Coiffes de Bretagne.
Coiffes de Bretagne.
28th October 2002
A weeks' autumn holiday in Western Brittany. - Beautiful wild scenery, a bit like Dartmoor in England.
Head-dresses like these used to be seen everywhere, but nowadays they are only seen at special festivals.
We had a very nice holiday in Brittany apart from the weather on the day we left! The storm had been building up all day Saturday and the weather forecast wasn’t good. We were due to leave Poole on the 8.30am ferry. We heard on the early morning radio that cross channel ferries had been cancelled so I phoned Poole ferry terminal and they said the Captain was still undecided about whether he would take the ferry across to Cherbourg. So we got to the port and were quickly loaded onto the car ferry. The captain decided to wait until the weather improved – in fact it was three hours later that we finally left the port. Out in the channel although the weather had improved a bit it was still very rough so to avoid the worst of the storm he instead of sailing directly to Cherbourg (normally it takes 4 and a half hours) he took the ferry along a different route keeping close to the French coast – the crossing took nine hours!
Still when we eventually got to our gite in Western Brittany we were very pleased with it. Note: A "gite" is a house or cottage to rent, self catering. I think it's only used for houses in France ("gite" actually means shelter) They are all sorts and they are graded , some very simple,some quite luxurious with swimming pool etc. (In North America I think we call them "efficiencies" - but if you know any other international names for them please let me know:
The Gites de France website tells you about them - www.gites-de-france.fr/
The gite was very comfortable, under floor heating which was very efficient, lovely furniture and a nice modern bathroom, even satellite TV. There was a garden with plenty of room for Judy to run about. There is lots to see in that part of Brittany, it’s not far from the coast which is very rugged and very near the gite there were forests and rivers. As I said on the post card the country side is a bit like Exmoor or Dartmoor – ferns and heather and gorse and great expanses of open heathland. We were there for 5 days, not really long enough to see everything, we will definitely go back to that area.
Love
G. R & J.