Yesterday evening (7/13), we were aiming to camp just south of Nantes but it turned out the campground there had been shut down. So at around 7pm we had nowhere to stay and drove another 30 minutes north to a municipal campground in the small village of La Roche-Bernard, which is located on the coast in the southernmost portion of Brittany. The campground is adjacent to a large harbor filled with sailboats, as well as a sailing school. We had dinner around 9:30pm; thankfully we are in a tourist town with the harbor and it’s a holiday weekend so a few restaurants/bars were open. We had oysters and mussels, as well as a huge salad with chevre with honey and thyme. And of course the local wine – muscadet, which is light and has a slight citrus taste, so it is excellent with seafood. We all slept very well – temperature is down around 50 at night and 65/75 in the day with blue sky and sunshine – perfect.
I went for a walk this morning and explored the village – sort of seems like someone took France, Ireland and Maine and put them in a blender together – incredibly charming. Finally found a boulangerie for bread – the croissants are insanely good here. As it turns out today was market day in town so after breakfast Nancy and I headed to the market while Jim spent a few hours setting up our campsite – we’ve decided to stay here for the duration of my trip so we don’t spend any more time driving.
The market was pretty large with a large variety of food vendors. We got some nice vegetables, including cooked beets from one of the farmers, some cheese and cured ham. I got a Breton style white/red striped shirt – the vendor was having a sale (a second shirt for only 2 euro more), so Nancy and I picked one out for Jim in white/navy. We also stumbled on an excellent pottery store in the old section of town (15th, 16th and 17th Century houses) – we spent a lot of time in the store and I will definitely be going back to buy something once I ponder and see what else is out there in other towns we visit. The folks in the store were very sweet and tried to help us despite their lack of English/our lack of French, so one of the other customers helped us out with translating which was very sweet.
We had lunch at a really nice restaurant in center of the old part of town. Le menu: fruit de mer (I tried snails, oysters and a bigger size snail – all pretty good actually, as well as shrimp and langostine); fish in saffron broth; apricot cake with caramel/butter sauce holy cow it was good. Sittign next to us was a very friendly 80-year-old gentleman eating by himself; when he didn’t finish all his wine he offered the remainder to us, so we struck up a conversation despite the language barrier. He has a fishing boat in the harbor and was getting ready to go out for a few days. He recommended several places for us to visit in the area. At one point he was trying to explain to me that Benjamin Franklin stayed in the town of Auray in 1776 to negotiate a treaty with France. This gentleman had a very strong accent so when he pronounced “Benjamin Franklin” I didn’t immediately comprehend, so he said it a few more times, slower, so when I finally got it I felt like an idiot! We all had a good laugh.
Back to the campground for an afternoon nap, reading guidebooks so we can plan the last few days of my time, and. I also did a bit of laundry. The crowds really started building in the afternoon in the park next to the campground. By dinnertime there were hundreds of people, all sitting family style in rows of tables, eating all kinds of local favorites that smelled fantastic and listening/singing along to several live bands singing French/Breton and Irish traditional songs. One of the boats docked in the harbor was loaded with people drinking wine and listening to a man playing what looked like Breton bagpipes. Before and after dinner I walked over to listen to some of the music and to watch the fireworks, which were pretty short (about 10 minutes) but everyone clapped politely when it was over around 11:30.
We really feel like we won the lottery ending up in this charming village by accident – it’s really a gem and will be an excellent base for the next few days.
Photos from past few days here. Videos of Bastille Day here (not the best quality & not sure they'll work).
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