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.
Region: Brittany
Des ruines au musée, abbaye de Landévennec
La visite accompagnée conduit du musée départemental aux vestiges de l’ancienne abbaye de Landévennec, l’un des plus anciens monastères de Bretagne. Les salles déroulent le résultat de 25 ans de fouilles et 1 500 ans d’histoire bretonne. Le parcours suit ensuite l’évolution architecturale du site, de l’époque carolingienne à sa reconstruction romane. Il s’achève au jardin des simples, reconstitué d’après des graines retrouvées en fouille.
Visite de l’Atelier de la Nacre, à Audierne
The Atelier de la Nacre opens its bench in Audierne for a behind-the-scenes tour, and visitors work the material themselves. Jocelyne has been a nacrière for more than twenty years, in one of the rares nacrières de France. She collects ormeaux, huîtres perlières and burgos from fishermen and shellfish farmers, and turns them into boucles d’oreille, bagues and pendentifs. It belongs to the savoir-faire weeks of the Brittany Tourist Offices.
De phare en lumière: Ramiro Chaves at the Pointe du Raz
Ramiro Chaves photographed the Breton coast after dark, with the beam of a lighthouse for his only light. He made the series along this shore during a residency run from Brest by the Centre Atlantique de la Photographie. A photographer from Córdoba who has long lived in Mexico, he sets those images against a stronger southern light. The show joins the Maison de site’s season on lighthouses and the Curieux Mexique cycle of a Cap Sizun collective.
Sonerien Du ouvre le Festival Presqu’île Breizh
The Festival Presqu’île Breizh opens with a concert by Sonerien Du at the Espace Louison Bobet in Quiberon. The band plays the repertoire that fest-noz dancers follow, so the floor matters more than the seats. Over three days the festival spreads across Quiberon and the neighbouring communes, with some thirty spectacles and hundreds of dancers and musicians. A grande parade celtique sets off from the same hall.
Saint-Cast s’éveille: dawn over the baie de l’Arguenon
This is one of the Minutes Bleues outings, the week when heritage sites of the Côtes d’Armor open in the blue light of dawn. The walk leaves the Grande Plage de Saint-Cast-le-Guildo in the dark and follows the GR34 coast path to the Pointe de la Garde. The arrival is timed for the sun coming up over the baie de l’Arguenon at high tide, with a guide reading the shoreline. The return drops through one of the oldest quarters of the town.
Behind the counter at the crêperie Saint Thomas
The crêperie Saint Thomas lets a small group through to the working side of its kitchen in Landerneau. The batter is mixed in front of them, the crêpes are turned, and the fillings are built from produce sourced nearby. A tasting closes the round. The house is known in the Pays de Landerneau-Daoulas for its Breton specialities, and it opens its doors here for the Semaines du tourisme économique et des Savoir-Faire.
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.
Les Délices de Sillery: biscuits made by hand
The team at Les Délices de Sillery opens its kitchen at Douarnenez to a small booked group. Kouign Amann is folded by hand in four forms, plain, apple, chocolate and miniature, beside the day’s biscuits and gâteaux. The same bench turns out biscottes, some without salt, others made with blé noir, the buckwheat of Breton tables. Every ingredient comes from within a hundred kilometres, and a donation sends two euros fifty to the SNSM de Douarnenez.
Sur la route de Cléden-Poher : costumes bretons
Lévénès de Cléden-Poher hangs his photographic portraits in the town hall at Cléguérec. Men and women of the different pays bretons sit for the camera in traditional costume rebuilt faithfully. Interactive labels carry a QR code opening a sound capsule and a biography. The Breton costume works here as a visual identity card, declaring its wearer’s territory, period and social standing. The photographer leads a guided visit of his own hanging.