Avalou Plabenneg, the orchard association of Plabennec, fills the Salle Marcel Bouguen with heritage dessert varieties, cider apples and organic fruit from the Locmaria orchard. Grafting and apple identification each have a booth, alongside displays and videos on fruit-growing technique. Outside, apple juice is pressed in the open and knives and tools are sharpened. A pie contest and guided circuits of the town’s orchards run alongside, with admission at two euros. Pruning and grafting at Locmaria, Kerangal and Kerséné occupy the association through the year.
Topic: events
Le Mystère Abgrall: a trail through Guerlesquin
Guerlesquin hands over a game booklet and a problem: Erwann Abgrall, a wealthy Breton eccentric, has vanished, leaving an immense fortune of murky origin, no will and no heir. The booklet turns each walker into an investigator, reading the heritage of the Petite Cité de Caractère to crack the riddles. Maître Braouzec, a notary in Rennes, carries the succession. The trail covers twenty-four Breton towns of the Petites Cités de Caractère network.
Bling Bling: young apprentice goldsmiths in Vitré
Not everything that glitters is gold, the session starts out, yet everything here is precious. Children of four to six are taken into metal itself, through the materials and then the pieces of metalwork made from them. They go at it as apprentice goldsmiths, with the objects in front of them. The hour is led by the service patrimoine et musées of Vitré, which keeps the town’s heritage, and it is held at the Place du Château.
Visite de la Cidrerie Benoît at Saint-Alban
The Benoît family has pressed cider at Saint-Alban through four generations, and the cidery opens its press for a fortnight of works visits. Press, fermentation vats and bottling are the stages the guide walks through, in the order the fruit takes. The orchards behind it are organic and certified free of treatment. A cidrology workshop with Benjamin Benoit closes the visit, tasting the juices and ciders made on the spot.
Des écailles, des carapaces & des hommes
The Musée de la Conserverie Le Gall turns its temporary exhibition to the world of fishing through five species: sardine, thon, maquereau, langouste and langoustine. Collections gathered with the Musée de la pêche de Concarneau trace how techniques changed and what comes next. The route runs outdoors, to the port de pêche and the théâtre de verdure. Conférences follow the species one by one, among them la langoustine, l’or rose du Pays bigouden.
Les Minutes Bleues at La Galerie, Binic-Étables-sur-Mer
Rue Touroux holds La Galerie, where the contemporary artist Elsa Tomkowiak sets strong colour, volume and movement through space at the crossing point of painting and sculpture. A café follows the walk through the rooms, and the group trades what it noticed. The fifth edition of Les Minutes Bleues puts such sessions in the natural and cultural patrimoines of the Côtes-d’Armor, read in the blue light of dawn or dusk. Admission is free, every age is welcome, and booking is strongly advised.
Aber Wrac’h Odyssée: La Route des Phares
Four lighthouses of the Aber Wrac’h archipelago set the route: the two towers of the Île Vierge, the light of the Île Wrac’h and the Lanvaon tower. Hervé skippers the boat, grandson of a semaphorist at Aber Wrac’h and from a family of Plouguerneau boat builders. He explains how lighthouses and coastal buoyage work, and carries the memory of shipwrecks and shipwreckers. The run passes the Wrac’h, Stagadon and Vierge islands close to the water.
Ormeaux bretons at the France Haliotis sea farm
France Haliotis rears Breton ormeaux in open water at Aod Kerazan Vihan, on the Aber Wrac’h in northern Finistère. The farmers walk visitors through their trade, from the beds held out in the sea to the work done back on shore. The stock eats nothing but algues cut by hand along this same coast, and the holding stands as the only abalone farm of its kind in France. A booking is required, because the small team leads each round itself.
Chapelle Saint-Quirin and its altarpiece, visit in LSF
The Culture and Heritage Department of the Pays d’art et d’histoire Auray Quiberon Terre Atlantique opens the chapelle Saint-Quirin at Brech to visitors. The sober classical building is marking its 350th anniversary, and it houses one of the finest altarpieces in Morbihan, from the late 17th century. A French sign language interpreter accompanies the guide. Les incontournables also opens megaliths and chapels elsewhere on the territory.
1, 2, 3 Saumon: River Treasure Hunt at the Aquarium
The Aquarium des curieux de nature at Belle-Isle-en-Terre holds the flora and fauna of Brittany’s rivers, and hands young visitors a map and clues for the tanks. Riddles along the way follow the salmon’s life cycle from stream to sea and back. Teams puzzle out each step together until the hidden treasure turns up. The Centre régional d’Initiation Rivière runs the place, and Les Minutes Bleues adds it to its dusk programme in Côtes-d’Armor.