Maud Veith is a documentary photographer settled at Plougasnou, whose work follows women in situations of political or social strain. The Café Marylène has invited her to show the opening stage of a long photographic enquiry. « Nous prendrons la mer avec nous » gathers the accounts of women of the Breton coast on exile and the sea. Portraits hang beside written testimony, of crossings, mutual help, boredom, disappearances and miracles.
Tag: maritime-culture
Dans les coulisses des algues bretonnes
The drying facility of a Trégunc seaweed business opens for this visit, and the stages of seaweed processing are presented in order. With them comes the trade of the professional seaweed harvester, who works wild food seaweed, not a cultivated crop. A tasting closes it: seaweed as broth, as crackers, as tartare, as chips, and in cheeses aged with it. The Maison de l’Alimentation Itinérante of the association Aux Goûts Du Jour runs the stop.
Livre & Mer, salon du livre maritime de Concarneau
The Festival Livre & Mer gathers the authors of the sea at the complexe sportif du Porzou in Concarneau, for its forty-first edition. Novelists, scientists, historians, comic-book authors and sailors meet readers across one large maritime bookshop. Lectures and round tables run beside the stands. Three prizes are handed out, led by the Prix Livre&Mer Henri Quéffelec, and this edition carries the label 400 ans de la marine.
Visite des huîtres Legris, Plouguerneau
Maison Legris is a conchylicole house whose oysters are raised in the Archipel de Lilia, off Plouguerneau. The visit sets out from the family’s oyster bar facing the open sea and crosses a few hundred metres to the chantier. The oysters are then sorted, graded and packed for dispatch while the work is explained. The thread running through it is the métier de l’ostréiculteur, worked on the beds of the archipelago.
France Haliotis: Europe’s only abalone hatchery
France Haliotis runs the only abalone hatchery in Europe. Its team sets out halioculture and algoculture: the biology of the ormeau and of the seaweeds, the secrets of their reproduction, and the rearing of the spat from nought to two centimetres. Photographs and film carry the visit through the growing methods used on land and at sea, the production gear, and what the farm does to protect the natural resource. Recipe ideas close it.
Night walk to the lights of the Pays des Abers
The Pays des Abers tourism office takes walkers onto the GR34 after dark, four kilometres there and back. The route turns on the history of the île Vierge and the île Wrac’h, their lighthouses and the maritime signalling that marks this coast. The guide reads the territory’s heritage under those lights, so the beams become instructions to shipping, not a view. A torch, sturdy shoes and warm waterproof clothing are needed.
Island music at the Pointe du Raz
ID-Îles brings an afternoon on music and island life to the Maison de site de la Pointe du Raz. Nina Montagné’s documentary « Ouessant, île sera une fanfare », on that island’s brass band, opens it, followed by the music video « Dec’h ». Louis Brigand, a geography professor who specialises in islands, then gives an illustrated lecture. Michel Colleu, a collector of traditional maritime cultures, joins the filmmakers afterwards.
Aber Wrac’h Odyssée: the lighthouse route
A small semi-rigid leaves the port of l’Aber Wrac’h at Landéda for an exclusive landing on the Île Vierge. Passengers pass the four lighthouses of the archipelago, among them the Lanvaon tower, and learn how coastal buoyage works. The island adds an outdoor exhibition, “From builders to renovators”, paired with the skipper’s account of the towers. Hervé, grandson of a semaphorist of the Aber Wrac’h, carries the memory of the shipwreckers.
AP Sellerie, an Upholstery Workshop at Auray
François Lamiot has run AP Sellerie since it began, keeping close ties across a wide network of boating professionals. The firm started as a subsidiary of All Purpose, the Trinité-sur-Mer sailmaker, and later took its independence to become Brittany’s largest artisanal upholstery workshop. The visit goes behind the benches of the Toul Garros workshop at Auray. The premises are not accessible to visitors with reduced mobility.
Crazy Lobster composite workshop, Saint-Brieuc
Crazy Lobster shapes technical parts from carbon and glass fibre, a Breton workshop whose first customers were boats. The round crosses the shop floor zone by zone: machining, painting, infusion, sanding. A part is carried from development through prototyping and testing to a finished piece. The firm’s history lies in pleasure sailing and offshore racing, the trade this coast is known for, and that know-how now goes elsewhere in industry.