not to mention the hundreds of people happily frolicking in the mud, on both sides of the road, to collect all the shells that had been unfortunate enough to forget to leave with the tide… It’s a slightly less “wild” adventure, but it was still good to have brought Marvin to one of the islands in the Bay of Biscay… 😉 Back then in the marsh, in the Poitou part, this time, for another night among the birds and the coypus…
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