Normandy and Brittany

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22 September 2009

September is a great month to visit Brittany. The weather is still pleasant and the summer visitors have gone home. The children are at school and the adults are back at work. That means we have the area to ourselves, almost.

Ray and I flew to Paris overnight 7 September and spent the next day with our daughter Erica, son-in-law Andrew and their two children Atticus 4 and Roman 2. It had been six months since we had last visited and we found the two boys growing like weeds. We just had time for them to get used to us again before we were off to Normandy and Brittany.

One of the reasons we chose Brittany was that it is close to the home of Liz and Yves Dat. Liz would be joining us in Brittany (see Normandy-Brittany Part 2) but Yves was travelling to London and Scotland to visit their two daughters who live there. Ray and I also enjoy visiting Yves, so we made a detour on our way to Brittany to have lunch with the Dats in Lion sur Mer, on the Normandy coast.

After a leisurely meal and lots of chat we continued on to Bayeux. Ray had not visited the famous tapestry in Bayeux, so we booked a very nice B and B through Gite de France for the night. Since we had enjoyed a full meal at lunch time, we had a simple supper in our room of bread, cheese and wine. That became our evening meal for the next two nights as well. Those "formule" lunches offered at the restaurants were too good to pass up.

Even though this was my fourth visit to the Bayeux tapestry, I was still impressed. The exhibit has improved at each visit and I learned more about 1066 every time. The old town of Bayeux is certainly worth exploring on its own, so our visit stretched into the early afternoon.

Our next stop was Mont St Michel. Once again this was a repeat visit for me and the first visit for Ray. We got there shortly after it opened in the morning and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We managed to include an excellent English guided tour of the Abbey and ended with another great Formule lunch overlooking the mud flats. If we had more time we would have investigated a guided walk around the bay. There was a group of young people doing just that and it looked like fun.

We spent the last night before meeting up with the group in a country B and B just north of Guingamp. The city was once a weaving center and the origin of gingham, but we didn't visit. We chose our B and B so that we would not have a long drive on Saturday. In fact we had time Saturday morning for a short stop at the ruins of Chateaux Tonquedec and still arrive at Coat Aillis by 11 AM.

We saw a little more of Brittany on the way back to Paris. We had time for a brief visit and lunch in St Malo and then an exploration of the lovely half-timbered town, Dinan.

For an account of our time on the Cote d'Armor, Brittany see Coat Aillis Normandy-Brittany Part 2