The château de Dinan opens for a sensory visit that works on perception instead of chronology. Optical illusions unsettle the eye, hidden places are opened, and exceptional panoramas are reached. Visitors read the château through the eyes of those who crossed it, moving from one point of view to the next. It belongs to Les Minutes Bleues, the Côtes-d’Armor programme that opens the département’s patrimoine in the blue light of dusk.
Region: Brittany
Handloom weaving at L’Échoppée Belle, Pontivy
L’Échoppée Belle is a shop run by the makers who stock it, and for this round one of them sets up her loom among them. Anne Grolleau works the handloom in front of visitors and spins wool as she explains how the frame is threaded. She names the textile fibres she uses, says where each comes from, and gives the names of the different cloths. Weaving on a hand frame is one of the oldest trades practised by the Breton artisans who share the shop.
Science at the Manufacture des tabacs, Morlaix
The Espace des sciences occupies the Manufacture des tabacs in Morlaix, and over the Toussaint break it opens its nine exhibition rooms to all ages. Foucault’s pendulum shows the Earth turning and Globe 360 takes the planet apart. Coup de foudre à la Manu makes static electricity visible. The guided Au plus près des Moulins goes into the Manufacture’s own mills, still working, past a machine classed as a Historic Monument.
Patat’As: Ploeuc Potato House and Farm Visit
Patat’As is the potato house of Plœuc-L’Hermitage, and the association La Belle du Lié guides visitors through it. Its collection runs to more than 220 heirloom varieties, held as a living conservatory of the crop the commune is known for. The visit then moves to a traditional Plœuc farm that has grown potatoes for several generations, following the tuber from field to plate. It closes back at Patat’As with a tasting of Bret’s.
Les Croc’Archi: the Carnac yacht-club base
Les Croc’Archi is the short-visit format of the Pays d’art et d’histoire Auray Quiberon Terre Atlantique, and it stops here at the Carnac yacht-club’s nautical base. A guide-conferencier of its Culture and Heritage service sets out why it counts: it came with the sports architecture that followed the spread of leisure. The agence Yves Guillou built it, and its sixtieth year is the occasion. The group forms at the little train’s departure point.
Fest Noz with Carré Manchot and Sterne, Plédran
Carré Manchot has been playing Festoû-Noz for forty years and brings a wooden transverse flute, accordion, guitar and Armel An Hejer’s voice to Plédran. Sterne arrives from Saint-Cast with bombarde, biniou and bourdon behind violin, folk guitar and its own singing. The duo Le Bour Bodros answers with Timothée Le Bour’s saxophones against Youen Bodros’s accordion. Three sets, one dance floor, in the hall’s own season.
Les Bergers du Cap : brebis laitières à Beuzec
Les Bergers du Cap opens its dairy at Beuzec-Cap-Sizun for a round through its sheep’s cheese. Nicolas and Léo milk seventy Lacaune ewes that graze some twenty hectares of grassland certified Hautes Valeurs Environnementales. In the cheese room the raw whole milk becomes fresh cheeses, yoghurts and tommes, hand-moulded and ripened on spruce boards from the Finistère. Part of what the visits take goes to the Fondation du Patrimoine de Bretagne.
Emma Tribute plays Matmatah at the Triskell, Meucon
Emma Tribute is five Morbihan musicians who play the repertoire of Matmatah, and the Groupe Interquartiers Meucon Musique has booked them into the Salle du Triskell. The association files the evening under rock celtique et tradi, the Breton strand of the genre. The set runs from “Lambé An Dro” to “Brest-même”, songs a crowd here can sing back. A food truck and a bar stand outside the hall.
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.
Pointe de Sel: fish leather at a Paimpol atelier
Pointe de Sel works leather drawn from the sea, and for this visit it opens the small atelier-boutique it keeps in the port of Paimpol. The artisans lay out the materials, the tools and each stage of making, then talk through what they are doing. The unusual part is the hide itself: fish skin, whose particular demands the workshop explains as it works. Two people must book for a visit to run, and the rooms take callers with disabilities.