This day stands out in my memory, and not for the best reasons unfortunately but luckily nothing too terrible happened and it’s all quite funny now…

While based in Carnac, we took a daytrip to the peninsula of Quiberon, explored Carnac’s famous alignments and visited a night market and fest noz in the evening.

  

Ah, La côte sauvage de Quiberon – the wild coast of Quiberon. How poetic and enchanting it sounded. This, coupled with my mom’s lasting memory of the place (it was a chilly morning, and they drove along a small spit of land, sea on either side and a gentle mist in the air) made it sound like a great way to spend our first morning in Morbihan.

…first off, traffic was horrendous. The ‘tiny spit of land’ my mom remembered was half accurate – it was like that for a short distance, but otherwise it was just one very narrow road, surrounded not by the ocean, but a sea of other motorists. There were also several markets happening, meaning congestion on the roadsides and people everywhere.

As we approached Quiberon itself, we passed some pretty looking places (including a castle!) but there was literally nowhere to park. We drove and drove till we found what we thought was the savage coast but we weren’t sure. We were looking for the famous arch, and google seemed conflicted on its location. We drove on.

  

After 3 or 4 confused attempts at parking, wrong turns and moving the car from one car park to another, we finally found the right place. A crowded beach area full of cars and surfers greeted us as we trudged through the hillside.

  

We joined a German couple, also looking for ‘the arch’ and we all had the same reaction upon seeing it – ‘oh, that’s it? …ok…’ After seeing some epic photos of it the real thing was sadly a bit of a letdown, clearly the best time to be there is on a deserted evening, at sunset…or, in the words of our bnb host ‘pendant une tempête’. Unfortunately, midday in full sun met none of those criteria.

A local woman got very snappy with us (and the Germans) for stepping over a small boundary wire on the floor, to take a photo. We felt she was being a but pedantic, especially considering there was a guy out on the actual arch.

  

Back on the road the shitty conditions persisted. We saw some signs for a Super U and as we needed to visit a shop, temporarily changed course. Unfortunately we overshot the turnoff we were looking for like 3 times. Our faithful Waze GPS guide, Thomas, was leading us on a merry dance as we attempted to find the damn shop.

Finally, in a rage and emotionally wrecked state the likes of which I’ve really never experienced before, we pulled into the parking lot of the Super U and I let off steam the only way I could think of – by aggressively shouting every Afrikaans expletive I knew, and inventing a couple of new ones too. It all proved too much for mom at this point who quite literally fell out onto the parking lot floor laughing.

Emotionally shell-shocked, we went into the shop…which wasn’t great. It was like a big Makro and pretty disappointing. Still, we left feeling marginally better and we decided to head back to Carnac via Auray. This was another bad decision.

It was also very crowded, there was nowhere to park and when we eventually did find a place it was at the back end of town and nowhere near the prettier historical centre. So we left….and tried the picturesque Port De St Goustan. Unfortunately it was (perpetually, for us) low tide and it looked terrible. I was so upset and over it I didn’t even take a picture.

Once back in Carnac we visited the alignments before returning to the guesthouse. They were beautiful. We didn’t go in but walked around and admired them from the perimeter. The sheer size of the formations is super impressive.

  

  

  

  

  

Later that evening we walked down to the church square for a night market featuring a fest noz. We didn’t participate in the dancing (this time) but enjoyed watching the couples and groups. The market itself was fun but nothing special, much the same as we have back home and probably anywhere in the world. Some of the things for sale included soaps and chocolates, leather bags and caricatures.

The highlight for me was going into the church – seeing it at night was quite magical and its wooden ceiling was particularly beautiful.

  

  

  

  

(side note: when we first arrived in Paris airport my mom pointed and shouted in delight at a man walking past us, “baguette-eating man! Look!” Since then we had to laugh because it’s amazing how everywhere we went there was someone just carrying a baguette. I think it’s one of the best things about the French!)

  

  

The highlight was the church, and the lowlight was dinner. As it was one of our last nights out on the town I convinced my mom to have a galette with me. I stood in the long queue for a while and finally ordered a ‘galette complet’ from a lady in a wimple. Ham, cheese and a buckwheat savoury crepe – sounds good right?

…alas no. It had no flavour (most obviously no salt but also French cheese which is all so  incredibly mild) and was a miserable texture. We agreed – massive galette-down.

But at least we tried some authentic cuisine!

  

– – –

BZH 2017: Intro  |  Pt 1  |  Pt 2  |  Pt 3  |  Pt 4  |  Paimpol 2017 – Festival du Chant de Marin 
Pt 5  |  Pt 6  |  Pt 7  |  Pt 8  |  Pt 9 |  Pt 10  | Pt 11  |  Pt 12  |  Saint-Malo: La Route du Rock Festival
Pt 13  |  Pt 14  |  Pt 15  |  pt 16  |  Pt 17  |  Pt 18

If you travel and you don’t use Booking.com you really should it’s the best! I’m not 100% sure how the referral codes work but try mine if you haven’t used one before for a discount after your first trip: https://www.booking.com/s/35_6/rattsi32